A New Orleans homicide detective hunting a string of staged animal-maul murders is forced to trust the wolf-blood heir she should arrest when the bodies form a ritual map beneath the French Quarter-and their forbidden bond may be the final key needed to raise the thing his family has kept buried for two centuries. By the time Detective Esm e Vigne reaches the alley, the victim is already in pieces. The patrol cops call it another animal attack. Esm e knows better. Real animals don't leave symbols in blood. Real animals don't tear out the same bone from every body. And real animals do not drag the dead toward old stone no city record admits exists. Then the prime suspect saves her life. Thierry Marrow is rich, brutal, impossible to read, and tied to every crime scene in ways no innocent man can explain. His confession should end the case. Instead, it rips it open. He is the last living heir of a wolf-blooded house once sworn to guard New Orleans from a hunger buried beneath the Quarter. Someone is recreating an old summoning rite. Someone inside the city wants the lock broken. And Esm e's scent, her blood, her very presence around Thierry is changing the pattern. Now every hour brings another body, another lie from City Hall, another reason to put a bullet in the man she cannot stop wanting. Because if Thierry is telling the truth, the monster beside her is not the thing she should fear most. He is what stands in front of it.
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