Scales

Ava has spent her life haunted by nightmares she can't remember-visions of endless darkness and golden eyes watching from the void. The only constant has been Cliff, her overgrown Saint Bernard, who seems to understand her terrors better than she does. But when her biologist mother brings home a new "specimen"-a lethally beautiful black serpent with uncanny intelligence-Ava's world fractures.

A single bite changes everything.

As the veil weakens, Ava must confront her mother's dark obsession with the reptilian specimens she collects, unravel Cliff's true nature as a guardian spirit, and decide whether to trust the ruthless, magnetic, Xyris, whose bond with her may be the only thing keeping them both alive.