

Tyrese Mayer is a prodigy of Blueland until his own cousin Jody Hodson covets his kirin Bone and conspires to have him stripped and thrown into the Beastgrave. At the bottom, nearly dead, he finds a dying black beast and seals an ancient blood bond with it. The beast is a Voracity cub, a primordial devourer from myth, capable of consuming anything and converting it into power it feeds back to Tyrese. They survive the tomb by eating everything sent to kill them: demon beasts, pursuers, whatever comes. Tyrese rebuilds his body, awakens abilities he wasn’t born with, and the cub he names Baemon grows stronger with every meal. When he walks back out, it isn’t to flee. It’s to settle every account, dismantle every lie, and let the sect learn exactly what they threw away.

On our seventh wedding anniversary, I was straddling my Mafia husband, Lucian, kissing him deeply. My fingers fumbled in the pocket of my expensive silk dress, searching for the pregnancy test I'd hidden there. I wanted to save the news of my unexpected pregnancy for the end of the evening. Lucian's right-hand man, Marco, asked with a suggestive smile in Italian: "Don, your new little canary, Sophia. How does she taste?" Lucian's mocking laughter vibrated through my chest, sending a chill down my spine. He replied, also in Italian: "Like an unripe peach. Fresh and tender." His hand was still caressing my waist, but his gaze was distant. "Just keep this between us. If my Donna finds out, I'm a dead man." His men chuckled knowingly, raising their glasses and swearing their silence. The warmth in my blood turned to ice, inch by inch. The one thing they didn’t know was that my grandmother was from Sicily, so I understood every word. I forced myself to remain calm, keeping the perfect smile of a Donna fixed in place, but the hand holding my champagne flute trembled. Instead of making a scene, I opened my phone, found the invitation I had received a few days ago for a private international medical research project, and tapped "Accept." In three days, I would disappear from Lucian's world completely.