Book Description:
Elias has spent his life being broken.
At home, his father's fists and belt teach him that weakness is punished. At school, the same boys who laugh while they hold him down make sure he never forgets it. Every day is another bruise, another humiliation, another night tasting blood on the linoleum floor.
Then something ancient answers his pain.
A kitsune - a spirit of hunger and shadows - offers him power. Not protection. Not justice. Power. The kind that lets him stop being prey. The kind that turns fear into a weapon and pain into pleasure.
At first, Elias only wants to make them afraid. Then he wants them to bleed. And soon, he discovers he enjoys the sound of it. The warmth of fresh blood on his claws. The way their screams taste sweeter than anything he's ever known.
But every gift from the kitsune comes with a price.
As Elias hunts down the ones who hurt him, the line between revenge and hunger begins to blur. The boy who once crawled is gone. What remains is something darker - something with too many tails and too many teeth.
Some debts can only be paid in blood.
And some spirits never let go of what they're fed.