Chapter 4

One year later…

The massive facility enclosed in chain-link fences loomed behind me as I walked through the visitor’s parking lot, feeling as if a physical weight had finally fallen off my back.

Sadly, that burden consisted of a year-long battle for private space, basic freedom, and dodging makeshift plastic shivs from girls picking fights. Now, it was instantly replaced by a different kind of pressure—one that tasted entirely of hatred and resentment.

My twelve-month sentence at the Cape Falls Juvenile Detention Center, a hellhole specifically designed for female werewolf delinquents, was over. I had spent a whole year locked away for a list of crimes I never committed. Someone had systematically ruined my life, and I had made it my sole purpose to find out which bastard did it.

Halfway through my stay, my aunt Rita had called me from a resort in Hawaii under the guise of fishing for information. As the undisputed family gossip, she relished other people’s misery, which was undoubtedly the only reason she had reached out. But before she hung up, she had dropped a bomb, warning me never to let my father know she had passed the information along.

Turned out my own father was a rat and a liar.

He was the anonymous caller who had tipped off the police about my presence at the illegal race. He was also the one who had provided the exact placement of the drugs and cash the officers managed to pull from my clothes. I vividly remembered the theatrical show the arresting officer made when he withdrew an envelope stuffed with hundred-dollar bills and a tightly wrapped, brick-sized package from my person. They had found the stash tucked right into the pocket of my hoodie.

Someone had planted it on me that night, and my suspicions narrowed down to three men: Darius, Jace, and Hunter. They were the only ones who had gotten close enough to me that night to orchestrate the trap. But since my father knew exactly what was hidden on my person, the conclusion was undeniable—he had commissioned one of them to do the dirty work.

Hunter.

I stopped dead in the center of the asphalt as the realization struck me. How had I been so blind? Hunter was the prime suspect. It wasn’t just because he claimed he was patching through to my father in the car, but because of how he had acted during the entire ride. His impatient, cold, and utterly detached attitude hadn’t been mere annoyance—it was the rush to deliver me to the slaughter.

Jace had been the one to insist I sit in the front seat, perfectly positioning me for them to ditch me and make a quick getaway.

Those two men and my father had been working together from the start. Pieces of shit.

Though, my time in juvie hadn’t been a total waste. I had spent the year collecting leverage, learning dark secrets about the illegal operations running through the various local factions. The Bloodmoon Brotherhood, in particular, had some incredibly dirty ledger lines. I also discovered that Hunter was a registered rogue wolf, which made me question why Jace associated with him in the first place. Traveling with a rogue was a surefire way to get shunned by the Syndicate. Our laws didn’t tolerate it. Period.

But structural pack laws clearly didn’t stop my father from employing one.

I let out a long breath, adjusted the nylon straps of my backpack, and slung it over my shoulder.

The absolute worst part of this nightmare was that despite my father being the architect of my ruined reputation, I had no choice but to go back to his estate. When my mother passed away seven years ago, she left me a massive trust fund and a coastal manor near the beach. Rumor within the pack suggested her true inheritance was even larger, but my father had locked the legal will in his private safe, keeping the details from me. He was hoarding everything that was rightfully mine. Legally, now that I was eighteen, those assets should have transferred to my name.

But as an Alpha and a mob boss, he possessed endless ways to bypass human and werewolf courts. Handing his own daughter over to the state on fabricated felony charges was just an effortless strategy to keep his hands on my mother’s fortune.

I wanted what belonged to me. To get it, I had to swallow my pride, play the role of the obedient, broken daughter, and bide my time until I could liquidate my assets and run for the hills.

The one benefit of our Syndicate structure was that you could disappear anywhere in the world without facing formal exile, just like Aunt Rita did. But getting caught on enemy territory was an automatic strike. I was currently on probation with my own pack, and the journey to crawl back into their good graces was going to be a long and humiliating journey.

I tossed my tangled chestnut hair over my shoulder and growled at the empty pavement. “Where the hell is the car?”

My father had explicitly promised his personal attorney that a private driver would be waiting at the gates. It would have been the perfect arrangement—saving me from having to beg his enforcers for transport every time I needed to leave the house. But the asset was clearly missing.

I turned on my heel, intending to march toward a concrete bench near the fence, when a candy-red Chevrolet Corvette Stingray tore into the visitor’s lot. Imagine Dragons’ Enemy blared from the custom marine speakers, vibrating the gravel.

I snorted in annoyance, ignoring the display and continuing toward the bench. The sports car honked sharply behind me.

I whipped around, a curse dying on my tongue as the driver’s side door swung open.

Jace Blaine slid out onto the gravel.

You have got to be kidding me.

“Hey, gorgeous.” He leaned his forearm over the fiberglass roof of the door, flashing that familiar, punchable grin. “Your ride is here.”

A lot of things had changed about me during my year behind bars. Chief among them was my temper and my threshold for handling threats. The Elise who entered juvie would have smiled, sucked it up, and talked her way through the tension.

The Elise standing here now offered him the sweetest, most venomous smile she could muster. I stalked directly toward him, my backpack swinging against my hip. “Jace,” I drawled.

His grin stretched even wider. “Glad to see that place didn’t break your spirit. You’re still as cute and—”

My right fist drove straight into the bridge of his nose.

A loud, wet crack echoed across the lot. The force of the blow caught him so entirely off guard that his butterscotch eyes went wide and vacant, his brain struggling to process the impact. Werewolf biology took over instantly, the bone audibly popping and resetting itself beneath his skin as blood began to stream over his lip.

I didn’t give him a chance to recover. I dropped my weight and launched a left hook aimed directly at his jaw, but he was too fast. Cupping his bloody face with one hand, his peripheral vision locked onto the movement, and his fingers clamped around my wrist like a steel cuff.

I dropped my backpack into the dirt, using my free hand to drive an elbow toward his throat.

“What the fuck, Elise!” Jace spun me around with terrifying speed, pinning my arms securely against the small of my back and neutralizing my leverage. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“You,” I hissed, my skin burning hot against his chest as I thrashed against his grip. “You are exactly what’s wrong!”