CHAPTER ONE

“Hey Izzy,” Clyde calls to me from the kitchen. “Sharon’s on break. Take table 12, yeah?”

I cringe a little. I hate being called Izzy. But I put on my best fake-sweet smile and tell him, “Of course, Clyde.” Then I tighten my apron and hurry off to take their order.

Clyde is a rogue, like me. But that’s pretty much where the similarities end. In fact, Clyde is the only rogue around here that gets any sort of respect, since he owns the diner and it’s a popular spot for wolves and humans alike.

He knows I hate being called “Izzy.” But I don’t call him on it because I need the money and he’s the only one that was willing to give me a job.

In the interview, he asked me what experience I had.

“None,” was my answer.

That’s the answer to a lot of questions in my life.

Experience? None.

Pack? None.

Parents? None.

Mate? None.

I hurry back towards table 12 to take their lunch order. I’m halfway there when I feel a steely grip of two fingers pinching my butt, hard. Hard enough for me to yelp. I spin, an involuntary snarl on my lips. But my face immediately goes slack when I see the identity of the butt-pincher.

A guy with sandy hair and penetrating green eyes grins up at me from a table with two other snickering guys. I know this face. He’s the Gamma of the nearby pack, and comes in at least once a week with his two top fighters to powwow and talk trash on rogues.

He’s handsome. He’s strong. He smells like heaven. He’s also an utter, irredeemable jackass.

“Sorry,” the Gamma says, and he smiles up at me.

Wait. “Sorry”? Did the Gamma just actually apologize to me?

Then his smile turns to a sneer. “I thought you were somebody else. Turns out you’re nobody. My mistake.” He and his buddies have a good laugh at that.

And me, I bite my tongue. Literally, I bite it, almost hard enough to draw blood, because it’s the only way to keep me from saying something I might regret. Someone like him would kill someone like me for far less than an unkind word, and not even Clyde would dare try to stop him.

So, I say nothing, and I let him laugh, and I go wait on table 12 because it’s my job. The only thing I have.

Because that’s me. Izzy the Nobody.

*

It’s near closing time and I’m counting out the register when Clyde sidles over to me and says, “Hey Izzy…”

“It’s Isabel,” I mutter under my breath. But if he hears it, he ignores me.

“Do me a favor.” He holds up a manila envelope, thickly padded, folded over on itself and wrapped in red tape. “Drop this off for me?”

I want to scoff but instead I clear my throat. “Clyde, you know I don’t have a car.”

“I know.” He almost sounds apologetic. Almost. “But I have tickets to the game and I’m already running late.”

“This isn’t the kind of thing I can say no to, is it?” I ask him.

He flashes me a smile that says, Not if you want to keep your job, and drops the envelope beside the register. “You remember where the drop point is?”

“I do.”

“Good girl.” Another flash of teeth, and Clyde scoots out the door.

Good girl. Like I’m a child. I’m twenty, for Goddess’s sake, not that anyone knows that or cares.

Fifteen minutes later I turn out the lights, lock the diner door behind me, and step out into the pleasant spring night. It’s only then that I notice I’m still wearing my apron over my “uniform,” which is just a white t-shirt and black pants and black sneakers. I smell like burgers and fries and I swear the scent will never wash out of my hair, but at least I’m finished for the day.

Or almost finished. Just this one thing to do.

The envelope, stuffed thick and wrapped in red tape, is Clyde’s monthly payment to the nearby pack. Years ago he struck a deal with their Alpha that he could open and operate the diner close to their turf, and that it would be a peaceful place, no fighting or conflict, in return for his monthly stipends.

The drop point is three miles away. Luckily I’m pretty fast and I like running, so I take off in that direction. I could run a lot faster if I shifted, but what would I do with the envelope? Put it in my mouth? Then it’d be all soggy. Not to mention the red tape might break, and then the Alpha himself would come around, asking if the money was tampered with.

So I run in human form, feeling the breeze in my hair. And as I run, I daydream. I know it sounds geeky and I don’t care. When you have nothing, hope is all you have to hang onto. So I retreat into my own mind, going back to that magical daydream I’ve had since I turned eighteen -- that I would find him, the one I could call mine, and he would whisk me off my feet, take me somewhere far from here.

My Prince Charming.

My happily ever after.

My mate.

Of course it’s just a fantasy. It’s been two years, and thanks to my job at the diner I’ve probably met every male wolf in a fifty-mile radius at one point or another. I know that he must be out there, somewhere. But “somewhere” could be Sri Lanka, for all I know.

I slow to a trotting pace, not because I’m winded but because I should almost be at the drop point by now, and I realize the path I’m on is not familiar to me. I usually take a shortcut along a jogging route through the park but this path is worn dirt, not paved, and the trees lining it are larger, thicker than they should be, wild and unmanicured.

Did I take a wrong turn? Was I so deep in my own head that I wasn’t watching where I was going? Where the heck am I?

I bet most girls would be freaked out if they realized they were lost in the woods alone at night. But I like the nighttime, and I see a lot better in the dark than during the day. In fact, my vision is so good at night that I easily spot the mark on a nearby tree.

To any human, it would look like a strangely colored, misshapen knot. But to my keen vision, it very clearly looks like a brown paw-print.

“Oh crap,” I mutter, and an instant later I catch a scent on the breeze. It’s the unmistakable musk of a wolf.

I’ve wandered onto pack territory. And I’ve served the arrogant Gamma lunch enough times to know that the penalty for a trespassing rogue is capture… or death.