Chapter 1

Nora

I had gotten good at hiding.

Six years will do that. Six years of folding myself and my little sister into closets and crawl spaces every time Victor came home drunk.

Tonight, my stepfather was drunker than usual.

I pressed my hand over Lily's mouth and felt her breath shake against my palm. She was six. She already knew the rules. Don't cry. Don't move. Don't let him hear you. Six years old, and already she was an expert at it. I wished she didn’t have to be.

Somewhere past the bedroom door, glass shattered.

"Nora!" His voice slurred through the walls, my name spat out like vinegar. "Where are you hiding, you little—"

A chair went over. Then something heavier. He was tearing the front room apart, looking for us, and the blood pounded so loud in my ears that I almost missed the small sound Lily made against my hand.

I tightened my arms around her.

"Shh," I breathed into her hair. "He'll get tired soon. He always does."

It wasn't a promise I could keep. But she needed to hear it, so I said it.

My mother used to tell me I was born careful. She married Victor when I was five. He was her second chance, she liked to say, the man who would give us a real home. For a few good years, we almost were one. He never warmed to me, the daughter of a wolf he'd never met, but he loved her, and that was enough.

Then, when I was twelve, she died bringing Lily into the world.

Something in Victor died with her. He stopped looking at the baby, started drinking, and I learned how to warm bottles, change diapers, and stay very, very quiet.

Now, at eighteen, I knew how to keep a child alive better than I knew how to keep myself whole.

It used to be neglect. Lately, it was worse. I’d catch him looking at Lily and me with resentment so raw it frightened me more than his fists ever had.

The footsteps came closer.

I held my breath and watched the strip of light under the door. His shadow crossed it once. Twice. He cursed. A bottle rolled across the floorboards and clinked against the wall.

A long time passed before the steps moved away.

I counted to a hundred. And then I counted again. Only when the house had been silent for a long time did I ease the closet open and wipe the tears off Lily's cheeks with my thumb.

"You can come out now," I whispered. "It's over."

…

Lily fell asleep in my lap. I watched her sleep, fighting the urge myself. Every time my eyelids drooped, I snapped them back open and shook my head.

Must. Stay. Awake.

All night, I sat against the wall with her head on my knee and listened to the house, certain that every creak was Victor coming back to finish the job. He never came. By the time gray light crept through the curtains, my legs had gone numb and my eyes burned.

I made breakfast anyway.

I was still in last night's clothes, a thin gray shirt and leggings worn soft at the knees, when I cracked two eggs into the pan and cut Lily's toast into the little triangles she liked. I carried her plate up to her room, and once she was settled, I went back down to the sink and started on the dishes.

"Nora."

The plate nearly slipped out of my wet hands.

I turned around. Victor stood in the kitchen doorway, and in the morning he was a different man. Showered. Pressed shirt. The silver Alpha pin gleaming on his collar, as if the night had never happened at all.

This was the Victor the pack knew. Important and respected. The Alpha who ran our whole territory with a steady hand and a kind smile.

"I have an Alpha Council meeting out of territory." he said. His voice was calm now, almost pleasant. “I’ll be gone until tomorrow evening.” He paused. "Don't wander."

Two small words. A whole sentence buried underneath them.

"I won't," I said.

He held my eyes a moment longer. Then, he straightened his cuffs and was gone.

The front door clicked shut. His car rolled down the gravel and faded. Only then did my hands stop shaking.

Don't wander. As if I could. I'd already learned what it cost.

I had a plan. I worked shifts at a diner in town. It was the one job Victor allowed, because the tips bought groceries he didn't want to pay for. He didn't know I kept half of every dollar in a tin behind the loose board in my floor, or how close it was getting to full.

I didn't go to school. He'd put a stop to that years ago. And I had no wolf to fight him with. I'd been born wolfless, and against an Alpha like Victor that left me with nothing but quick hands and a good hiding spot. I couldn't run to the neighboring packs, either. I'd tried that once, and it cost me more than I let myself remember. Worse, it had taught Victor the one sure way to make me obey.

Hurt Lily, and I would do anything.

So I didn't fight. I saved. Enough money, and one day I would put my sister in a warm coat and walk us both out of here for good.

…

By the time my shift ended, the sky had gone orange over the rooftops.

I counted my tips on the bus home. Sixteen dollars and some change. I thought about Lily the whole ride home. Whether she'd eaten. Whether she'd stayed in her room like I'd told her. I missed the warm weight of her in my arms so badly it ached.

The gravel drive was quiet when I stepped off the bus.

I was halfway up the drive when the wind shifted, carrying something with it. Something that didn’t belong here, amongst the pines and the damp soil.

Blood.

I knew that smell. I'd scrubbed enough of it off my own skin to know it anywhere. My stomach dropped straight through the floor, and one thought swallowed every other one.

Victor came home early.

The thought swallowed everything else. I ran past the dark house and toward the trees, following the scent up the back hill. Lily. He'd done something to Lily. He'd finally gone and done it.

"Lily!" I tore through the brush, branches whipping my arms. "Lily, where are—"

I stopped.

It wasn't Lily.

A man lay sprawled in the leaves at the foot of an old pine. One arm was flung above his head. Blood soaked dark through the side of his shirt, and he wasn't moving at all.

He wasn't much older than me. Dark hair had fallen across his forehead, stuck there with sweat and blood. Even unconscious in the dirt, he was the most beautiful man I had ever seen.

I caught myself staring and hated that I did.

His chest rose. Shallow. But it rose.

He was alive.