So, you want more?
Here’s your reward for trusting me with your inbox. This is the epilogue that started it all—unedited, slightly unhinged, and filled with everything I love: monsters, magic, and maybe a little heartbreak.

Lupines Bloom Where Blood Falls (Book 1, Florilegium Cycle)

Prologue: Somewhere Deep in the Ridge and Valley

Fucking humans. Same old stories, same old bullshit. You invent monsters to make the dark feel smaller, more manageable. You act like you’ve got a grip on what’s real, laugh off old myths, but the second something doesn’t fit your narrow little world?

You panic. You break shit. You kill.

You keep things neat and familiar, telling yourself tidy little lies to make the world bearable.

Even when the truth is far messier than you’re willing to admit.

Even if it means pretending the shadows aren’t full of patient, bloodthirsty monsters like me.

I never understood the whole “shadows mean safety” nonsense. If Plato had met me, he’d have dropped philosophy and fucked off to herd goats instead.

Reality isn’t some grand enlightenment. It’s messy, brutal, and strange as hell.

People like to think the dark hides monsters.

Please.

The dark doesn’t hide monsters. It breeds them.

Always has. Always will.

The world is full of them. Some haunt your stories. Some you trust with your children.

And then there’s me. Watching. Waiting. Picking off the ones that taste the best.

But tonight? Something’s different.

It feels like someone ripped the universe open, realized too late they fucked up, and slapped it back together. The seams are already fraying. It’s a ripple in reality, a barely-there shift that scrapes at the edges of my senses.

I tilt my head back, inhaling deeply.

Nothing. No scent, no sound. Just…off.

Whatever.

I’ve felt these little disturbances before, and they always amount to nothing.

I roll my neck, savoring the sharp crack, the satisfaction settling deep in my bones.

Blood cools in sticky streaks across my jaw. I drag my fingers through it slowly, licking the last traces from my knuckles. The taste lingers on my tongue, clashing flavors of sugar and steel.

Every nerve in my body hums with pleasure after I feed.

The hiker I devoured had been a particularly satisfying meal. He hid deep in the woods for months, running from child molestation charges, thinking the wilderness would shelter him.

He didn’t beg.

Didn’t apologize.

His only regret?

That someone finally caught him.

Like every brutal, filthy thing he did was fine…until he had to pay for it.

Even as I peeled the flesh from his fingers, the moonlight glinting off raw bone, he only watched, jaw tight, eyes burning with the bitter realization that this was the end. His helplessness made me shiver with delight as I moved on, working my way through him with a cruel deliberation.

Human bodies are absurdly brittle, just pathetic meat loosely wrapped in skin and bone. I made him watch as I consumed every part of him—inch by inch, limb by limb, organ by organ.

His screams rose into a symphony, a crescendo of terror, with yours truly as the sadistic conductor.

Every widening of his gaze, every strangled plea, stoked a slow satisfaction that bloomed beneath my skin.

Did he deserve to die?

Of course.

But that’s not why I took him apart.

I used to be indiscriminate, taking whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted it. Then someone showed me that evil isn’t just palatable. It’s exquisite.

The kind of thing you crave again. And again. And again.

Their agony seasons them, saturates their marrow with something richer, more intoxicating.

Now, I hunt the wicked.

Not out of some silly human moral obligation, but because they melt on my tongue in ways the innocent never could.

Now, full and restless, I glance at the hiker’s tattered backpack.

The river behind me will take care of that. No body, no lingering possessions. It’ll be as if he never existed.

I crouch, scattering dirt and leaves over the splattered blood, knowing it’ll vanish soon enough, like every other trace of violence in these woods. The locals will chalk up another missing hiker to “The Trail,” like some fickle god taking its due.

Towns along the Appalachian Trail know better than to ask questions. I’d call it lucky, but I didn’t pick this corner of dark, forgotten forest by accident.

As I work, a scent drifts through the air—sweet and strange, something that shouldn’t be here. It seeps in, curling through my lungs, richer with every breath. Heat unfurls behind my ribs, slow at first, then sudden and sharp, like a match catching fire. It licks at my spine, sinks lower, coiling tight in my gut. A slow, simmering pulse spreads through me, uninvited and infuriatingly insistent.

This doesn’t happen. Not to me. Not anymore.

And yet, my cock twitches, like it recognizes the uncanny scent before I do.

I freeze, scowling down at my traitorous body. It’s been centuries since I felt anything close to real desire. After feeding, the hunger for blood is always quiet.

But now?

Now my body’s humming for something else entirely.

This maddening scent rolls over me in waves, painfully seeping into every cell, infecting me like a plague.

And I fucking hate it.

“Settle down, frater. We don’t fuck with humanity anymore. They’re far too messy, even by my standards,” I mutter under my breath, though it does little to settle the heat simmering low in my stomach.

If I’m still hard as fuck after I clean up, I’ll take care of it the old-fashioned way. My hand, slick with this bastard’s blood, should be enough to work out whatever this fucked-up cocktail of lust and rage is.

Tossing the backpack into the river, I close my eyes and let my shadows curl around me, pulling me out of this skin and into something older.

Something faster.

To this day, I don’t know if I chose the Tesem, or if they chose me.  

I first saw them in Egypt, back when humans butchered each other in the name of whichever god they favored that day.

The Tesem were deadly. Poetry in motion. So swift and fearless that death raced alongside them.

The creature I crafted is larger, sharper, and honed by centuries of adaptation.

I didn’t evolve this form out of necessity, though.

I did it because restraint is for cowards. And no matter how massive or terrifying I make this form, the fools still take the bait.

Every fucking time.

Humans may be terrified of the unknown but wrap it up in soft fur and a wagging tail, they’ll practically beg you to rip their throats out.

Even the worst predators fall for the wounded-dog act. Serial killers soften, monsters drop their guard, all because of some pathetic whimper and sad eyes.

It’s fucking hilarious.

As the last shadows sink into me, I stretch, relishing the ripple of muscle beneath sleek black fur. With a snort of frustration, one that’s unmistakably canine, I slip silently into the night.

Trees blur into shadowed streaks as that maddening scent drifts closer, tunneling beneath my skin.

It’s achingly familiar, ancient even, yet somehow disturbingly new—like an old nightmare returned, wrapped in something irresistible and utterly terrifying.

Whatever’s out there.

Whatever infiltrated my town and dared to make me feel.

I’ll find it.

No one disrupts my peace.

Not without consequences.

Threats are simple: hunt, kill, forget.

But this?

This is different.

Familiar in a way that makes my skin crawl.

And personal in a way I can’t ignore.