They said the Hunt was sacred. That if I was chosen, it meant fate. But fate didn't feel like a mouth on my skin or claws at my back. It felt like blood. Mine. For years, I stayed hidden. Quiet. Unclaimed. I stole seeds from the state fields, grew food in secret, fed my family from soil and silence. I did everything right - stayed beneath their radar, beneath their noses. I didn't make waves. I didn't ask for more. But monsters never forget a scent. And when the Hunt came, I was scented. Tracked. Taken. I stabbed him. I buried the blade in his shoulder and watched him bleed. It didn't matter. Because he still bit me. And the world saw. Now my face is on every screen. The girl who didn't run. The girl who fought back. Some call me a rebel. Some call me a mate. But they all forget one thing. I wasn't made to be claimed. I was made to survive. And if they want to collar me, cage me, crown me - they'll have to reckon with everything I've kept buried beneath the roots. Because I am not the flower. I'm the fire beneath it. Rewrite version of formerly known book Escaping the monsters Embrace

Sarah Summers thought she had everything figured out. But when her fathers decided to expand their family, Sarah's sense of reality slowly began to unravel. Against her will, she was forced to move across the country, and soon, everything she thought she knew was turned upside down. At her new school, she found herself entangled in a strange friend group, one where individuality seemed nonexistent. The members acted less like people and more like parts of a single, rule-bound entity. These rules pulled Sarah further and further from who she used to be, and over time, she began to forget how unsettling it all truly was. On her very first day, she was thrust into a bizarre ritual where the group chose who she would date. She had no say, not in who, not in when, not in how long and not even in whether the relationship would ever end. She had never questioned who she was or where she came from. As far as she was concerned, she knew everything she needed to know. She belonged to a loving family, and that had always been enough. But after a chilling encounter in the woods, the past began to stir, haunting her, pulling her toward a reality she had never known existed. Suddenly, the questions she had never thought to ask became impossible to ignore. Who was she, really? And where had she truly come from?