Prologue

For seventeen years, my existence in the Lightmaw pack was defined by a single, crushing word: omega. I was not just the bottom of the pack hierarchy; I was the dirt beneath their paws. I was the unshifted outcast, the overweight and overlooked girl who was only ever noticed when someone needed a target for their cruelty. Every day was an exhausting exercise in making myself as small as possible, hiding beneath baggy clothes and avoiding the judgmental glares of wolves who deemed me a genetic failure.

They thought they had finally broken me entirely on the night of the school prom. For one brief, foolish afternoon, I had allowed myself to hope. When the Beta heir, the golden boy of the football team, asked me to be his date, my adoptive mother had been so thrilled. We spent hours shopping, pinning up my hair, and trying to make the clumsy omega look like she belonged. But it was all an elaborate, vicious trap – a cruel game they called 'pigs to prom'. Standing in the centre of that glittering gymnasium, surrounded by mocking laughter and pointed fingers, I felt my spirit shatter. The humiliation was absolute.

But that was not the true breaking point. The real fracture happened hours later.

Desperate to escape the stifling pity of my family, I retreated to the familiar sanctuary of my bedroom roof. The night air was biting, but the cigarette trembling between my fingers offered a fleeting distraction. I sat on the edge of the slate tiles, staring out at the dark treeline, whispering a quiet, desperate vow to the moon that one day, they would all pay. I never heard my adoptive brother, Kai, climb up behind me. He only meant to make me jump, a misguided attempt to shock a smile onto my face.

He succeeded in making me jump. My foot slipped on the damp roof, my hands grasped at empty air, and I plummeted towards the unforgiving concrete below.

Death, however, did not claim the broken omega. Instead, the devastating impact plunged me into a deep, month-long coma. While my fractured body lay motionless in a sterile hospital bed, sustained by machines and the desperate prayers of the parents who found me in a hollowed stump, my mind wandered. I found myself lost in a mist-shrouded, ancient forest. The air was thick with the scent of pine and cedar, crisp and biting in my lungs. I followed an invisible pull, my bare feet silent on the bed of fallen needles, until the trees parted to reveal a sheer cliff edge.

It was there, bathed in an ethereal white light, that I finally met her.

Laurel.

She was a magnificent, towering grey and white wolf. Her coat shimmered like spun moonlight, but it was her eyes that pinned me to the spot – piercing, glowing violet eyes that perfectly mirrored my own. She did not look at me with the pity or disgust I was so accustomed to. Instead, she radiated a primal, ancient authority. Through a voice that echoed in my very soul, she whispered of a forgotten past, a stolen birthright, and a dormant power that was finally ready to awaken. She told me the time for hiding was over. To claim my destiny, I had to take a leap of faith. I had to step off the precipice, leave the weak, terrified girl behind, and embrace the predator within.

So, I jumped.

As I fell through the blinding light of my dreamscape, my real eyes snapped open. The harsh, fluorescent glare of the hospital room welcomed a stranger. The soft, terrified girl who had fallen from the roof was gone. As I slowly lifted my hands, I barely recognised them. The month of unconsciousness had stripped away the weight I had carried as a shield, leaving behind a leaner, sharper survivor. My muscles, which should have been atrophied and weak, hummed with an undeniable, terrifying new strength.

The wolf was finally awake.

I was no longer the Lightmaw pack's pathetic omega. I just did not know yet that a visiting stranger with icy blue eyes was about to walk past my hospital door and reveal the brilliant, terrifying truth: I was Tallulah, the long-lost twin princess of the Onyxclaw pack.

My abusers thought they had buried me when I hit that concrete. They were about to discover that they had simply planted the seed for a queen’s revenge.