CHAPTER ONE: THE TASTE OF LIES

SELENE

The potion tasted like swallowing ash and broken promises.

I forced it down, gripping the edge of Aunt Priscilla's kitchen sink while my stomach churned in protest.

Three weeks ago, it had been bearable.. bitter, medicinal, but manageable. Two weeks ago, it started burning. Last week, I'd vomited it back up twice before keeping it down.

This morning, it felt like drinking poison.

"Better?" Aunt Priscilla's voice came from behind me, thin and threadbare as the curtains that never quite blocked out the morning sun.

I turned on the faucet, splashing cold water on my face to hide the tears. "Much better."

The lie came easier than the truth: Nothing about this is better. Nothing has been better for weeks.

Through the window above the sink, I could see them.

Ariel and Chris, barely fifty yards away in the clearing behind our cottage, mid-shift under the late September sun just because they could.

Ariel's transformation was poetry—graceful, effortless, her human form rippling into that stunning silver wolf in the span of three heartbeats.

Chris took longer, all brute force and determination, but when his russet wolf finally emerged, shaking out its massive frame, the result was just as beautiful.

Just as free.

I pressed my palm against the cool glass, watching them play-fight, all power and joy and belonging to a world that would never include me.

The envy sat in my chest like a stone I'd been swallowing for seventeen years.

"Selene."

I didn't turn around. If I did, she'd see it on my face.. not just the envy, but the fear that had been growing alongside it. The birthmark on my left forearm had been itching for days.

Not the normal itch of healing skin or dry weather, but something deeper. Something that pulsed in rhythm with my heartbeat, especially at night when I couldn't sleep. Something that felt like waking up.

"Selene, look at me."

The command in her voice made me turn. Aunt Priscilla stood in the doorway to her bedroom, one hand braced against the frame like she might collapse without it. When had she gotten so thin?

The illness.. whatever it really was, had carved her down to angles and shadows over the past month, her skin taking on a grayish pallor that no amount of rest seemed to fix.

The medical bills were drowning us. I'd stopped opening the envelopes two weeks ago.

"I found you work," she said.

The words landed like stones in still water, sending ripples through everything.

"What kind of work?" I asked carefully.

She moved into the kitchen, each step deliberate and painful to watch. Her hands shook as she pulled out a chair and lowered herself into it.

On the table between us sat an unopened letter.. expensive paper, cream-colored, with a wax seal I didn't recognize.

A seal that looked like a wolf's head, crowned.

"No," I said immediately.

"You haven't heard—"

"I know that seal, Aunt Priscilla. Everyone knows that seal." My voice came out sharper than intended.

"That's the Orion estate."

She said nothing. Which was answer enough.

"Absolutely not." I grabbed the letter, fully intending to tear it in half. "I'll find something else. I'll pick up more shifts at the diner, I'll.... "

"There are no more shifts." Her voice cracked like ice. "I already asked. And the diner's owner is werewolf, Selene. He's being... encouraged... to hire pack members only." the letter felt heavier in my hands.

"I'll apply to the grocery store. The library. Anywhere but...."

"Do you think I haven't tried?" For the first time in my memory, Aunt Priscilla raised her voice.

"Do you think I would send you there if we had any other choice?"

The silence that followed was suffocating.

Through the window, Ariel's silver wolf howled... joyful, triumphant, the sound of someone who'd never known what it meant to be powerless.

Chris's answering howl was deeper, resonant, full of belonging.

I looked down at the letter in my hands. At the wolf's head seal. At the future I didn't want but couldn't refuse.

"He's dangerous," I said quietly. "Everyone says so. Mr. Orion. They say he's ruthless. That his staff never lasts long. That girls who work there—"

"Will be paid well." Aunt Priscilla's hand closed over mine, cold as death.

"Well enough to cover my treatments. Well enough to keep this roof over our heads. Well enough that you might still make your spring semester at college."

My acceptance letter from Elmswood University sat in my dresser drawer, pressed between two books like a flower I was trying to preserve.

Full scholarship for academics, but it didn't cover housing or meals or textbooks or the thousand other expenses that added up to impossible.

I'd already written the email declining admission. I just hadn't sent it yet.

"Please." Aunt Priscilla's voice broke. "I'm running out of time."

The words hung between us, meaning so much more than she was saying.

I looked at her, really looked at her. At the way her collarbones jutted sharp beneath her nightgown. At the purple shadows under her eyes that no amount of sleep could fade.

At the tremor in her hands that had gotten worse every day for the past week.

At the woman who had raised me, loved me, protected me, despite having no obligation to do so.

The woman who was dying, whether she'd admit it or not.

I looked back out the window. Ariel had shifted back to human form, laughing at something Chris said.

They'd be heading over soon, like they did every Saturday morning, to drag me into whatever adventure they'd planned. Another day of me watching them belong to a world I could only orbit.

The birthmark on my forearm pulsed, a dull ache that had become constant background noise.

Something was breaking.

I could feel it in my bones, in the strange metallic taste that had been haunting my mouth for days, in the way sounds seemed sharper and colors more vivid and everything felt too close and too far away all at once.

Something was breaking, and Aunt Priscilla knew it... that's why she looked so frightened.

I set the letter down on the table, smoothed out the wrinkles my grip had created.

"When do I start?"