CHAPTER TWO: CLAIMED BY THE RIVAL

The truck smelled like leather and rain and him.

I didn’t even know his name then. I just knew his truck was warm and my dress was soaked through and I was shaking so hard my teeth were clacking.

“You’re bleeding,” he said.

I touched my neck. My fingers came away with a little blood. Where Kaden’s rejection had burned. The mark that never got to be a mark.

“I’m fine,” I whispered. My voice was gone from screaming.

He didn’t say anything. He just reached into the back seat, grabbed a flannel shirt, black and red, huge, and dropped it in my lap.

“Put it on. You’re freezing.”

I did. It swallowed me. It smelled like pine and smoke. Like him.

He drove. Fast, but not scary fast. The windshield wipers slapped hard against the rain. We left Wolf Creek Ranch in the rearview. I watched the fairy lights in that barn get smaller and smaller until the trees swallowed them.

“What’s your name?” I finally asked.

“Zayn Blackwood.”

My stomach dropped. Even I had heard that name. Blackwood Mountain. The pack that owned half of Montana and didn’t let anyone onto their land without permission. The Alpha they said killed a bear with his bare hands when he was sixteen.

He was supposed to be cruel.

“I’m Amelia,” I said.

“I know.”

Of course he knew. Everyone knew the wolfless girl of Wolf Creek.

We drove for almost an hour. The rain let up a little. The road climbed. The trees got thicker, taller. Then the gates appeared, big black iron gates with a wolf head carved into them. They opened on their own.

Blackwood Mountain Ranch wasn’t a ranch. It was a kingdom.

The main house was three stories of dark wood and stone, lights glowing warm in every window. Barns bigger than Wolf Creek’s whole property. Horses in the fields, even at night. And quiet. No gossip, no laughing. Just the wind.

He parked in front of the house and came around to open my door. Like a gentleman. A terrifying gentleman.

“I can’t pay you,” I said quickly. “I don’t have anything.”

“I didn’t bring you here to pay me, Amelia.”

He led me inside. It was warm. A huge fireplace was roaring. Someone had left a blanket on the couch. He didn’t touch me, but he stayed close enough that I felt steady.

“Sit.”

I sat. The blanket ended up around my shoulders.

He crouched in front of me so we were eye level. Up close, his eyes weren’t just gray. They had a little gold around the edges. Alpha eyes.

“You’re not wolfless,” he said.

I laughed. It came out broken. “Everyone saw tonight. I didn’t shift. I’m eighteen. If I was going to…”

“You were poisoned.”

The word sucked all the air out of the room.

“What?”

“As a pup. Wolfsbane, small doses. Long enough to suppress your wolf so she couldn’t surface. Whoever did it knew what they were doing.” He looked at my neck, at my hands. “I can smell her. Underneath. She’s there. She’s been fighting to get out for years.”

My hands went cold. “Poisoned? By who?”

“I don’t know.” His jaw tightened. “But it had to be someone close enough to get near you as an infant. Someone who could hold you. Feed you. Someone inside Wolf Creek.”

Inside Wolf Creek.

Mrs. Holloway who made my bottles? Alpha Stone who used to pat my head? Kaden’s mother?

The room spun.

“No,” I whispered. “No, no one would…”

“Someone did,” Zayn said flatly. “And you’re rare. I can smell it. White wolf blood. Do you know how rare that is, Amelia? One in ten thousand. Your pack should have worshipped you.”

White wolf blood. The bedtime stories. The true Luna bloodline. I thought they were just stories old wolves told to make omegas feel better.

He stood up. He walked to the fireplace, his back to me.

“Stay here thirty days,” he said. “I’ll awaken her. I know how to burn the wolfsbane out. It’ll hurt like hell, but she’ll come.”

Thirty days with the most dangerous Alpha in Montana.

“What do you get out of it?” I asked. My voice shook but I made myself ask. I wasn’t going to be handed around again.

He turned. A small smile, not nice.

“My pack needs a strong Luna. And I need a Luna who isn’t after my money.”

“That’s it? You want to use my wolf for your pack’s power?”

He stared at me. Then he nodded like he respected the question.

“That’s part of it. I’m not going to lie to you.”

The old Amelia would have just said yes. Thank you for saving me. The new Amelia, the one still bleeding on her neck from rejection, felt something sharp wake up in her chest.

“Then I have a condition,” I said.

His eyebrows went up. No one sets conditions for Zayn Blackwood.

“Find out who poisoned me,” I said. “Not just awaken her. Help me find who did it. Your word. Not your pack’s power, not your money. Your word you’ll help me find them. Or I walk back down that mountain tonight, even if I have to crawl.”

Silence. The fire crackled.

Then he walked back to me. He held out his hand. Big, rough, scarred.

“You have my word, Amelia Quinn. We find who tried to kill your wolf.”

I took his hand. It swallowed mine. Warm and calloused.

“Deal.”

He let go. “The Luna cabin is yours. Behind the main house. No one will bother you.”

He started to walk away but I was already so tired of being handed things.

“No,” I said. “I’m not taking a cabin I didn’t earn. I’ll work. I’ll earn my place. Like everyone else.”

He looked at me for a long moment. Then that not nice smile came back, a little softer.

“Fine. You start in the stables tomorrow. Five a.m. The cabin’s still yours tonight though. You can argue with me about it once you’ve slept.”

“Fine.”

That night, he left me in the Luna cabin anyway. I was too exhausted to argue further. The bed was huge and soft and smelled clean. I fell asleep in his flannel shirt.

I woke up burning.

Not the neck burn. Deeper. In my spine, my ribs, my teeth. Like my bones were breaking and reforming.

I fell out of bed onto the wooden floor, gasping. My skin was too hot. My vision went white at the edges.

And then, a sound I had waited eighteen years to hear.

A howl. Inside my own head. Not sad. Furious. Powerful.

My hands hit the floor and they weren’t hands anymore. White fur, thick and bright, sprouted up my arms. My dress ripped.

I shifted.

For the first time in my life, I shifted.

I stood on four legs in the moonlight coming through the cabin window, shaking, panting. I looked down. White. Snow white, from nose to tail. No gray, no brown. Pure white.

A legend.

Outside, from the main house, I heard a low, shocked growl.

Zayn.

He had felt it.