No more Dark Mode. That’s what Bran had promised Kat—and made her promise him. Which was their shorthand for, “Let’s stop killing people.” But that’s easier said than done when your friend is a hybrid: part human, and part mutated apex predator.

On the run from their former lives in Northern California, Bran and Kat find themselves in the Oregon wilderness, searching for a place to call home—a place where they can escape their past, with people that will accept Kat for what she is.

So it seems like a miracle when they stumble across an old monastery, now housing a single woman and five boys–five hybrid boys. But “Miss Shay” has one rule: Absolutely no violence. And the reason behind this rule is doubly hard to live with—in fact, it’s downright dangerous: The father of those five hybrid boys is the alpha male of a pack of primals—human beings whose DNA has been radically mutated by a plague, turning them into hyper-aggressive predators. And this alpha male doesn’t like the threat to his dominance posed by those five boys.

Patrick Beckley has been hunting that alpha male for years. He knows that the only way humans will survive on this planet is if they eradicate every single primal. And this particular alpha male—massive, with a cruel streak unusual even for primals—was the one that killed his daughters. So when Patrick stumbles across a monastery that appears to be harboring young primals, he doesn’t care that they might be half-human. They’re a threat to the human species. After all, how much primal genetics makes someone a dangerous animal?

Then again, how much human genetics makes them a person?

As Bran’s hopes for a peaceful life fall apart, and fragile territorial boundaries erode, he learns that his promises both to Shay and to Kat—NO VIOLENCE, and NO MORE DARK MODE—might be harder to keep than he’d thought. Because in order to protect the ones you love, and have a home in a world gone mad…well, sometimes you have to kill.

——-

*Sanctuary falls chronologically after The Valley: A Lee Harden Novel

Sanctuary is a standalone story within The Remaining Universe. For more information on reading order, click here.