Chapter 1
SIENNA
I have never known what normal is.
Not since I was a child. Not since the world I should’ve belonged to rejected me like a faulty organ. And certainly not now—on my knees in the pack house, scrubbing the floors until my shoulders shake and the scent of harsh pine cleaner burns my nose.
The brush digs into my palm through the layered gloves I’m forced to wear, scraping against the wooden boards like a tiny animal trying to claw its way out of a trap. The floor shines under my effort, gleaming in the afternoon light that filters through the windows… a light that never seems to reach me.
Normal. I roll the word around in my head, the shape of it jagged, unfamiliar. Something other people get to experience. Something soft. Something warm. Something that doesn’t involve being treated like a live grenade someone forgot how to disarm.
Ever since I was younger, this has been my life. My fear. My reality. No parents. No family. Just me.
Sienna Avery.
Though no one calls me that.
To them, I’m Sin.
The bringer of death. A curse given a girl’s name. A ghost wandering halls that should have been filled with laughter and the kind of chaos-only-family-can-make. They whisper the nickname when they think I’m not listening—Sin—sharp and cruel, like the point of a spear pressed against a throat.
The girl who killed her parents with just a touch.
They say it with morbid fascination. With fear. With disgust. I’ve heard every version of the story. It doesn’t matter that I don’t remember any of it. It doesn’t matter that the memory of my parents is a foggy smear at the edges of my mind. The pack decided the truth for me long ago.
Elsa, but death instead of ice.
Kids used to say that. Their giggles echo in my memory, the way children find amusement in the monstrous because they don’t understand real danger yet. I never corrected them. Never fought back. What was the point?
Fear is louder than truth. Fear sticks.
Now, almost all of my skin is covered. My entire body wrapped in layers upon layers of fabric. The Alpha made sure of that. He wrapped me in blankets when I was small—too small to understand the difference between being protected and being hidden. Between being cared for and being contained.
It was for the pack’s safety, he’d said.
But what about mine?
Even now, as a teenager, the rules remain the same: gloves at all times. Long sleeves. Thick leggings beneath floor-length skirts. High collars. No exposed skin except my face, and even then, people keep a careful distance, like my very breath might poison them.
Learning that anyone who touches my skin either gets really sick… or fully dies… tends to make people cautious.
I don’t blame them. I don’t like this either.
I wish it were different. I wish I could control whatever monstrosity this is. I wish I knew how powerful I truly was—or if I’m even powerful at all. Maybe I’m simply cursed. Maybe the Moon Goddess made me wrong.
Maybe I was never meant to exist.
Instead, I scrub these floors until they shine enough to catch the eye of any patrol wolf walking past. My sweat gathers beneath all the fabric, a suffocating heat that makes my vision swim. The gloves cling to my hands like second skin, sticky and damp.
I’m scrubbing like my life depends on it. Like an omega. But I’m not one. Not by blood. Not by status. Only by circumstance.
I know I could leave whenever I wanted to. The pack house isn’t a prison with bars—it’s a prison built out of fear, silence, and the invisible line no one wants me to cross. But I could cross it. I know I could.
I know I could get revenge on every wolf here. On every person who has avoided me, whispered about me, treated me like a living toxin.
But want is different from ability. And ability is different from choice.
And I’m more afraid of what would happen out there than what happens in here.
Out there, I don’t know where to go. Don’t know what waits for me. Don’t know who I might hurt by accident. The world outside the pack territory is enormous and unpredictable. If I can’t control what’s inside me here—within the walls I’ve known my whole life—why would I risk unleashing it anywhere else?
At least the pack house contains the damage. Contains me.
At least here, they know what I am.
Or think they do.
—
It’s my birthday.
The thought drifts into my mind sometime around sunset, when I’m rinsing out a mop in the utility sink. Sixteen. The age wolves come alive. The age their other halves—their true selves—wake beneath the full moon.
The pack has been preparing all week. Decorations. A feast. A ceremony. A celebration.
My celebration.
Or it would be, if anyone actually wanted me there.
Still, sixteen is a turning point. Even for me. Even for Sin.
The problem is…
It won’t be my first shift tonight.
It won’t even be my second.
It will be the first one they see, but not the actual beginning.
Because I shifted three years ago. Thirteen. Too young. Too early.
Too wrong.
I remember it with agonizing clarity.
It had been an ordinary winter night, the kind where the wind rattled the windows and the pack house smelled like stew and pine smoke. I’d been alone in the laundry room, folding linens with gloved hands, humming quietly so the silence didn’t crush me.
Then it hit. A spike of pain so sharp it knocked the air from my lungs. Bones cracking. Skin burning. Veins flooding with something fierce, ancient, and hungry.
