Novels by Annie

Ella’s POVThe pig screamed when I stuck it.Not for long, the scream became a gurgle, then a sigh, then nothing. Blood gushed into the bucket between my boots, steaming in the cold air of the slaughterhouse. I held the pig steady until the kicking stopped, then wiped my blade on my apron and reached for the hook."Ella!"Greta's voice came from the front room. I didn't answer. My hands knew this work—lift, hook, slit, drain—and I needed to keep them busy. I needed something to distract me from the morning's memories.Caleb's voice echoed in my head. "You're too... crude."The word he'd swallowed. The look on his face.I couldn't even be bothered to spare him a glance.The hook caught in the pig's tendon. I yanked, harder than necessary, and the carcass swung wild, splattering my cheek with cooling blood."Ella! Customer!"I wiped my face with my sleeve and walked to the front. My apron stuck to my thighs where blood had soaked through. Three years at this block, and I still hadn't le

The word should have sent me running. Report to the Warriors. Let them handle it, let them drag him to the border, let them add his body to the mounds I'd just left.Instead, I knelt. I couldn't just leave someone to die.His face was carved from something harder than bone, even slack with unconsciousness—high forehead, blade of a nose, lips pale and parted around shallow breaths. His fingers twitched against the snow, long and calloused, nails packed with dried blood.God, he'd lost so much blood. How was he still alive?I touched his throat. The pulse beat against my fingertips, fever-hot and thready, a rabbit's kick."Hey." I shook him, gently. Nothing. Harder. His head lolled, exposing his throat, and I saw the scar— sitting above his collarbone like a moon mark. I frowned. That mark looked so familiar, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't remember where I'd seen it before.I looked back at the pack's distant lights, yellow and warm and utterly closed to me now. I looked at

Ella’s POVThe first stone caught me in the shoulder, hard enough to bruise."Traitor's daughter!"I didn't turn. My arms were full of Lily, twelve years old and shaking hard enough to rattle her teeth. The second stone cracked against my temple, and blood flooded my left eye, warm and slick. I blinked, and the world ran red.I was supposed to turn eighteen next month. The plan was to celebrate with my parents and my little sister — and my boyfriend, Caleb.But all of that was torn apart before it could ever happen. My parents died a week ago, under circumstances that were anything but clean. And before I could even begin to grieve, I was already being driven out, ostracized by the entire pack."Dead weight!" Margaret's voice cut through the wind, sharp as a skinning knife. Alpha John's cousin, all bones and spite. "Your father burned the east warehouse, killed three Warriors! He deserved worse than fire!"I spat blood into the snow. It steamed. "My father was hunting on the west slop