Chapter One
Lilith’s POV
Pain hammered through my head as if someone were driving a nail into my left temple, pounding it deeper behind my eye with every blow.
I rolled over, trying to escape it, but my stomach lurched first. Acid surged into my throat.
I leaned over the side of the bed and retched, spitting up a mouthful of sour liquid. Gasping, I forced my eyes open.
“Moon Goddess, is this a slum?” I muttered.
The ceiling light was broken. Each time it flickered on, I caught glimpses of yellow water stains on the walls, an overturned cup on the floor, and a depression in the mattress beside me, as though someone had slept there for years.
Where was I?
I had just attended my Luna coronation. The hem of my gown had been trailing across the floor, and everyone had been waiting for me to walk to his side...
Wait. What was a Luna?
I struggled to hold on to the image, but it slipped through my fingers like water. The harder I tried, the worse my head hurt, until I could no longer remember why I had been trying in the first place.
And who was I?
Panic seized me. I groped blindly across the bedside table. A cup. Empty medicine bottles. A crumpled tissue...
My fingertips brushed against a stiff card.
The light flickered on.
A woman’s face was printed on the card. She had long, dark-brown hair, a pale complexion, and a thin old scar at the corner of one eye.
I touched my own eye.
The same scar was there.
Was this me? The woman I remembered being had never looked this haggard, this much like a corpse that had just crawled out of its grave.
A name was printed beside the photograph: Lilith Vayne.
Underneath it was a line of red text, larger than everything else.
TIER-5.
“What the hell is Tier-5?” I stared at the red letters. “Lilith...”
The name rolled easily off my tongue, as if someone had deliberately planted it there, yet it did not feel like mine.
Another name forced its way through the pain.
Lily.
I pressed a hand to my temple, trying to fit the two names together. The pain suddenly intensified, and white light flashed across my vision.
“Open the door!”
Someone kicked the door hard from the other side. Dust trickled from the frame.
“Are you dead?” an old woman shouted. “Lilith Vayne! Are you trying to kill yourself again? Last time you slit your wrists and got blood all over the room! It cost me three hundred credits to have it cleaned. If you’ve died in there this time, I swear—”
I looked down at my wrists.
Several pale pink scars crossed and overlapped on my left wrist. The skin had healed, but the marks remained.
I did not remember them.
Another kick struck the door.
“Did you hear me, you debt-ridden bitch?”
I tried to stand, but my legs were weak. The pain came in increasingly violent waves, as if a hand had reached inside my skull, seized something, and begun twisting.
Through the agony, I saw a man lowering his head toward me. Long golden hair slid from his shoulder and brushed my cheek, tickling my skin.
He gazed at me with olive-green eyes, his focus so complete that it seemed I was the only person left in the world. His fingertips rested against my feverish skin, applying pressure little by little, pushing the pain down.
“Does it still hurt, Lily?”
He spoke slowly and softly, as though afraid of waking me, then waited patiently for my answer.
“...Elias.”
The name slipped from my lips without thought.
My husband. My teacher. My Alpha.
He had taken me from the orphanage to the pack house when I was fifteen. He had taught me to read and taught me how to shift. Whenever my headaches left me writhing on the floor, he had stayed awake all night, holding and soothing me.
I reached for him.
The lock clicked.
I flinched and looked around. I was alone. There was no golden hair, no pair of olive-green eyes, and no warm hand touching me.
Had that been a memory, or a hallucination brought on by the pain?
The door opened.
A short old woman stood in the doorway. Her gray coat was crisply pressed, without a single crease at the cuffs. Behind her loomed a tall man in a black uniform and steel-toed boots polished to a shine.
“Oh, you’re awake.” She glanced at the vomit on the floor with disgust. “I thought I’d have to call someone to collect your body today.”
I opened my mouth.
I wanted to ask who she was, where I was, what had happened yesterday, and where Elias had gone.
Before I could, she raised her wrist and tapped the silver, watchlike device strapped around it. A glowing red number appeared from nowhere, hovering directly in front of me.
I nearly recoiled.
Numbers floating in midair? What kind of witchcraft was this?
“You owe me forty-two hundred credits. You will pay the minimum retention fee by this evening. Otherwise, I’ll be showing the room to new tenants tomorrow afternoon.”
I stared at the glowing number, then at my own wrist. I wore a similar device, though its screen was cracked like a spiderweb.
“Credits...” My voice sounded dry and hoarse. “You mean money?”
She looked at me as if I were a rat that had suddenly learned to speak.
“Money? That’s all people like you understand.” She sneered. “Credits are the only reason stray dogs like you are still allowed under the dome. They’re your oxygen!”
I understood only half of what she was saying.
People had to pay for oxygen? In my memories, wind blew freely through the forest, carrying the scent of pine needles and damp earth. No one had ever paid for it.
“I don’t remember...” I said.
“Don’t try that trick on me!” she snapped. “You said the same thing last time. Then you slit your wrists that night and left blood everywhere. It was disgusting.”
“Mama Kessler, why bother talking to a Tier-5 bitch?”
The man strode into the room, yanked open the bedside drawer, and began throwing its contents out.
Mrs. Kessler called him Dane.
A ring box flashed into view inside the drawer.
My head buzzed.
That belonged to Elias and me!
I lunged forward, grabbed the drawer, and tried to wrench it back.
“Get out! This room is still mine!”
His boot struck my temple.
The world crashed into silence, leaving nothing but white light and a deafening hum.
I had no idea how I fell. By the time my vision returned, my cheek was pressed against the floor. It was cold, and the smell of detergent mingled with mildew filled my nose.
Pain tore through my scalp.
Dane had grabbed my hair. He dragged me out of the room, my knee slamming against the threshold. In the middle of the corridor, he shoved me down onto my knees and held me there by the shoulder.
Doors began opening on both sides.
Some people leaned halfway out. Others raised their wrists and aimed their glowing devices at me.
“What are you so desperate to protect?” Dane bent down. “Do you actually have something valuable in there?”
I stared at his hateful grin, my teeth grinding together.
If I still had my wolf, I would tear him apart.
“Not happy about it, are you?” he scoffed.
Dane seized my wrist and jabbed at the shattered screen. It lit up, projecting a small panel of light with a single word on it.
UNAWAKENED.
He burst out laughing, then turned and shouted down the corridor.
“Fuck, she really is a wolfless Tier-5!”
Laughter erupted all around us.
Dane lowered his head and spat in my face.
“Wolfless bitch.”
The spit ran down my cheekbone.
How could I possibly be wolfless?
My gums began to itch as though something were trying to force its way out. Pain pulsed through my knuckles, and a low growl rose from deep in my throat.
The people around us stepped back, their expressions shifting from shock to wariness.
Energy exploded from my chest. It surged upward, but just before it reached my head, it slammed into something invisible, rebounded, and scattered.
Nothing happened.
I stared blankly at my hands.
Where was my wolf?
It was there. I had felt it clearly only a moment ago.
The corridor erupted with laughter.
Dane laughed loudest. Straightening, he planted the toe of his boot on my shoulder and ground it down.
“Do it again,” he said. “Let us hear your little dog bark. Go on, puppy.”
I bit down hard on my tongue. The taste of rust flooded my mouth, but I kept the second growl trapped inside. My gaze fixed on his throat, on the vein pulsing beneath his skin, as my body instinctively gathered its strength.
I was going to bite through it.
