LOGINCalla’s POVThree years did a lot to a person.I knew this because I barely recognized the woman in the mirror anymore. Not in a bad way. Some mornings I stand in front of the mirror just looking, trying to reconcile the person staring back at me with the trembling girl who had clutched a suitcase in front of a mansion and prayed the Alpha wouldn’t eat her alive.That girl was gone.In her place was someone I was still getting used to. Someone with good posture that didn’t have to be reminded. Someone whose hands didn’t shake when an aggressive wolf got in her face. Someone who had learned, slowly and painfully and through more mornings on the ground than she cared to count, that she was not a vessel or a background character or a burden.I knew exactly what I was worth.I sat at the vanity and worked the brush through my hair in long, even strokes. It fell past my shoulders now, all the way to the middle of my back … thick and curly and with a weight to it that still surprised me
Calla’s POVThe arrow hit the tree. I groaned, rubbing my face in anger. Using an arrow was so fucking hard but it’s one of the things I really really wanna learn. The thoughts of shooting all my enemies filled me with glee.I wipe the smirk off my face and focus on the target on the tree.This time I was totally off about a foot to the left of the target, which was already a generous description of how far off I was. The arrow sat there quivering in the bark like it was embarrassed on my behalf.I lowered the bow.“Okay,” I said to nobody.I picked up another arrow.The morning was quiet out here behind the house. The valley did its usual thing … birds doing their business in the tree line, the river making its constant soft commentary somewhere below the slope, the sky a clean pale blue with no clouds having the nerve to show up and ruin it. Adele had left for school an hour ago. I had watched Tyson’s driver take her down the valley road in the old truck, her backpack was enorm
Calla’s POVThe water was at my knees.I stood in the dark with my back against the door and my hands flat against the wood behind me and I took one breath. Just one. The same way Tyson had been teaching me to breathe before I reacted to anything.Assess first, he always said. React second.Okay.The door wouldn’t open. I had tried force and it hadn’t worked which meant force alone wasn’t the answer. The window. There was a window above the sink, but it was small, it was meant for air only I’m sure my body could not pass through that. But small didn’t mean impossible. I had been training for three months. I was not the same woman who had trembled in a bedroom doorway waiting for an Alpha to acknowledge her existence.I was not that woman anymore.I pushed off the door.The water was cold and it was dark and I couldn’t see anything but I knew this bathroom. I knew the layout because I had stood in it every morning for three months and I had never needed the lights on to know where
Calla’s POVI was sweaty, sore, and ready to collapse.Training with Tyson was not the kind of thing you walked away from feeling good about yourself. It was the kind of thing you walked away from feeling like your arms had been replaced with wet noodles and someone had quietly removed all the bones from your legs while you weren’t paying attention.I pushed open the door to my room and immediately dropped onto the edge of the bed.Just for a second, I told myself.Just one second.I sat there breathing. My hair was everywhere. There was dirt on my left elbow that I had no memory of and my shoulder, the one that had been wrenched in the alley three months ago, was throbbing slightly but it happened whenever I pushed it too hard.And I had definitely pushed it too hard.Outside the window, the valley was doing its usual beautiful thing , the golden afternoon light sitting on top of the green hills, the river catching it here and there and throwing it back up in bright little flashes.
Calla’s POVThe words had barely left his mouth before he moved.One moment he was sitting in his chair with his toast in his hand and his eyes on mine and the next moment he was on his feet and the chair was scraping back against the wooden floor and the sound of it cut through the kitchen like a blade.Everything stopped.The maid at the stove stopped stirring. The one at the counter stopped mid sentence. The third one, the one who had been watching me, went very still against the wall.Tyson didn’t raise his voice.bHe didn’t have to.He simply looked across the kitchen at the maid who had shrugged her shoulder at me … the one at the counter, the one who was the most disrespectful… and he pointed at her.One of his elegant slender fingers. I wonder if that came with royalty.“You,” he said. “Come here.”The maid straightened sweet pooled across her face as she looked like she wanted to bolt. “I said come here,” Tyson said.She came.She crossed the kitchen with steps that were slo
Calla’s POV Three months. It had taken three months for the new place to begin feeling like something other than a waiting room.The house Tyson had brought us to sat at the edge of the valley, backed up against the tree line with the river visible from the kitchen window on clear mornings. It was not a grand house. Nothing like the Blackthorn pack house with its imported furniture and crystal chandeliers and endless corridors that always felt like they were watching you. This house had low ceilings and wide windows and wooden floors that creaked in specific, predictable places that I had long since memorized. I knew which step on the stairs announced itself loudly enough to wake Adele. I knew that the kitchen window stuck unless you lifted it slightly before pushing. I knew that the corner of the sitting room caught the last of the evening light in a way that lasted exactly twenty minutes and was worth stopping for. Three months. And I knew the bones of this place the way I







