CHAPTER 1

POV: NORA ASH

The white dress was not supposed to get dirty tonight.I had spent three months saving up for it. Sixty-two dollars from the dinner tips I stuffed into a cracked mug behind my bed. The dress was simple ,cotton, lace at the collar and a little too big on my waist because I kept forgetting to eat. But it was mine, and tonight of all nights, it had to be perfect.

Tonight is the Moon Ceremony.Every wolf in the Silver Creek Pack had dressed up and gathered at the Stone Clearing to honor the full moon. Couples danced,alphas gave speeches,and real, confirmed mates pressed their palms together under the moonlight and let the bond glow gold between their fingers.

Damon had promised me we would be one of those couples this year.

I walked fast through the pine trees, my heels clicking on the dirt path. The music was already playing. It was of drums and strings. Laughter floating above the treetops like smoke. I was late because my cousin Sienna had borrowed my only mirror and taken forty minutes longer than she promised.

I should have noticed, right then, that Sienna smelled different when she finally handed the mirror back. Like sweat and something sweeter. Something like guilt.

But I did not notice as I was too busy fixing my hair.

The Stone Clearing was packed. Wolves were in their best clothes, children chasing each other between adult legs, the elders sitting in high-backed wooden chairs near the fire. I smiled at a few faces I knew. Most of them did not smile back.

That was nothing new. I was Nora Ash ,the omega with no wolf,shift and rank. The girl who turned twenty-two last spring and still had not felt her wolf stir. People called me ghost-blooded behind my back and some even called me worse things to my face.

Only Damon had ever looked at me like I was worth something.I pulled out my phone and typed his name but there was no reply. I scanned the crowd for his dark blond hair, his easy grin, the way he always stood with one hand in his pocket like he owned whatever room he walked into.

Then,I spotted him near the tree line but he was not alone.

My feet stopped moving before my brain understood why. The drumbeat kept going. Someone laughed near the bonfire. Everything else turned quiet and strange, like the world had stuffed cotton into my ears.

Damon's hand was pressed flat against the bark of a pine tree. Sienna stood in front of him, her back to the crowd, her fingers curled into his shirt. His forehead was down, almost touching hers. His mouth was moving.

She rose up on her toes and kissed him.

He kissed her back.

I stood there for three full seconds. I counted them. One. Two. Three. Like if I counted long enough, what I was seeing would rearrange itself into something that made sense.

It did not.

My white dress got dirty when I ran. I did not take the path. I went straight into the trees, tripping over roots, the branches catching my lace collar, and my heels sinking into soft mud. I yanked one shoe off and then the other and kept running barefoot because stopping felt like dying.

Then,I heard Damon shout my name once.

Just once.

Then silence followed.

I ran until the music disappeared and the trees got thicker and the moon above me was so bright it looked like it was on fire. My lungs burned. My feet were cut from the stones. I pressed my back against a wide oak trunk and slid down until I was sitting in the dirt, knees to my chest, fingers clawing the fabric of that stupid white dress.

I did not cry. I was so angry I could not cry.

I had spent three months saving for that dress. I had spent three years loving Damon Cole. I had eaten cold lunches alone in the packhouse cafeteria while people laughed at my empty plate, just waiting, just believing that one day my wolf would come and one day Damon would stand beside me and the world would feel different.

And he had been kissing my cousin while I fixed my hair.

I pulled off my ruined dress. Underneath I had a thin slip of cotton ,the kind I wore to bed. It would have to do. I balled the white dress up and threw it as hard as I could into the dark between the trees.

Then I stood up.

I did not know where I was going. I had never been past the eastern border of Silver Creek territory. Nobody had told me what was out there because nobody thought I would ever be foolish enough to go but went anyway.

The border marker was a line of white stones half buried in the earth. I stepped over them without slowing down. The air changed the moment I crossed ,colder, thicker, carrying a scent I had never smelled before. Cedar and iron and something electric, like lightning the second before it strikes.

I kept walking.

The ground sloped upward,then the trees got older and bigger,or so I thought. My cut feet left small dark prints on the pale stones. Above me, the moon blazed so white it looked angry.

I was so deep in my own head ,replaying Damon's mouth on Sienna's mouth, his hand on the bark, his forehead dipping down toward hers ,that I did not hear it.

The low growl right behind me.

I spun around. And my whole body locked.

Standing ten feet away, black as the space between stars, was the biggest wolf I had ever seen in my life. Its shoulders came up to my chest. Its eyes were pale silver, almost white, burning steady and cold in the dark. It did not move. It just looked at me.

And the air between us went so still that I could hear my own heartbeat.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

The wolf lowered its massive head. Its nostrils flared. It was a slow yet deliberate action.

Then it took one step toward me.

And I did the only brave, stupid, completely useless thing I could think of.

I stood my ground.