All Chapters of The Rejected Heiress: Chapter 1 - Chapter 3

Elara POVI wake at five, like every morning, in the room behind the pack house kitchen. There is no window. The air smells like old grease and bleach.I lie still and count to thirty. Nobody knocks. My phone has no messages. No card has been slid under the door.I am eighteen today.I get up anyway. In the mirror over the sink I see the same thin face. I hold my eyes open and look for gold. There isn't any. There never has been.By six I'm on my knees in the dining hall with a brush and a bucket. Boots come down the hallway. Nobody walks around me. They step over my hands, and one pair steps on my fingers and stays there."Still no wolf, birthday girl?" a girl says above me. She knows what day it is. They all do. "Guess the Moon Goddess skipped the trash.""Careful," a boy says. "She might contaminate the floor with her defect."Laughter. I keep scrubbing. Someone kicks the bucket and gray water runs across the tiles and into my sleeve, my only clean shirt. It is cold against my ribs

Elara POVI don't speak. I don't think I can.Nobody at the table says anything. My father closes the folder and keeps one hand flat on top of it."I've never met him," I say. It's a lie and it isn't. I know nothing about the man except his face and what he said to me on a roof."Tonight you'll meet him properly," my father says. "After that, we'll talk about what can be done.""Can anything be done?"He doesn't answer. Lucas says, "Papa," and my father says, "Not now." Lucas looks at his plate.Sera folds her napkin and excuses herself. Her chair makes no sound this time.Ezra slides closer on his seat and puts a piece of toast on my plate without a word. I haven't eaten since the muffin. I pick it up.Theo pushes a new phone across the table. "Don't open the video," he says. I open it. Four million views. The comments are not kind. I put the phone face down.* * *By noon the house has been taken over. Racks of gowns line every hallway. Seamstresses move through the rooms with pins