chapter 1

Daisy

The night I found out I meant nothing to Lucien Blackwood, I still had the taste of him on my lips. Funny how that works.

Ten years ago, his mother pulled me out of a children's home with nothing but a one-eyed teddy bear and the clothes on my back. Helena knelt down in front of me, wiped my snotty nose with her silk sleeve, and said,

"You're coming home with me, sweetheart. You'll never be alone again." She meant it. Her son didn't.

For ten years, Lucien was my brother. Not by blood, but by everything else. He was the one who dragged Mason Clarke out of the pack school by his collar when he called me Piggy. He was the one who snuck chocolate cake into my room at midnight and stole half of it. He was the one who said,

"Nobody touches you, Daisy. Nobody."

Then I turned eighteen, and my brother turned into a monster. He walked into my birthday party, took one look at me, and went pale. Then he smashed his glass against the wall and walked out without a word.

The next morning, my things were moved out of the family wing and into the staff quarters. No explanation. When I asked him why, he looked straight through me and said,

"Because you don't belong here." After that, it only got worse.

At breakfast, he told Seraphina to stop feeding the stray. The whole table laughed. Seraphina laughed the loudest. She's his real sister, Helena's real daughter, and she has hated me since the day I walked through the front door.

Last week, her friends locked me in the cold storage room for three hours. When they finally let me out, shaking and blue, Lucien was standing at the end of the hallway.

He saw me. I know he saw me. He turned around and walked away. I cried myself to sleep every night for four months asking what I did. I never got an answer. So I stopped asking.

Tonight, I stood outside his office with an acceptance letter crumpled in my fist. Moonstone Academy. Two years of closed training. No phones, no visitors, sealed records. It's where they send wolves who haven't shifted by eighteen, and I hadn't.

It's also as far away from him as I could get. I didn't knock. I just walked in.

Lucien was sitting behind his desk with a glass of whiskey in his hand. His head snapped up. His eyes went dark, and his jaw locked so tight I heard his teeth grind.

"Get out," he said.

"I'm leaving," I said.

"Tomorrow. For two years." For one second, he actually laughed. Cold and ugly.

"Good," he said. "Go."

It shouldn't have hurt. It did. I swallowed it down and dropped the letter on his desk.

"Helena already signed the papers. I just thought you should know where I'll be. Not that you care."

He looked down at the letter. I watched him read the word Moonstone, then the word sealed, and I watched every bit of colour drain out of his face. He stood up so fast his chair crashed into the wall.

"No," he said.

"You just said go."

"I said no!" he roared. He tore the letter in half, then in half again.

"You don't leave this territory. Not without my permission. Not ever."

"Why?" I screamed.

"So you can keep treating me like dirt? So Seraphina's friends can lock me in a freezer again while you watch? You hate me, Lucien! Let me go!" He was in front of me in two steps.

His hand wrapped around my throat and slammed me back against the door. Not hard enough to choke me. Just hard enough to remind me exactly how much stronger he was. His eyes weren't blue anymore. They were pitch black.

"You think I hate you?" he growled.

"You have no fucking idea what I feel." Then he crushed his mouth against mine.

It wasn't a kiss. It was a punishment. Rough and furious and starving, his fingers tightening on my neck, his body pinning mine to the wood so I couldn't move. I froze in shock.

Then something deep inside my chest woke up. Hot. Wild. Clawing.

Sparks ripped across my skin everywhere he touched me, and for one disgusting, terrifying second, my body melted into his.

He's my brother. The thought hit me like ice water. I bit down on his lip as hard as I could.

He jerked back. Blood beaded on his bottom lip. He licked it away slowly, watching me, and then he smiled.

That smile scared me more than anything he'd ever done. I slapped him. The crack echoed across the room.

"You're my brother!" I screamed.

"What is wrong with you?"

"Your brother," he said, like the word tasted bad. "I was never your fucking brother, Daisy."

Then the black bled out of his eyes, and he looked at me like I was something he'd stepped in.

"Get out," he said, "before I do something you'll regret."

I ran. I locked my door and slid down against it with both hands over my mouth so nobody would hear me sob. My lips were swollen. My neck still burned where his fingers had been. And that strange thing inside my chest was still awake, pacing, whining for him.

I hated it. I hated myself. But some stupid, pathetic part of me still hoped. Maybe he didn't hate me. Maybe there was a reason for all of it.

At midnight, I crept up to the family wing. His door was cracked open. I heard voices and stopped in the shadows. Lucien. His Beta, Damien. And Seraphina.

"So is she or isn't she?" Damien said.

"Your mate. The whole house heard you two." I stopped breathing. Mate? Lucien laughed.

"Daisy?" he said.

"She's a plaything, Damien. Something to use when I'm bored and throw away when I'm done." Seraphina giggled.

"Gross, Lucien."

"You really think I'd let the pack see that fat little charity case as my Luna?" he said.

"I'd rip my own throat out first."

"Mom should have left her in that orphanage," Seraphina said.

"Maybe she'll do us all a favor," he said,

"and never come back."

His words cut deep into my heart, so deep I thought I'd bleed out right there on the carpet. I didn't cry. I was done crying.

I packed one bag. I left a note on Helena's pillow. I'm sorry. I love you. Please don't look for me.

At dawn, a black car was waiting at the gates. The driver, a tall man in a dark coat, opened the door for me. I looked back once.

Lucien was standing at his bedroom window, shirtless, watching me. His hands gripped the frame so hard the wood splintered.

He didn't come down. He didn't stop me. So I got in the car and let the fat orphan girl die on that gravel drive. He wanted me gone. He got his wish.

And when I came back, Lucien Blackwood was going to learn exactly what it felt like to beg.