Chapter 1

POV: Vera

I had one day left.

Tomorrow, everything my parents had built would belong to the pack. The house, the furniture, the savings. And my four-year-old sister and I would be thrown out with nothing.

One week ago, our Alpha had called me to the great hall. He'd told me, with all the warmth of a man reading a receipt, that the pack didn't need me. Wolves who couldn't fight, couldn't contribute, couldn't produce strong pups, they got cut. Driven out into the unclaimed territories where rogues hunted anything that moved. He hadn't even looked up from his ledger when he said it.

I tugged my father's old canvas jacket tighter as I cut through the market square. The zipper had been broken since winter, but it was his. It still smelled faintly of him if I pressed my face into the collar, and I tried not to do that too often, because every time I did, there was a little less of him in it.

He'd been a Guardian. Twelve years patrolling the eastern border, until a rogue ambush took him and my mother both. Three months ago. Without Dad, Cleo and I were just two omegas with no protector and no value to anyone.

Cleo was four. She drew pictures of our family every day with the same three crayons: blue, yellow, and pink. She still asked me every night when Mommy and Daddy were coming home, and every night I told her they were watching us from the stars. She always looked up when I said it, like she might catch one of them waving.

It was the only lie I allowed myself.

"Hey, omega."

I stopped walking.

Three wolves blocked the path near the butcher's stall. Derek Voss and two of his patrol buddies. Derek was thick through the shoulders, with small eyes and a loud mouth. He wore his patrol jacket unzipped to show off the rank patch underneath, arms folded across his chest.

"Still here, Crane?" He grinned. "Figured you'd be packing by now."

"Still talking, Derek?" I stepped to the right. "Figured you'd be doing something useful by now."

He walked with me. The grin dropped. "Funny mouth for someone who's about to lose her house."

His friends laughed. The woman behind the butcher's counter looked away. So did the man weighing apples two stalls down. That was how it always went. Nobody in this pack wanted trouble, and I had become the kind of trouble that was easy to look away from.

"Honestly, she should've been gone months ago," the shorter one said. He had a shaved head and a scar running through his left eyebrow. "An omega who can't even shift? What's the point?"

"Her parents were the same," Derek said. "Couldn't even fight off a few rogues. Some guardian her father was."

Something cracked inside my chest.

Nox, my wolf, lunged forward. Heat flooded my muscles, and the shift pressed against my skin like a living thing trying to claw its way out.

She was huge. She was furious.

I clenched my jaw and shoved her back down.

You promised. You promised Dad.

Most wolves got their wolf at twelve. I had gotten mine at eight. My father had seen her, seen how impossibly large she was inside a girl who barely reached his hip. He made me swear never to shift in front of anyone. He said it could bring the wrong kind of attention. The kind our family wouldn't survive.

So, I never did. Ten years of hiding. Ten years of letting every wolf in this pack believe I was just a small, weak omega who had never even shifted. Ten years of biting my tongue while people like Derek decided what I was worth.

I forced my jaw loose and looked Derek in the eye.

"Say whatever you want about me." My voice came out low and flat, and something in it made his grin slip. "But don't talk about my family again."

For a second, nobody moved.

Then Derek snorted. "Or what? You can't even shift." He shoved past me, his shoulder catching mine hard enough to knock me sideways. "Pack's better off without you, Crane."

They walked off laughing. The woman behind the butcher's counter still wouldn't look at me.

I stood there until my hands stopped shaking. Four red crescents marked each palm where my nails had dug in. The shift was still pressing at the edges of my vision, a low hum beneath my skin that wouldn't quiet down. I breathed through it until it faded to a dull ache behind my eyes.

The only way to keep the house, to keep anything at all, was to find a mate before tomorrow.

A mate. By tomorrow.

But who would ever want an omega like me? A small laugh escaped me.

I hitched the grocery bag higher on my shoulder and kept walking. I'd figure it out. I always did.

I had a fated mate. Tyler Cross: the beta's son, handsome, and well-connected. Everyone in the pack knew he wished fate had picked someone else.

Tyler had never once claimed me.

He hadn't rejected me either. I wasn’t sure which was worse.

Rejection could kill an omega, and Tyler cared about his reputation too much to carry that stain. My father had saved Tyler's life during a rogue raid when we were kids. Walking away from his dead savior's daughter wouldn't look good for the beta's golden boy.

So, he kept me in limbo. Bonded but unclaimed.

Fine. I didn't need Tyler Cross to save me. I'd never needed him for anything.

There was always a way to survive. There had to be.

I headed for home. A woman brushed past me carrying a basket of bread. She didn't look at me either. The sun was dropping behind the tree line, everything going copper and orange around the edges. Smoke curled from the chimneys along the lane. Somewhere, someone was frying onions, and my stomach reminded me that I'd skipped lunch again so Cleo could have the last of the bread.

Then, I caught it.

Blood.

Fresh and thick on the evening air, coming from the direction of our house.

My stomach dropped. Cleo.

I threw the bag down and ran.

Branches whipped my arms. My lungs burned. Every step pounded the same word through my skull.

Cleo, Cleo, Cleo.

I burst through the trees behind our yard and the blood scent nearly knocked me sideways.

But it wasn't coming from inside.

A man lay face-down in the grass, twenty feet from our back door. His shirt was shredded and dark with blood. The ground beneath him was wet with it.

I checked the windows first. Cleo's bedroom light glowed warm and steady behind the curtain. Safe. My knees nearly went out from under me.

I crouched beside the stranger and rolled him onto his back.

No rogue stench, but no pack scent either. Had he recently left his pack? Didn’t he know it was dangerous to travel alone?

Whatever had done this to him had left deep claw marks torn across his ribs, and a gash along his collarbone had barely clotted. It didn’t smell like an animal either. His shirt was ruined. The blood had soaked through to his skin.

I pressed two fingers to his throat. His pulse was weak but there. Too slow, though. Whoever he was, he didn't have long.

Then I looked at his face. My hand froze on his collar.

Sharp jaw. Dark lashes against pale skin. High cheekbones. Lips parted slightly with each shallow, uneven breath. Dark hair fell across his forehead, damp with sweat and blood, and even unconscious, there was something severe about his face. Like he'd never once in his life been told no.

He was the most gorgeous man I had ever seen in my life.

And he was dying in my backyard.