Chapter 3

My mother went to bed and never fell asleep.

At two in the morning, she got up, heated a bowl of soup, gathered the cashmere blanket into her arms, and carried both to my door.

"Chloe, Mom is ending the trial now, okay?"

Nothing moved on the other side.

My body lay against the freezing floor, and the distress light on my wrist was still blinking, one slow pulse after another.

She tried to reach me through the family mind-link and got nothing back but dead silence.

Her expression changed. She turned and pounded on Daniel's door.

Daniel checked the terminal, half asleep. "The trial's isolation protocol is still active, so of course the mind-link won't go through. The curve isn't showing any dangerous fluctuations. She's still in dormancy."

"You said the isolation was only forty minutes."

"You can't interrupt an awakening," Daniel explained patiently. "Mom, no one cares more about keeping Chloe safe than I do. If her wolf really awakens early, no one will ever call her worthless again."

That last line landed, and my mother went quiet.

She set the soup and the blanket down outside the door and told Daniel, "This ends before sunrise."

The next morning, a strange, cold, damp smell hung in the hallway.

Mrs. Anderson came over from next door to borrow a baking pan and wrinkled her nose the second she stepped in. "Marie, was there some kind of chemical spill in here? It smells so strange."

Vivian smiled. "That's the awakening compound I made for Chloe. It does have a bit of a smell to it."

Mrs. Anderson lit up. "Chloe's wolf is awakening early too? Your whole family really is full of prodigies."

My mother didn't put on the proud smile she always did.

That day was supposed to be Daniel's. He was being honored as heir.

His suit was pressed. The car from the Pack Council was already idling outside.

Daniel checked the time. "The ceremony's about to start. We can finish the trial when we get back. There's still time."

For the first time, my father didn't agree with him. "Let the Council wait. Nobody leaves this house until we know what's going on with your sister."

My mother's eyes went red the moment she heard it.

If they had put me ahead of all those honors the night before, would any of this have happened?

Once the neighbor was gone, she went straight to my room. "Open it. Alpha or Omega, I don't care anymore. I'll accept her either way."

Daniel frowned at the tablet in his hand. "Something's off. The latest readings are abnormal. They aren't rising. Let's give it another half hour."

"Move."

Vivian shouted as if something had just clicked into place. "I get it! I get it! It's the plateau before the breakthrough, isn't it? There's a long flat stretch right before it happens, and Chloe is about to break through any second now. Right, Daniel?"

Then she turned to my mother. "Mom, Daniel spent a lot of money on this equipment, and Chloe has already held out for over seventeen hours. If we quit now, she'll blame us for letting all of it go to waste the moment she wakes up.

"You know how she is. She always finds something to resent."

My mother stared at Vivian. For the first time, she doubted the whole thing.

My father checked his watch. His voice came out cold. "Fine. Half an hour. When the time is up, that door opens no matter what the numbers say."

My mother sat down outside my door with the blanket in her lap, frowning.

Something about what Vivian had said didn't sit right.

She kept thinking back to the day they carried me out of that forest.

The first thing I said when I woke wasn't a complaint. I asked whether Daniel had gotten in trouble for not coming to get me sooner.

After Vivian used Alpha pressure on me, I spent three days in the hospital.

And I was the one who told my mother to leave her alone. "Vivian is smart," I said. "She hates to lose at anything. Don't say a word to her."

My mother had stroked my hair. "Chloe is the reasonable one. She knows her brother and sister are only trying to help her."

Still turning it over, she said to my father, "Maybe Chloe would be perfectly happy as an Omega."

My father nodded. "You're right. She missed Thanksgiving. I'm going to go get her something."

He pulled on his coat. "I'm buying Chloe that moonstone wolf pendant she loves. She's been talking about it forever. It'll be sitting there when she comes out, and it'll make her whole year."

I hovered by the door and watched him hurry off.

Most moonstone is silver or gray. Gold is rare. That particular pendant was the one I'd wanted since I was twelve.

My father always said he would fasten it around my neck himself the day my wolf awakened.

I would never live to see that day.