I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me (I Feed Her to the Beast, #1)

by Jamison Shea

“Ballet requires an immense level of dedication from its members. It isn’t for the weak of heart. Or the faithless.”

To make them all tremble.

We weren’t the same; I’d tamed my beast and walked away from this place. And I didn’t know how much of my Coralie was left. If there was any at all.

And if she wanted an enemy, I wouldn’t give it to her. Just like this place, she wasn’t worthy of me. As Coralie glared down

Adrenaline and Acheron in my blood subsumed every ache in my body.

I was a monster succumbing to the hunt, a predator out for a kill. The world had let me starve for too long, and eventually, the hungry stop caring what we eat so long as we’re fed.

And she was right—I was killing her, and I was killing me. I needed this if I was going to walk out alive, start again as something new.

I fed her to the beast, and the beast was me, and the beast was within me.

This place made monsters out of both of us.

Death had been too quiet, too cold, and too still.

So all alone, naked and dripping and scarred, in steam I tried to become one of them, to do what I came back for. I tried to dance again.

It wasn’t human, or perfect in all of its imperfections, but it was more than enough. I was more than enough.