I collapsed. Convulsed. Fell into darkness.
And when the darkness peeled back— When my eyes opened— I wasn’t looking out of human eyes anymore.
I saw everything in shades of shadow and gold, the way a predator does. I felt my wolf’s mind press against mine for the first time. Her voice was a whisper of thunder.
Azriel, she introduced herself. I am Azriel, born too soon, born wrong, born for you.
Azzy.
My wolf.
My powerful, terrifying, beautiful wolf.
I only held the form for minutes—maybe less—but when I forced myself to shift back, shaking and terrified and drenched in sweat, something happened.
Something catastrophic.
A sickness spread through the pack. It started the next morning. Wolves waking with fevers. Coughing. Shaking. Collapsing.
A flu, the healers said. Aggressive. Fast. Unexplainable.
It tore through the pack like wildfire. Half the wolves fell ill. Children. Elders. Betas. Omegas. Warriors.
Some were bedridden for days. Others for weeks. One, the Beta’s son, coughed so violently he cracked a rib.
And I knew.
I knew it was me. My shift. My power. Azzy’s awakening.
Death didn’t come, thank the Goddess. No one died from it.
But the pack’s strength crumbled. Half their warriors unable to even stand. The Alpha furious and paranoid. The healers baffled and frightened.
All because of me.
So I hid the truth. Locked it away with iron will and trembling hands.
No one can ever know I shifted early. No one can know the sickness was mine.
If they knew…
I don’t let myself finish that thought.
I can’t.
—
Azzy stirs inside me as I wring out the mop, her voice coiling around my consciousness like smoke.
It’s time, she murmurs. Tonight, they’ll see us.
My stomach drops.
“No.” I brace my hands on the edge of the sink. “No, Azzy. They can’t.”
You can’t hide me forever.
“I have to.”
You smother me. Her growl is low, wounded. You lock me away. You fear me—your own shadow.
“I fear hurting people,” I whisper sharply.
They hurt you every day.
“That’s not the same.”
Isn't it?
I swallow hard because I don’t have an answer.
She’s right about one thing: the gloves I wear inside my mind are just as suffocating as the ones on my hands.
I cover everything. Suppress everything. Smother everything.
Especially her.
And she’s restless tonight. Agitated. Awake.
The moon is rising.
—
Preparation hums through the pack house like electricity.
Laughter. Voices. Footsteps pounding up and down the halls. Teens gossiping excitedly about who will shift soon, who might be a late bloomer, who might surprise everyone.
I’m not a surprise. I’m an expectation.
The cursed girl must become a cursed wolf.
The Alpha knocks on my door with a gloved hand—one he reserves specifically for dealing with me. He stands a safe distance away, eyes sharp, expression unreadable.
“You will join us in the clearing,” he says simply. “Half an hour.”
“I know.”
He hesitates. “Try to remain calm.”
Calm.
As if calm is an option.
I nod anyway. He leaves.
I sit on my narrow bed, hands trembling in my lap. My tiny room feels even smaller tonight, like the walls are closing in.
I stare at my reflection in the cracked mirror.
Brown eyes too wide. Midnight-black hair braided tightly, tucked away. Gloved hands curled into fists. A body wrapped in layers, hiding every inch of lethal skin.
I look like a ghost of a girl. Not living. Not dead. Somewhere horribly in between.
Azzy’s voice softens, brushing against my mind like a touch I can’t feel through the gloves. You are stronger than this.
“I’m trying.”
No. You’re not. You’re surviving. And that is not the same as living.
My throat tightens.
Outside, the first howl echoes through the trees— A summoning. A beginning.
My beginning.
The one I never got to have three years ago.
I stand slowly. My legs feel too thin. My lungs too tight.
I walk to the doorway. My hand hovers over the knob.
Azzy hums, hungry and gentle all at once. Let them see who we are.
“I can’t hurt them,” I whisper. “Not again.”
We did not kill them. She reminds me softly. They lived. They recovered. We brought illness, not death.
“That’s not comforting.”
It should be. Death is easy. Sickness is a warning, a whisper. A beginning.
A beginning.
Not an ending.
Maybe she’s right.
Maybe I’m not a bringer of death.
Maybe I’m something else. Something unseen. Something unknown.
But I don’t have time to unravel it now.
The pack is waiting. The moon is rising. And I can feel Azzy pacing inside me, claws dragging across the edges of my soul. Excited. Impatient. Desperate to breathe.
I grip the door handle.
“Tonight,” I whisper, “I either prove I belong—”
Azzy finishes for me.
—or you finally become what you were always meant to be.
I open the door.
And step into the night.
