Claimed By Her Monsters

On Halloween night, the storm comes for me…and so do three dangerous men who swear I’m theirs.
At nineteen I’ve taken my knocks, parents gone, extended foster care, and one bad night at my group home that lands me with a court-appointed, distant “relative.” He’s a beautiful stranger in a black suit; I’m a disaster in borrowed shoes. Neither of us wants this. Still, he brings me to a mansion that breathes. The halls listen. The portraits watch. Outside, the thunder speaks my name.
He tells me to stay in my room.
I don’t.
Downstairs I meet his friends:
Mick, the big one who growls.
Caspian, the quiet one who can’t stop staring.
Alister, the grump who brought me here.
A storm rages outside. The house whispers. The lights die.
They tell me I’m the key to whatever’s waking inside these walls…and inside me. I have to complete a ritual before midnight or the thing under my skin will tear me and this town apart. They say it’s simple.
Fight and die.
Yield to it, and to all of them, and live.
But in this house, nothing is what it seems, least of all me, and when the clock strikes twelve, I’ll have to decide whether to resist the monsters at my door or admit they already own my heart.