The clock ticks like a heartbeat in Brenda’s skull—sixty minutes until the change. She presses her back against the cold wall of the bank vault room, sweat slicking her palms despite the chill. The other hostage whimpers, but she can’t focus on that. Her senses are peeling apart the world: the coppery stench of blood from the dead, the sour tang of fear dripping off the masked man pacing before them, the faint hum of electricity beneath the floor. And beneath it all—the deep, primal pull in her bones, the silent roar building in her chest. She’s not afraid of the gun. She’s afraid of what she’ll become when the moon rises. Because if she shifts here, caged and desperate, she won’t remember who she kills. And worse—she might not care.