Page 7 of Monsters Like Us
I lift the spoon and blow on the stew. The first bite is hot, bland, and perfect.
Even with my back turned, the world tightens around a single thread. I can feel him—an invisible pull, a pressure at the nape of my neck. He’s watching me. I know it with every fiber of my being. The hair on the back of my neck prickles with unease and something else. Something hotter. Forbidden.
I try to focus on chewing, on the rhythm of swallowing, on anything that will keep my heart from jumping out of my throat.
Marcy’s attention slips for a beat. Two men at a table across the room are arguing, and she rises to intervene. The noise swells around me.
I let my eyes drift over my shoulder like a forbidden promise.
Micah’s looking at me.
His smirk is small and almost casual, like a man tasting a private joke. But when his eyes lock with mine, something elseflickers there—hunger threaded with ownership. It’s an awful, private certainty that makes the hair on my arms stand up.
It’s ridiculous. He’s a monster. Why should his look have any gravity?
Still, the sensation lingers like a thread tied from him to me. Maybe it’s the power of being noticed. Perhaps it’s the danger. Maybe a tiny, stupid part of me is flattered by his attention.
Utterly stupid. That’s what I am.
I shift in my chair and force my gaze back to my tray, the telltale tremor in my hands steadying. Food goes cold if you stare at it too long.
I focus on eating, trying to forget his stare—and smirk. A task that is impossible.
Around me, Holloway hums with noise. Trays scrape, voices drop to murmurs, Marcy barks orders. Yet the thread from him to me tightens and loosens with the tide of the room, but never breaks.
And when I swallow the last bite of food, I cannot tell if I’m more afraid of him or how much I’m already drawn to his darkness.
CHAPTER 6
Micah
Katana’snot supposed to look at me, and she knows it. Marcy shoved her over to the far end of the cafeteria, made her sit with her back to me, as if that would erase the connection we have. Threads don’t snap that easily. Not when they’re stitched in blood and inevitability.
Now she’s looking at me over her shoulder, using Marcy’s distraction to her advantage.
The room fades to gray. All I see is her. Big hazel eyes locking with mine, daring me, begging me, belonging to me. Her lips part, soft and pink. She sees the smirk tugging at the corner of my mouth, the fire I don’t bother to hide. It’s full of ownership. Possession.
Because she’s mine.
I watch the fight play out across her face—the war between sense and instinct, fear and fascination.
When she spins back toward her tray, I almost laugh. The choice was already made the moment her eyes lingered. She knows it, and so do I.
My fists curl under the table. Rage crawls up my spine, sharp and cold, every time I picture Marcy’s hand on her arm.The way she dragged Katana away from me, shoved Katana’s true nature down like she’s just another patient to be processed and controlled.
I want to snap Marcy’s wrist for daring to touch her. Tear the tendons from her arm for daring to come between us.
But not yet.
Not in this room full of eyes.
Solitary wouldn’t just take me from my girl—it would put me back in a box, and I’ve spent too much of my life in boxes.
Patience.That’s what makes me different from the rest of these drooling fools. I can wait. I’ve been waiting for ten years inside Holloway’s walls.
And now, my purpose has been revealed. Her.
But my patience has limits. And if anyone here—Marcy, Bruce, or any of the gawking sheep in gray sweatpants—tries to keep her from me again, I’ll decorate these walls with their blood.
