I wake up bound in a winter wonderland with no memory of how I got here. Thousands of Christmas lights illuminate the land around me—a sprawling tree farm transformed into a mystical land of candy. Behind me, footsteps crunch through freshly fallen snow. A voice cuts through the silent night, commanding me to run. So I do. Through rows of evergreens wrapped in twinkling lights and past peppermint archways that morph this place into a dark fairy tale. My boots slip on ice as he closes in, his presence everywhere and nowhere at once. He knows this place. Every path. Every hiding spot. He knows me—my body's treacherous responses, the dark desires I’ve fought to hide. When he finally catches me, wrapping me in strings of Christmas lights like I'm a present, I'm forced to confront an impossible the most dangerous games are the ones we've been dying to play all along. Each book in the Dark Nights Collection CAN be read as a standalone. Please read the content warning prior to diving in.