Page 91 of Mate of a Monster

My mouth curves in a dark smirk.

I feel him there, humming beneath my ribs, coiled and ready, his power pulsing against my bones like a second heartbeat asking permission. The Argent nobility watch me with those hungry eyes, their bodies already betraying them, already leaning toward me like flowers starved for sun.

They have no idea what’s coming.

“Do it,” the Nightkin purrs. “Show them what we are.”

My lips curl.

Zev’s hold tightens on my stomach. He knows. He can feel the shift in me, the way the air changes pressure when that ancient magic I’m apparently made of decides to wake up.

Legend’s eyes haven’t moved from my face. He seems seconds away from tearing me apart with his teeth. The worst part is I want him to try.

But that’s not the game we’re playing tonight.

“Arabella,” I say her name like a curse. “You look tense.”

Her perfect mouth twists. “You shouldn’t be here. Guards—”

“I already told you.” I tilt my head, letting my dark hair fall over one shoulder. “No one’s coming to save you.”

The Nightkin laughs inside my chest, a sound that vibrates through my blood and settles low in my belly.

“Release me, Hellpet. Let me show them what chaos tastes like.”

I exhale.

And I let go.

The power tears out of me like a scream made of smoke and hunger. It rolls through the architecture in a visible wave, distorting the air, turning everything hazy and thick. The temperature spikes. The incense turns to something sweeter, darker, muskier.

The first Argent drops his champagne glass.

It shatters against marble, but no one flinches. No one even looks. Because the woman beside him has grabbed his lapels and dragged his mouth down to hers, kissing him like she’s trying to consume him whole. Her fingers tear at his buttons. His hands shove up her skirts. They crash against a pillar, grinding against each other with zero shame, zero awareness, zero anything except raw, desperate need.

The sound ripples outward—gasps and moans and the wet slide of mouths meeting skin.

Another man stumbles forward, tearing at his collar. His breathing comes ragged and harsh, his pupils blown so wide his eyes look black. He catches the arm of a passing server, a girl half his age in a white uniform, and she melts into him. Her tray crashes. Crystal scatters. Neither of them notice.

“Oh,” I breathe, watching it spread. “There it is.”

Rot finds the soft places first. That’s how the Nightkin’s power moves through the crowd. It splits each hidden pocket open, dragging out each person’s secret: all the wanting they learned to dress up and lock away beneath good breeding and good taste.

A woman in an emerald gown drops to her knees in front of her husband, pressing her mouth against his crotch through the fabric. His hand finds her hair and yanks her closer as his head falls back.

Moans layer over moans, bouncing off arches until the whole hall hums with it. Somewhere near the fountain, a cluster of bodies has collapsed together, limbs tangled so thoroughly I can’t tell where one ends and another begins.

Slick, obscene noise pours through the hall, slipping between groans and the slap of skin.

Sweat, spit, and sex coat my tongue.

The Nightkin’s power doesn’t stop at flesh.

It digs deeper, past the skin and the wanting, into the rotting places where people shove the things they can’t live with. The things that fester in the dark.

A Lord in gold-trimmed velvet has his face buried in a serving girl’s neck, his hips jerking forward. When his mouth opens against her throat, words spill out like vomit.

“I killed him.” His voice breaks on a moan. “My brother. I put ground glass in his evening meal. Watched him bleed from the inside for three days before he stopped screaming.”