(Catherine POV)
Time slowed to honey as I watched Kieran's transformation unfold before my eyes. Not the complete change I'd witnessed in my chambers, but something more disturbing—a man caught between forms, trapped in the painful space between human and beast.
His face had elongated just enough that his features looked alien, wrong, like a portrait painted by someone who'd only heard humans described secondhand. Golden eyes blazed with light that definitely didn't come from the torches, pupils dilated so completely they looked black in the center of molten fire. When his lips pulled back in what might have been pain or rage, I saw fangs that belonged in nightmares rather than drawing rooms.
The crowd recoiled like a wave pulling back from shore, voices rising in shock and fear that cu
