Chapter 3

Nadia

The sky had dimmed, gray clouds gathering. Ahead, the road diverged, and Vincent pulled the car off near the closest clearing. He spared me a glance, adjusted the cuffs of his sleeves, and shoved open the door.

Slowly, I followed him, disbelief spreading through me like fire. What was this? Where were we? There was nothing but trees in front of us. No estate looming to greet us, no staff waiting to take my lone, pathetic bag.

“What is this?” I asked. “Where are you taking me?”

Vincent shook his head. “Enough questions.”

“But—where—”

Without warning, Vincent leaped into the tree line, a growl rumbling in his chest. The muscles on his back rippled, and his suit tore away, silvery-gray fur rising on pale skin. I screamed, lurching back. Away.

Vincent, the man, was gone. Standing in his place was a wolf.

I’d never seen one before. Not truly. I’d always imagined them like dogs, only angrier. Wilder. Bigger.

This was no dog, even wild or angry. This was more like a beast.

Werewolf.

Vincent had said I was like him, but this had never happened to me. I couldn’t grow claws, couldn’t sprout fur. I felt human… I was human. But this? How could I deny this?

The wolf—Vincent—approached me. The air around me seemed to shift as he neared, growing heavy. Warmer. The trees he passed groaned, the roots twisting away from the creature, bark bending as if to watch the wolf pass.

I forced myself to stay planted in place as the beast loomed over me. Its snout was close enough to touch. Vincent blew out a breath—a puff of steam in the chilled air—and I squeezed my eyes shut against it.

When I opened them again, Vincent had shifted back. His features slowly smoothed back into place: the familiar leer of his gray eyes, the tilt of his lips, the graying hair that was the same shade as the silver fur of the wolf.

“You believe me now?”

“What choice do I have?” My voice sounded skeptical. Breathless. “After seeing that?”

Vincent huffed out a laugh. He nodded toward the car. “Come on.”

“How come I can’t do that?” I hurried after him, slipping into the passenger seat. “Shift?”

“You don’t have your wolf yet. You’ve been gone for too long. Now that you’re here,” he said, pulling back onto the main road, “your wolf spirit will find you. Without it, you won’t be able to shift or use any of your innate abilities.”

“How did you know where to find me? If I don’t have a… wolf spirit?”

“Your scent. I traced it back to the orphanage.”

Right. My scent. Because he’s a werewolf.

Questions rolled through my mind, one after another, like the waves in a storm. I wanted to ask about everything. About my parents, about why they abandoned me. About who I was before I became nobody.

About the life I could have had.

Before I could make enough sense of my own thoughts to even know where to begin, Vincent pulled the car into a long, spiraling driveway. The nearing estate was bigger than anything I’d ever seen. It rose like a beast at the end of the road, moss-covered stone spilling toward sky.

“This is where you’ll live from now on,” Vincent said simply. “I’m the Alpha of the Darkmoon Pack. Until you’re able to support yourself, I’ll act as your guardian.”

I nodded. I had already planned to get a job as soon as possible. The last thing I wanted was to trouble anyone.

“And you’ll have to go to school.”

School? That wasn’t part of the plan. “Why do I have to listen to you?”

“Because,” said Vincent, his lips stretching into a grin, palm shoving open the car door. “I’m your adoptive father.”

Despite my resistance, Vincent continued to push the subject. Since he was the only one I knew here, I figured it was best to listen. After a few days of settling into his estate, I enrolled at Fenrir Hall.

The academy was a collection of halls—brick and cobblestone speckled around a quad of foliage. Students migrated in and out of buildings, trampling along the stone paths in packs. A few spared me looks as I made my way to the center of campus, where the belltower rose like a beacon of greeting.

Outside the belltower’s doors, an array of posters and notices were tacked onto a crooked bulletin board. My eyes caught on the edge of a wrinkled, torn paper, the word princess sticking out like a splash of ink.

Anyone with information about the missing princess, please report to Headmistress Yves.

The princess was last seen eighteen years ago.

Useful information will be compensated with a sum of $1,000,000.

My breath caught. That amount of money was unheard of. Unimaginable in the places I grew up in. But eighteen years missing? That was a long time. How could one hold out hope for new information when it’d been that long?

Eighteen years. My age.

I tried to imagine myself being a princess. Wearing an elaborate gown, a tiara crooked atop my auburn hair. Even the image, stitched into my mind in all its falsehood, felt ridiculous.

A princess wouldn’t have been thrown into an orphanage.

Shaking my head, I moved on to the map hung beside the board. The dormitories were on the southside of campus, tucked between the dining hall and a speckle of trees labeled training grounds.

I turned back the way I came and collided with a group of laughing students. They barely acknowledged me, throwing a half-hearted ‘my bad’ at me, before shoving each other down the pathway. Others followed in their place, a whole group gathering under the spread of trees.

A gallop of cheers filled the air. I pushed my way through the small crowd to the front, where two men circled each other, panting.

The man with his back toward me stood taller than the other, muscles rippling under bare skin, a spillage of tattoos stretching across his tensed shoulders. He’d clearly already gotten a few hits off on the shorter boy, whose face was scrunched in pain. His cheek was already swelling under the smear of blood on his skin.

The taller of the two rolled his neck and lunged for the other. They both tumbled to the ground, bloody knuckles slamming into skin again and again.

The crowd shimmered with excited rage. They chanted the man’s name and leaned closer with each hit thrown.

Kael.

He was on top of the other man now, his knees pinning his opponents arms to the dirt. He made no move of letting up, even as the boy spat up blood between hits, cracked teeth falling from his mouth like spit.

He was going to kill him.

Before thinking better of it, I threw myself into the mess.

“Enough.” I dug my nails into Kael’s shoulders, shoving him off the wounded boy. “You’re going to kill him!”