chapter 2

Daisy

They say your first shift is the worst pain you'll ever feel. They're liars.

Breaking six bones and screaming for nine hours on a cold concrete floor at Moonstone was nothing compared to hearing the man I loved call me a plaything.

Two years later, I stood in the headmistress's office with a silver crescent pinned to my collar. Top of my class. Real muscle where there used to be nothing but skin and bone. Curves I'd never had. Healthy skin instead of grey, and a face that wasn't hollow anymore. Hair chopped to my shoulders.

The skinny, starving orphan girl was dead. I'd buried her myself, one brutal training session at a time.

'And we're stronger for it,' my wolf purred in my head.

Nyx was the thing that woke up in my chest the night he kissed me. The one good thing he ever gave me, and I hated him for that too. The headmistress slid an envelope across the desk.

"This came through the sealed channel," she said.

"I'm sorry, Daisy."

I knew the handwriting before I opened it. Small. Shaky. It used to draw little hearts over the I in my name on birthday cards.

My darling girl,

"'The doctors say I don't have long. Before I go, I need to see your face one more time. Please come home."

Mama

The paper shook in my hand. I looked down at my lap and blinked hard until the words stopped swimming.

Two years. I'd stayed away for two years because of him. And she was dying.

'We go home,' Nyx said.

'He's there.'

'Then let him bleed.'

I didn't go back as Daisy. Moonstone gave every graduate a scent blocker for undercover work. I swallowed two pills on the drive and gave the gate guard a fake name.

"Rose Hart," I said.

"Healer from Moonstone. I'm here for Lady Helena."

The guard was Theo. He used to sneak me extra fries at pack dinners. He looked right at me and didn't blink. Good.

He waved me through. I was halfway up the drive when I heard the screaming.

A crowd had gathered in the courtyard. In the middle of it, a warrior was on his knees, his face a bloody mess. And standing over him, his knuckles split and dripping red, was Lucien. My heart stopped.

He was bigger. Harder. A scar cut down his jaw that hadn't been there before, and there were dark shadows under his eyes like he hadn't slept since the day I left. He looked less like an Alpha and more like something that crawled out of a grave.

"Say it again," he said. His voice was quiet. That was worse than yelling.

"Go on. Say it again." The warrior spat blood on the stones.

"I just said maybe the orphan would come crawling back now that the guy in the black car dumped her..."

Lucien's fist slammed into his jaw. I heard the bone crack from twenty feet away. The man collapsed and nobody dared to moved.

Lucien turned to the crowd, chest heaving, blood running down his fingers.

"Her name," he said,

"does not get spoken in my territory. Anyone else want to test me?"

Silence. I stood there frozen, my hands shaking at my sides. The guy in the black car. They thought I ran off with a man? They thought I eloped?

And Lucien just broke a man's jaw over it. Why? Why would he care what anyone said about his plaything?

Then his head turned. His black eyes landed right on me. He walked over slowly, wiping his bloody knuckles on his jeans. He stopped so close I had to tilt my head back to look at him. He breathed in, and I held my breath, praying the pills were strong enough. Nothing. His face didn't change.

"Who the fuck are you?" he said.

"Rose Hart, Alpha. The healer from Moonstone." His lip curled.

"The last three healers couldn't keep her alive either," he said.

"So let me make this simple for you, Rose. If my mother dies on your watch, I'll bury you right next to her. Understand?" I made myself look him in the eye.

"Then I'd better not let her die," I said.

Something flickered across his face. Surprise, maybe. Nobody talked back to him anymore. I could tell. He turned and walked away without another word.

Seraphina was waiting at the top of the front steps with her arms crossed. Two years had made her even more beautiful and somehow even colder. She looked me up and down like I was something the cat dragged in. Not one flicker of recognition.

"Another one," she said with a sigh.

"Don't get attached. Mom keeps asking for some girl named Daisy. Don't encourage it."

"Who's Daisy?" I said. The word felt like swallowing glass.

"Nobody." Seraphina smiled.

"A stray my mother picked up. She ran off with some man two years ago and never even called. My brother turned the whole country upside down looking for her, and she couldn't be bothered to send a postcard."

My nails dug into my palms so hard I felt my skin break. Looking for me? He told her to her face that he hoped I'd never come back. I heard it. I heard every word. So what kind of sick game was this?

"Her room's at the end of the hall," Seraphina said, turning away.

"Try not to kill her. My brother would make it hurt."

Helena's room smelled like lavender and medicine. She was so small in that huge bed, her beautiful hair gone thin and grey on the pillow. The woman who used to spin me around the kitchen at midnight was barely a shadow.

When I knelt beside her, she opened her eyes and stared at me for a long time. Then she started to cry.

"Daisy," she whispered. "My girl."

I broke. I pressed her cold hand to my face and sobbed like I was eight years old again.

"I'm here, Mama. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I left you."

"He looked for you," she whispered.

"Every day. He's not the same, sweetheart. He's..."

"Please," I begged. "Don't tell him it's me. Promise me."

She looked at me with so much sadness that I almost couldn't breathe. But she nodded. That night, I was given a room in the staff quarters. The same room I'd slept in for those four horrible months.

Of course it was. I was unpacking my bag when my door slammed open so hard it bounced off the wall.

Lucien stood in the doorway, a glass of whiskey in one hand, his eyes already black.

"Healers check in with me before they sleep," he said.

"You didn't."

"I didn't know..."

He wasn't listening. He was staring past me in my open bag on the bed. His whole body went still.

Slowly, he walked across the room, reached into my bag, and pulled out a small, ugly teddy bear with one missing eye.

The glass slipped out of his other hand and shattered on the floor.

"Where," he said, his voice cracking into something I'd never heard from him before,

"did you get this?"