Elena’s POV
The rain was hamring the trailer roof like it wanted in.
I cracked one eye open on the sagging couch and stared at the water stain spreading across the ceiling. Happy birthday to .
Sothing rustled on the coffee table. A handful of wild daisies, still wet from the woods, sat in a chipped mug. Next to them, a folded note in Mom’s neat handwriting.
My beautiful girl. Eighteen today. I’m so proud of the woman you’ve beco. There’s toast in the kitchen. I love you more than the moon. —M
My throat went tight. I read it twice. Then I folded it small and slipped it into my back pocket.
She’d left before dawn. Again. Working multiple dead-end jobs just to keep us afloat.
I swung my boots off the couch and padded to the window. Grey sky. Grey woods. The trailer sat at the end of a dirt road, far from the packhouse, far from anyone who mattered. That was how they liked us. Forgotten.
Are you going to mope all morning, or are we moving?
Tara, my inner wolf, stretched in the back of my skull like a cat in a sunbeam.
“I’m moving,” I muttered.
I fished a stolen, half-crushed cigarette from my pocket.
That is disgusting. Our lungs, Elena.
“Your lungs are fine. Mine need this.”
You are being dramatic.
“It’s my birthday. I get to be dramatic.”
She huffed and curled up again.
I pulled on my jeans. Worn thin at the knees. Black T-shirt. Black boots, scuffed to hell but solid. I tied my hair back, platinum rope swinging past my waist, and caught my reflection in the cracked mirror by the door.
Six foot one of bad attitude. Good. I’d need it.
The walk to school was a long one in the rain. My boots squelched through mud and gravel. By the ti the brick building ca into view, my hair was plastered to my neck and my mood had curdled into sothing an.
Inside, the hallway slled like cheap floor wax and wet wool. Lockers slamd. Conversations hushed as I passed. I kept my chin up and my eyes forward.
Then a shoulder slamd into mine.
My face t tal with a crack that echoed down the corridor. Pain blood hot above my cheekbone. Sothing warm ran down to my jaw.
I pushed off the locker and turned.
Brock. Of course.
He grinned like he’d won a prize. Broad shoulders, stupid smirk, and Sloane hanging off his arm like a second-rate accessory. Sloane, who used to braid my hair on sleepovers. Sloane, who hadn’t looked in the eye in years.
“Oops,” Brock said. “Didn’t see you there, Fairfax. Hard to miss a giant, though. My bad.”
“Walk away, Brock.”
He stepped closer instead. His fingers ca up and brushed the blood off my cheek, slow, like he was tasting the mont.
“You know,” he said, “I bet you’d do anything for a free lunch. That why your mama still has a roof? Because you’re spreading those long legs for the kitchen staff?”
My hand curled into a fist at my side.
He slapped .
Not hard enough to turn my head. Hard enough to sting.
“Cheap little slut.”
Tara snarled loud enough to rattle my teeth.
I smiled.
Then I brought my forehead down into his nose.
The crunch was gorgeous. Brock yelped, stumbled, and I grabbed the back of his skull and drove his face into the locker. Once. Twice. Blood sared the tal. His knees buckled and I rode him down, kneeing him in the gut, in the jaw, until his eyes rolled white and his body went loose under .
Sobody was screaming. Sloane, probably. The sound barely registered.
“Miss Fairfax!”
I looked up. Principal Brooks stood at the end of the hall, face purple, tie crooked. A crowd had ford.
I wiped blood off my lip with the back of my hand and stood. Brock stayed down.
“He started it,” I said calmly.
“She attacked him!” Sloane shrieked. “Out of nowhere! He didn’t do a thing, I swear—”
“Liar.”
“My office, Fairfax. Now.”
I’d been in Brooks’ office before. Posters about pack pride on the walls. A frad photo of the old Alpha. Cheap chairs.
What I hadn’t expected was the man standing beside his desk.
Three-piece suit. Charcoal. Tailored close to his body. Polished shoes that probably cost more than our trailer.
Beta Hugo.
I stopped in the doorway.
Brooks scurried in behind , already bending at the neck, throat tipped up in that sickening little gesture of submission.
“Beta Hugo, sir, thank you for coming. The girl is, as you can see—”
“Out.”
Brooks blinked. “Sir?”
“Out.”
Brooks left so fast he nearly tripped on the rug.
Hugo turned those cool grey eyes on . I did not tip my chin. I did not lower my gaze. I stared right back.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. Sothing that might’ve been amusent. Or pity. Hard to say.
“Miss Fairfax. My car is out front. Get in it.”
“No.”
“That was not a request.”
“I didn’t hear one,” I said.
He exhaled through his nose. “Alpha’s orders. You can walk out with , or I can carry you. Your choice.”
My stomach dropped an inch. The Alpha wanted . Personally. Over a fistfight.
This is bad, Tara murmured. Elena, this is very bad.
I followed him out.
The car was black, long, and slled like leather. The seats were softer than my mattress. I sat with my knees pressed together and my bloody knuckles hidden in my lap and watched the town scroll past the tinted glass.
The packhouse rose at the end of a tree-lined drive. Stone and glass. Too big. Too clean. Hugo led through doors that hushed shut behind us, down a long hall lined with portraits of dead n I didn’t care about, to a pair of carved red wood doors.
He knocked once.
“Enter.”
The voice rolled through the wood like distant thunder.
Hugo pushed the door open and stepped aside.
I walked in.
The office was vast. Floor-to-ceiling windows. A fireplace big enough to stand in. And behind a desk the size of a small boat, the Alpha.
He didn’t look up at first. He was writing sothing. Slow, neat strokes.
Then he did.
Sharp jaw. Brown hair combed back from a high forehead. A mouth that looked like it had never once smiled kindly. And eyes—green, not soft green, not spring green. The deep green of broken bottles. He was dressed in a crisp, expensive three-piece suit.
The man who’d let us rot out in that trailer. The man who let my mother bleed herself thin on his inflated bills. The ruthless leader who enforced our misery. The man I hated with every cell in my body.
Then his scent hit .
Cedar. Smoke. Sothing dark underneath, warm and male and impossibly right. It poured into my lungs and my knees actually buckled. I grabbed the back of the chair in front of his desk.
Tara lost her mind.
MATE. MATE. MATE MATE MATE—
She was howling, clawing at the inside of my ribs, trying to get out, get closer, get to him.
No. No no no. Not him. Anyone but him.
His pen had stopped moving.
Those green eyes lifted slowly to mine. He’d gone still the way predators go still.
Did he already realize what we were to each other? Was that why he had personally summoned over a simple schoolyard fight?
“Mate,” I whispered in absolute shock.
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