Psycho Beasts

Aran rides through neon-lit Serpentine City in a supercar, but the engineering marvels outside the rain-streaked window can't penetrate her spiral.

Aran rides through neon-lit Serpentine City in a supercar, but the engineering marvels outside the rain-streaked window can't penetrate her spiral. Days ago, she ripped her mother's beating heart from the fae queen's chest and ate it raw—the only way to kill an immortal monarch, and the act that crowned Aran ruler of a realm she despises. Disguised as a boy, scratching compulsively at her back where something terrible hides beneath her shirt, she watches the glowing skyscrapers distort into snarling beasts. Her best friend Sadie mouths reassurance from across the car. Ice claws once erupted from Aran's fingernails, a male voice praised her for the kill, and none of it makes sense. For the first time in her life, the fae princess passes out.

Cobra's father threatens to kill everyone at first sight

Their driver leads the battered group through a rainy alley to a door marked with threats about disloyalty. Inside, a dozen armed betas aim machine guns while a man who could be Cobra's twin lounges in a velvet chair—a massive white snake draped over his shoulders. The don demands his son prove his identity. Two enormous serpents, one black and one white, hiss face-to-face until recognition passes between them. Then the don casually orders everyone else executed. Jinx, Jax's twelve-year-old sister, freezes the entire room with an ear-splitting shriek and calls his bluff—she'd noticed his eyes dried when he lied. Impressed but unflinching, the don forces Cobra into Mafia initiation and warns that any alpha who refuses to form a pack within three months dies.

A fear-maximizing poison and one forbidden question

Sadie, Cobra, Jax, Ascher, and Xerxes hang by their wrists from ceiling hooks in a blue-lit room while the don's disfigured torturer paces with an enormous syringe. He injects them with an enchanted potion that recreates their worst memories while maximizing terror. Sadie relives childhood beatings; Cobra screams in agony. When they regain consciousness, the torturer asks a deceptively simple question: describe the don's appearance. The answer would prove disloyalty. Through hours of brutal interrogation—fists crashing into their faces, demands for information about each other—none of them break. Two other initiates do. Their dismembered remains cover the floor. They've passed the first trial, which has less than a one percent success rate. They limp out together, Jax cradling Cobra's unconscious body, blood pooling in the rain behind them.

Xerxes opens his sanctuary, then shatters the marble beside her head Xerxes's family estate is a gothic mansion staffed by well-paid servants, anchored by Walter, a fiercely loyal beta butler. The omega leads Sadie to…