Chapter 1

I had been personally invited by Alpha Kieran to join Silvercrest Pack as its new Beta.

Today was only my second day here.

Just minutes ago, my next-door neighbor Gloria had dragged her disheveled daughter Daisy to the dead center of the training grounds, where they both dropped to their knees.

Dozens of pack members in the middle of their morning drills stopped what they were doing and crowded around.

Gloria wailed at the top of her lungs, begging Alpha Kieran to deliver justice for her and her daughter.

Tears ran down her face in streaks, her voice hoarse and shrill as she screamed about the crimes committed against them.

Or rather, the crimes my son Koda had committed.

She got right in my face, shrieking that Koda had sexually assaulted her eighteen-year-old daughter Daisy the night before.

"That animal threatened Daisy — said he'd strangle her if she didn't comply!" Gloria's voice carried across the entire training grounds.

She demanded that Alpha execute Koda immediately and that I pay them ten million dollars in damages.

Daisy knelt in the dirt, arms locked around her own shoulders, trembling violently. She could barely breathe through her sobs, nodding frantically at every word her mother said.

The pack members around us began whispering, hostility plain on their faces. They'd already resented me — an outsider the Alpha had handpicked as Beta. Now every ounce of that resentment had ignited into something much worse.

Curses erupted from the crowd. They called my son Koda a shameless animal.

That was when Gloria's husband Harold shoved his way out of the angry mob.

He was nothing more than a low-ranking warrior, but his face was scarlet and the veins in his neck bulged as he stormed straight up to me, close enough that I could smell his breath.

"Your son did this to my daughter, and he can't even face us? Where the hell is he?"

Spit flew as he spoke.

"You think hiding him is gonna help? Someone's gotta bleed for this!"

Harold spun around and demanded that Alpha arrest Koda immediately and execute him right there on the training grounds.

The scene spiraled out of control. The roar of outrage was deafening.

Alpha Kieran stepped forward, his expression dark.

"Enough." His voice cut through the chaos. He turned his sharp gaze on me. "Vera. What do you have to say?"

I stood calmly at the edge of the grounds.

My gaze drifted from the mother and daughter kneeling in the dirt, to Harold, who looked ready to lose his mind.

My voice was perfectly level.

"My son did not assault Daisy." I met Alpha Kieran's eyes. "And he couldn't have."

That quiet denial landed like a bomb.

Instead of calming anyone down, it whipped the crowd into a frenzy.

A pack member threw his fist in the air. "Throw this outsider Beta out — she's shielding a criminal!"

Others joined in. "How can Alpha let someone this heartless lead our pack?"

As I watched the chaos unfold, my mind flashed through the events of the past two days.

When I'd been moving in yesterday, Gloria was the first one to come over. She'd been incredibly friendly, helping me carry boxes, casually prying into my personal life until she learned I had a son.

Her eyes lit up. She gushed about her daughter Daisy, who'd just turned eighteen.

I hadn't thought much of it. I'd said offhandedly, "My son just came of age too."

Gloria beamed and said they were practically the same age — what a wonderful coincidence to be living right next door.

The very next morning, Gloria showed up pounding on my door with Daisy in torn clothes.

The moment I opened up, she was in my face, accusing Koda of cornering Daisy on the path the night before and dragging her into the woods behind Pack House to assault her.

The mother-daughter duo refused to let it go. They laid out their terms: ten million dollars in compensation, and Koda had to marry Daisy in a formal Bonding ceremony.

Gloria threatened that if I refused, she'd report everything to Alpha and have Koda put to death under pack law.

I knew my son's situation. There was absolutely no way he could have done what they were claiming.

So I shut them down without hesitation.

After I threw them out, the pair didn't give up. Which was how we'd ended up here — with them kneeling before Alpha on the training grounds, begging him to take their side.

By now the crowd was near boiling point.

Alpha Kieran's expression hardened. He finally unleashed a wave of his Alpha dominance.

The invisible force slammed down over the entire grounds, and every voice died in its throat.

But in the very next second, Daisy — who had been sobbing on her knees this whole time — suddenly stood up.

In front of everyone, she ripped off her tattered jacket.

Bare skin exposed to the open air.

Her body was covered in sickening bruises and welts.

And crisscrossing between them — deep, unmistakable claw marks.