ry

and pressed my back against the attic door as those

h a sharp clicking sound, but the heavy deadbo

n't that fat

ice filtered clearly through the thin

-out sigh of my stepmother, Demetra Gross, the woman w

e your time, that usele

rame, my heart hammering against my ribs as my finger

bane soup I brew for her every day, her precious

eped through the wood, followed i

the Holder family could be turned into a spotty, bloa

ning, my knees buckling so hard I nearl

dormant wolf and deformed body weren't natural defects at all-they were t

il I tasted copper, forcing the choking rage dow

rd the other hallways did my legs give out completam

et in the corner, I yanked out the clay jar of her

w and poured the thick black sludge straight into the gutter outside,

cked mirror, I breathed in the lingering cedar scent

ate mother's tattered herbal journal, flipping through the yello

slow, gluttonous fool during the day, secretly dumping

rriors to slip across the Pack border, crawling through the damp und

n, the moon's peak power triggered a violent backlash f

between sixteen and eighteen, enduring the agony of every b

ess as my spineand ribs popped with sickening cracks, the pain

uffle my screams as foul, black, poisoned blood oozed

in that forgotten attic, the memory of that dark suite and t

s and forced my shattering bones to fuse back to

eceded like a tide, leaving me drenched in sweat a

the oversized clothes that used to strain agai

d a full year of hellish detoxification that carve

I stood in front of the dusty full-length mirror and w

ng woman with snow-white skin, a waist I could span wit

of my tailbone, where the crescent-moon birthmark-the royal sy

strength, and the rightful pride

meone forcefully projected a Mind-Link into my head-a telepathi

n to the front

y skull, and I curled my lip, severing our mental

ok, I threw it over my frame and pulled the hood low

r over a decade, I walked out of the attic and he