Training to become an elite warrior after her soulmate brutally rejects her, Violet Caldwell meets the king of all wolves-and joins him in his quest for justice on the brink of a surging war.
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There were two things I was absolutely certain as I awoke in the scratchy sheets of my childhood bed:
1. I had been rejected by the soon-to-be Alpha of my pack.
2. I could spend the morning wallowing in self pity and the pain ricocheting through my body from the tremors of exhaustion born from running all night in wolf form the night before last—or I could get out of bed, bathe, dress myself, mop up the tears that continuously trailed down my cheeks, and stand up.
I decided to stand up, even if it was the only thing I could do.
It was five o'clock in the morning, and I was already wanting to crawl back into bed despite having slept all throughout the day yesterday and through the night.
It was like someone had turned the lights off inside of me and all I wanted to do was rage until all the energy left me or sleep until I forgot the world.
"Violet! Get your ass down here now."
I went to the bathroom instead and sloughed off all the grime and dirt and random spots of blood where I must've hunted in wolf form.
The burning stream of water cascaded down on my sore and aching muscles and I sighed out with the first feelings of contentment in the past two days.
"Vi! I'm not playing around."
I blocked out the sounds of my mother's yell, losing myself to the water and the steam as the emotions tried to rise up again and again but I stamped them down, down, down deep into the recessed slices of hurt still stinging and raw from their freshness.
The stomping of my mother's feet assaulted my heightened senses and I knew she was standing before my bedroom door before she could even knock.
"Violet...I heard about what happened, I'm so sorry."
A violent spiral of shame and self-disgust swam around in my gut until I grew nauseous from it all.
Had the wolves who'd been there to witness my rejection already told everyone? Had Jackson?
The thought of everyone in our community knowing about what had happened to me was overwhelmingly humiliating and all at once so completely destructive to my mind that was barely even hanging on by a thread.
I was two seconds away from bounding out of my shower naked down the steps and running away into the forest to live out the rest of my days in animal form when my mother's soft voice spoke again and I could picture her there in my mind.
She'd have a pinched face of sorrow and pity contorting the soft features of her age-addled face, and there would be a dash of worry sprinkled in right there with it.
"Alpha called a mandatory meeting. I'm not sure what it's about but even it would be for the best if you could make it."
