~ 1

Chapter 1

~ Natalie ~

There are two rules for a werewolf hiding among humans.

Rule one: never draw attention.

Rule two: never, ever throw a rock at one of them.

In my defense, he threw it first.

"Read the address again," I said.

Allie held up my phone and squinted at it. "Forty-four Crescent Row, Wellington Heights. Same as the last five times you asked."

I stood beside my old Honda and stared down the street. At the end of it sat a mansion so big it could swallow my whole apartment building. Green lawns. Tall iron gates. A family crest on every gate — a stag's head with crossed pine branches behind it.

This was a rich people's street. Old money. The kind of people who hired girls like me to clean their houses and forgot our names by dinner.

And my step-sister was supposedly living here.

Eighteen months ago, my step-sister Fanny and I packed two bags, bought fake papers, and ran. We changed our names. We changed our numbers. We swallow little white pills every morning — pills that keep the animal in our blood quiet and hide what we are from anyone who might come sniffing.

Because here's the truth nobody in this nice, normal world knows: werewolves are real. Fanny and I are two of them. And back home, a very powerful, very cruel man wanted my sister for himself. Men like him don't take no for an answer. So we ran, and we've been pretending to be ordinary human women ever since.

The only human on earth who knows our secret is Allie — my best friend, currently sitting in my passenger seat, watching that mansion like it might bite us.

"Fanny hasn't answered my calls in four months," I said. "Now suddenly she wants me to come stay for two whole weeks. At this address. Make it make sense, Allie."

"Maybe she works here? Live-in maid or something?"

"A maid who's allowed to invite two guests?"

"Maybe she…"

Pain cracked across my shoulder. Sharp. Sudden.

"Ow!" I spun around, grabbing my arm. A small stone bounced off the road by my shoe.

Across the street stood a man in a leather jacket, his arm still stretched out from the throw. Tall. Dark hair. Annoyingly handsome, which somehow made it worse. Behind him, three motorcycles waited in a neat row, and the riders on them were watching us and grinning.

Rich boys. Bored rich boys with expensive toys, playing on their own private street.

He'd been skipping stones down the empty road. Now one of them was throbbing in my shoulder — and he wasn't apologizing. He wasn't even pretending to think about it. He just looked at me with his head tilted and one eyebrow up, wearing the lazy smirk of a man who had never once been told no.

Deep inside my chest, my wolf stirred.

"Seriously?" Heat rushed up my neck. "You hit me with a rock and you're just going to stand there?"

Nothing. Just the smirk.

"Natalie." Allie's voice went low and careful. It was the voice she used when she could see trouble coming. Months of keeping my secret had given her a lot of practice. "Listen to me. You are a boring nobody with a boring name, and you are going to stay that way. Whatever you're thinking… don't."

I bent down and picked up the stone.

"Natalie… please"

I threw it anyway.

The stone left my hand harder than I meant. Much harder. It flew across forty feet of road in a straight, clean line and cracked him right on the temple.

For one full second, nobody moved. Then his hand came up slowly and touched the spot. When his fingers came away red, one of his friends let out a long, low whistle. The kind of whistle you hear at funerals.

"Oh no," Allie whispered. "Natalie. Your arm."

She didn't have to say more. I already knew. Normal women don't throw like that. Normal humans don't throw like that. Strength is part of what we are, part of what the pills are supposed to keep buried — and I'd just shown it off in the middle of the street.

The smirk was gone from his face now. But it wasn't only anger that replaced it. It was interest. Sharp, careful interest, like I'd stopped being some annoying girl and turned into a question he wanted answered.

That was worse. That was so much worse.

"Car," I said. "Car, car, CAR…"

We dove in. Behind us, four engines roared to life, one after another. My hands were shaking so badly I dropped the keys on the floor.

"Natalie!"

"I'm trying!" I grabbed the keys, jammed them in, and stomped the gas. The Honda swerved, screeched, then straightened out. In my mirror, four headlights grew bigger and bigger, closing in fast.

"You threw a rock at a rich man's head!" Allie had both hands pressed flat on the dashboard. "Eighteen months, Natalie! Eighteen months of staying invisible, and you crack a millionaire's skull in front of witnesses!"

"He hit me first!"

"You're supposed to be BORING! Boring girls don't split heads open from across the street!"

The headlights filled my mirror — and a colder fear cut through my panic.

My eyes. Wolf eyes shine in the dark when light hits them, the same way a cat's eyes do. Silver-green and wrong. If those headlights caught my eyes in the mirror at the right angle, even once, they'd see it.

I slapped the mirror down and drove half-blind.

Huge iron gates rose out of the dusk ahead. I leaned on the horn and hung out the window like a madwoman.

"Open the gate! Please! Please!"

