Novels by Diana Smith

Mayor Monroe turned to his men, two burly enforcers in town-issue jackets, and gave a simple gesture. One motion of his hand toward Maya.“Hold her.”I could feel my pulse rising. Maya’s eyes were wide. Her breathing became unsteady. She turned to her parents, pleading silently.Mr. and Mrs. Hawke stepped forward instantly.“You can’t do this!” Mr. Hawke yelled.They pushed Mr. and Mrs. Hawke aside. Not hard, but firm. Enough to make it clear they weren’t asking.The crowd watched as they grabbed Maya’s arms. "No! Let me go!"She thrashed, struggling against the hands that grabbed her arms. One of them pinned her down by the shoulders. Her hair fell in front of her face as she kicked out.Zelda stepped forward, took one of Maya’s arms herself. “I knew it,” she muttered, loud enough for Maya to hear.“Stop!” Maya looked around the crowd, desperate. “Please! Somebody help me!”And that was it.I couldn’t stay still.Everything inside me shifted. Tyler surged to the surface, his anger m

Zelda's PovI couldn’t sleep.Not after what I heard.I sat at the edge of my bed, phone in hand, still shaking. I didn’t even know why I went there. I mean, I did. I just hadn’t expected that.Earlier that day, after how Maya had shut me down publicly, I remembered she and Louis were having a fallout. So, I thought, why don't I mess around a little, paying her back in a way that's going to hurt. I approached one of Louis’s friends in the hallway. Luke. He's one of the dudes Louis hangs around with at school. He's been into me for a while now… I mean, who wouldn't be? I smiled my best fake smile and asked casually, "Hey, do you know where Louis lives?"He hesitated. Probably knew I was up to something."Why?""Just want to return something," I lied.He still wouldn’t give it up. So I pulled a twenty out of my wallet and dangled it in front of him. Bribery always worked with boys like him.He gave me the street and house number.But before I walked away, he added, "You probably should

Maya's PovI left Louis’s house angry. Not the loud kind. The quiet, cold, gut-deep kind that makes your legs shake even when you keep walking like nothing’s wrong.My mind was a mess. How won’t it be when I was just told I wasn’t human. That I was something else. A werewolf. As if that word could fit neatly into my life.I didn’t want to think about what he said. I didn’t want to remember the way his eyes changed. Or how he said he loved me.I hated him for it. And hated myself for not hating him enough.I walked straight home. Same street. Same porch. Nothing had changed, except me.Mrs. Hawke opened the front door before I could. "Maya!” She greeted me with that half-sweet, half-distracted voice she always used when half-watching the news. “There you are. I didn’t know you’d gone out.”I didn’t answer.She gave me a worried look. "Maya darling? Are you okay?”I didn’t turn. I didn’t nod.I made it to my room, shut the door behind me and slid down with my back pressed against it.He

Louis's PovI left school early.Didn’t even wait for the bell. Just walked out and kept moving, ignoring the stares from kids too curious and too nosy for their own good. I had things to do, things that couldn’t wait.My wolf, Tyler, paced restlessly beneath my skin.Maya’s coming.He kept repeating it like a mantra.I cleaned up the living room, closed the blinds, and locked the back door. My fake parents were out on some business trip. Couldn't quite tell if it was fabricated or real but it had something to do with real estate. It gave me time. Privacy. Control.When I got to my room, I did a final sweep, cleared my desk, stashed the small silver ring I usually kept hidden. Wouldn’t want Maya accidentally brushing against that and triggering something violent. Not yet.While arranging, I felt a shift in the air before she even knocked, I knew she was on the porch.Her scent hit me in waves, bright, charged, slightly off-kilter like her emotions were tangled in barbed wire. She wasn

Louis's PovShe fainted in my arms right after the shift.Not the gentle kind either. Not the cinematic fall-into-his-chest type.Her entire body buckled, like something inside her had finally snapped loose and didn’t know how to piece itself back together.Tyler, my wolf, had howled in triumph the moment her red wolf emerged, but the joy didn’t last long.She collapsed, still halfway in her other form, still leaking adrenaline and moonlight. I held her close, checked her pulse, pressed my hand against her sweat-soaked cheek. Her skin burned like fire, then dropped to ice in under a minute.She was alive. I knew that much. But something was wrong. Something I couldn’t explain.We weren’t alone.There was a shift in the air. The scent was faint, too faint. One of ours. A wolf, no question.I didn’t look. Didn’t acknowledge. Just scooped Maya up and held her tighter.If it was who I thought it was, they’d report back. Word would spread faster than wildfire now, she’d shifted. She’d awak

Maya’s PovIt had been three days since I met up with Sienna in the school cafeteria.Three days of trying to pretend everything was normal, whatever normal meant for me now, while ignoring the persistent feeling that something was profoundly, irrevocably different.Sienna hadn’t been the only person I’d turned to. She did what any good friend would do. She referred me to people, real people. A therapist. A psychologist.They all nodded and listened then said the same thing, in slightly different ways: trauma, stress, neurological misfires.The hallucinations were symbolic, my body processing grief.“It’s your mind trying to process something overwhelming.”“It’s not real.”“It’s a form of dissociation.”But I hadn’t opened up to them, not entirely.How could I, when I'm this scared of what it is myself?How could I admit I was hearing a voice in my head, a voice that seemed… alive?Meanwhile, my senses were sharper; I noticed every movement, every conversation across the school corri