Chapter 1
Chapter One
The front glass of the diner didn’t just shatter. It groaned, splintering outward like a cracked tooth as a heavy boot kicked it in.
A fork slipped from a customer’s trembling fingers and rang against the greasy Formica tabletop. I was halfway through wiping down the sticky counter when I froze, my spine snapping straight. The low murmur of midday chatter died, replaced by a collective, suffocating intake of breath. The heavy, musky stench of damp earth and wet pine filled the air, and every human nerve ending in the room shivered with a primal panic.
Wolves.
There were four of them. Big men with bored smirks carved into their faces, moving with the languid, terrifying ease of apex predators slumming it in a petting zoo.
“Dues are late, old man,” the leader drawled, his gravelly voice vibrating through the floorboards.
Everyone in Neseka knew the drill. The Maraura government sat comfortably in the capital, miles away, blind and deaf to a human-majority town tucked deep in the kingdom, and it left wolves like these to tax every counter, shop, and pocketbook under the guise of “security levies.” Security they provided against themselves.
My father, Arthur, stepped out from the kitchen, wiping his hands nervously on a stained dish towel. “Business has been slow this week, Vane,” he said, straining to keep the tremor out of his voice. “Give us until next week. We’ll pay double.”
Vane’s smirk vanished, replaced by a predatory leer. “Or I can collect it right now. Tear this dump apart and call it a day.”
Dad held up a placating hand and tried to reason with him, but Vane wasn’t listening. With a vicious snap of his wrist, the brute shoved him. Dad flew backward, his temple cracking sickeningly against the wooden door frame, and dropped like a stone, completely limp.
“Dad!”
Metal clattered as Toby rushed out from the back, a heavy kitchen knife clutched white-knuckled in his fist. At twenty-five, my brother was a final-year student of human medicine. He spent his days memorizing bone structures and sutures, not fighting. He lunged blindly at Vane with a desperate, sobbing cry.
It was a pathetic attempt. Vane didn’t even have to try. He backhanded Toby’s wrist with casual cruelty, sending the blade skidding across the floor, and two of the other shifters pounced, dragging my brother down into a flurry of heavy, brutal boots and cruel laughter. The remaining customers scrambled over chairs and fled out the back exit into the street.
I didn’t scream. Panic was a luxury I couldn’t afford. My father was bleeding on the floor, my brother was taking a beating, and I knew damn well Dad didn’t have a spare cent to pay them.
I turned on my heel and slipped into the dim, claustrophobic storage room, opposite the kitchen where three steaming pot of water was placed on the iron stockpot. My fingers found the Silver dust I had hidden months away. I had borrowed it on a class trip to a human artillery museum. Our guardian had told us how powerful it had been during the great war and I had slipped back when everyone had left, I told myself it was for just in case I needed it, now was the time I needed it.
By the time I grabbed the stuff and was back into the diner, the shifters were ransacking the register, laughing as glass smashed. Slowly, the laughter turned into ragged coughs.
The smell of the silver dust which I had released from the container, harmless to a human but poisonous to a werewolf’s accelerated biology, crept out of the kitchen like a living thing.
I dashed into the kitchen, my heart hammering into my chest as I grab one of the pots. Through the pass-through window, I could see Vane and his men stumbling now, clutching their throats, their skin flushing a sickly pale grey as nausea took hold of their bloodstreams.
I stepped out of the kitchen, my knuckles white around the handle of the steaming pot.
Vane whipped around, his eyes bloodshot and watering, his features twisted in a snarl. “What… what the hell did you do?” he wheezed, stumbling against a table. “You think hot water scares us? We’re wolves, little girl. We have superspeed…”
“Not right now, you don’t,” I cut in, my voice cold and steady as steel. “Silver dust weakens a wolf’s abilities. It makes you weak. And right now, you’re breathing it in.”
Vane wiped a hand across his sweating brow and blinked through the haze. A cruel, desperate glint returned to his eyes. “So what? There are still four of us, and one of you.” He jerked his chin at the shifter on his left. “Rip her throat out.”
The man lunged. I didn’t flinch. With a sharp twist of my wrists, I hurled the entire pot of boiling water into his face.
A blistering shriek echoed through the diner as he collapsed, clawing frantically at his scalded skin. I spun and sprinted toward the kitchen to grab another pot, but a heavy hand tangled in my hair.
I was yanked backward with brutal force and slammed onto the grease-stained linoleum. Vane stood over me, coughing violently from the silver dust, his eyes wild with humiliation and murderous rage. He dragged me bodily away from the diner threshold, clear of the lingering silver scent which had began to fade, while his groaning companion hauled the scalded shifter along behind them.
“I’m going to skin you alive,” the scalded one swore, staggering to his feet.
I stared up at him, my chest heaving, refusing to let the terror show in my eyes. “Relax,” I spat, my voice dripping with defiant venom. “You’re a wolf. You’ll heal just fine.”
Vane’s lips curled back from his teeth, but it wasn’t a snarl of pain anymore. It was something far worse. His gaze dropped over my body, heavy and predatory in an entirely different way.
“You know what? The old man couldn’t pay his debts. I guess you’ll do as this week’s payment instead.” His mouth twisted. “You’re not bad-looking, for a human.”
“Get off me!” I thrashed wildly and kicked out with my boots, but I was hopelessly outmatched. Vane’s weight was an anchor, pressing the air out of my lungs as his hands ripped crudely at the collar of my shirt.
Just as despair threatened to ice over my veins, a voice cut through the room. It wasn’t loud, but it carried the chilling weight of absolute authority.
“I am sure an unconscious father and a badly beaten brother are quite enough punishment for whatever the fragile human did.”
I froze, my breath catching in my throat, and blinked through the dust toward the shattered front doorway. Vane and his men went still, their hands stalling as they turned, the color draining from faces already pale.
“Rakai Godswood,” Vane whispered, the name dropping like a lead weight, heavy with awe and raw terror. “What… what are you doing here?”
The name burned through the fog of adrenaline. Rakai Godswood. The former Prime Minister’s son. The supposed golden boy of wolf society, who had abandoned his throne.
As he stepped over the threshold, the harsh afternoon light caught him. He was tall, lithe, and impossibly polished, every inch of him screaming the effortless, expensive grace of the capital’s upper echelons. A sharp, aristocratic jawline. Silver-streaked dark hair falling casually over cold, calculating eyes the color of winter storm clouds. The air pressure in the room seemed to drop ten degrees by his presence alone.
Rakai didn’t look at Vane. His cold, clinical gaze was fixed entirely on me, flat and unreadable.
What was he doing here?