A security guard strolled out with a tablet in his hand, slow and bored, while four motorcycles thundered up the road behind me.

"They're going to kill us," I begged. "Please open the…"

The engines changed sound.

I looked back. The riders had stopped. Fifty feet away, headlights blazing, engines still running — but stopped. The one I'd hit, sat still on his bike with one fist in the air. He'd called his friends off.

But he didn't leave. He just sat there and watched my car through the dark, head tilted, like he was memorizing everything. My face. My plates. My impossible throw.

"Name?" The guard tapped on my window.

"My sister invited me. Fanny — Fanny Belmar?" I shoved my phone at him. "She sent me this address."

He scrolled through his tablet, taking his time. "ID."

I dug through my purse, dropped my wallet twice, and finally handed over my license with sweaty fingers. Natalie Belmar. The name was eighteen months old. A man in a basement two cities ago had printed it for me. He charged double for fast work and asked no questions.

The guard looked at the card. Looked at me. Behind us, the motorcycles kept up their low, waiting growl.

"Why did they stop?" Allie whispered.

"You're on the list." The guard handed my license back. "Welcome to the Wellington estate."

The Wellington estate.

Even I knew that name. It was on a hospital downtown. It was on the university library. It was printed on the sides of buildings in letters taller than me.

The gates groaned open. I drove through slowly, eyes glued to the side mirror. The riders never moved.

"Natalie," Allie said faintly. "What has your sister gotten us into?"

Before I could answer, the front doors of the mansion flew open, and Fanny came flying down the steps — arms wide, hair bouncing, smile stretched so bright it looked painful.

"You made it!" She yanked my door open and pulled me out. "I was getting worried!"

"Fanny." My legs could barely hold me. "What is this place? What are you doing here?"

"This is home!" She spun in a circle, and her dress flared around her knees. "Isn't it unreal?"

"Home? Since when…"

"Oh, I have so much to tell you! Come inside, come on…"

"Fanny." I planted my feet and dropped my voice so low that only ears like ours could catch it. "We're supposed to be hiding. This is not hiding."

Something flickered behind her smile — there and gone in a blink. "Relax," she murmured back. "Nobody looks for two dead girls in a place like this."

Then a man stepped out of the house behind her, and I understood at once how my sister had ended up here.

He was older — sixties, at least — but he carried it like a magazine cover. Silver-white hair combed back. A neat white beard. Blue eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled. Money and confidence rolled off him like warmth off a fire.

And, to my complete confusion, my wolf sat up and paid attention.

"Hello." His voice was smooth and warm. He held out his hand to me. "You must be Natalie."

"I... yes. Natalie." I shook it without thinking.

"And you must be Allie." He shook her hand too. She nodded. I'm not sure she was breathing.

"Girls!" Fanny bounced on her toes. "Meet Jeremy. Jeremy Wellington." She pushed her left hand toward my face. A diamond the size of my thumbnail caught the light. "My fiancé."

"Fiancé?"

It came out flat and unbelieving, but Fanny just laughed.

"I know! The wedding is New Year's Eve — a small ceremony here at the house, then a big one in spring!"

"How long have you known him?"

"Three months." Jeremy pulled her against his side, and she melted into him. "I know how it sounds. But when you know, you know."

Three months. Three months, and my sister — a woman whose real name was buried in a city we could never return to — was going to marry into one of the most famous families in the country.

A famous wedding means photos. Photos mean newspapers. Newspapers travel. And somewhere out there, the man we ran from was still looking for two faces exactly like ours.

Fanny hadn't just stopped hiding. She'd climbed up on a stage and switched on all the lights.

And this was the same sister who had crawled into my ex-boyfriend's bed two years ago. Who cried and swore he'd forced her — then begged me to drop it before I could make him pay. ‘No drama, Natalie. Please. Just let it go.’

John never begged for anything. He looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘She came to me. And I didn't say no.’

It took me two months of digging to find out who had lied.

It wasn't him.

But Fanny was the only family I had left. So I swallowed the truth. 

And now here she stood, glittering under a rich man's porch lights, engaged to someone who looked at her like she'd hung the moon.

"I'm happy for you," I heard myself say.

The lie tasted like metal. I hugged her anyway, because that's what family does. Even the family that breaks you.

Over her shoulder, through the tall glass windows, a figure stood inside the house. Leather jacket. Arms crossed. Completely still.

Watching me.

My heart stopped. No. No, no, no…

"Ah!" Jeremy turned, following my stare, and his face lit up. "Nikolai's home. Son! Come inside and meet everyone properly!"

Son.

Allie's ice-cold fingers wrapped around my wrist. "Natalie. Please tell me that's not…"

"It is."

I hadn't just hit some random rich stranger.

I had split open the head of the Wellington heir with a throw no human woman could ever explain. I am doomed