Silvia POV
I yawn as I lean on the the diner counter. Cook bangs down the plates in the open hatch behind me.
"Burgers," he says, then slams the hatch shut as soon as I pick up the plates. He's off for a smoke and a few shots of rum. After a year at this Diner I knows his habits but I don''t know his name. Nor do I care. There have been too many Cooks that I've worked for over the past four years.
I grab the plates and slow-walk over to the table of teenage boys. The burgers are overcooked and stink of old grease.
The boys ogle me as I bring them the plates. I hate the pink uniform. I pull it down, it rides up. Repeat over a full eight-hour shift. I look like a pornographic maid. I cut my hair short and spiked it up like a punk, pierced my nose and eyebrow and painted my nails black to compensate. But the cheap fabric clings like a second skin no matter what I do. It helps with the tips but most nights the few dollars extra I get don't seem worth it.
I remind myself that tomorrow is my day off and I think I sound almost cheerful as I reach the table.
"Eat up, boys," I say, setting the plates down in front of them, trying not to lean over too far. "We close in twenty."
One of them still manages to get his hand on the back of my thigh, nearly at the panty line. My wolf before I can even calm her down. Fer is pure instinct. When she senses danger (all the time), she forces me to react, ready or not. My hand whips around, the boy screams and snatches his own back, staring down in horror as four blood red welts appear on it.
I don't say anything. I've learned to brazen it out when Fer has had her way. After all, she did save my life once. I'm still paying that price.
They're stupid pups anyway.
There are seven of them. Five of them become quiet and start paying a lot of attention to the plates in front of them. One leans against the wall, his eyes unable to focus. He looks pale green and stinks of cheap alcohol. The one nearest me stands. He moves in close, threatening. Or so he thinks. He is tall though and I can tell that he doesn't know his strength. I'm wary.
"Apologise," he says.
I can tell he's acting. Putting on a show for the other boys. Four of them don't look up. One does. He looks much younger than the others. Probably someone's little brother their mom made them bring along. Not the best parenting decision.
He has wide gray-green eyes and round soft cheeks. No hint of any fuzz yet even. My stomach twists with grief as I think of my little brother, Didi. He would be older that this kid now. But in my mind he still looks the way he did five years ago. Funny how that was one of the worst things I had to get used to here; not being able to curl up around Didi when he was having a bad dream. Feeling his soft curls tickle my nose as I whispered happy thoughts to him so that he would go back to sleep. Waking in the morning with a crick in my arm and my neck because I had also happy-thoughtsed myself to sleep.
"Enjoy your meal," I say, and I turn and leave them to it.
In the Wildlands they would have been blindfolded, stripped naked, taken out into the forest, and told to make their way back to the Pack. Survival. That's what these boys needed. A few days and nights out in the cold, dark forest with no moon to guide them. Let them meet their wolves there.
Instead they are boys who want to be men and have no idea how.
They run out as soon as I'm back at the counter, whooping and hollering and thinking they've done something brave and interesting by leaving an unpaid bill. They have also left the table in a mess. Food is strewn across the table, the sugar bowl upset, drinks spilled, salt cellar broken and--I feel the bile rise to my throat--there is vomit under the table. Will this city ever stop assaulting my senses?
I clean it up and pay for the bill out of my own takings. It's not worth fighting Cook over. I'll lose because he can just fire me and replace me with someone else more desperate. Besides, I want to go home, put my feet up, have a cup of tea. And a nice raw steak, adds Fer. I sigh. A wolf has got to eat.
I leave Cook to turn out the lights and clean up his own mess. That's the way Loop City works. No pack rules here. Nobody helps anybody else. You're on your own.
Outside, I take a deep breath of the city air. The stink of the burned burger meat will linger in my nostrils for a while. I stretch out and my back cracks. I look up at the full moon and my skin prickles. I close my eyes as the cold shiver passes like a wave through me. I try to make sure I'm not working the day after a full moon. Full Moons are hard here. I should have found my mate at my Naming. Instead Jedan found me and tried to force me to be his mate. I will never forget the terror I felt that night, his body pressed down on mine. The two of us shifting between wolf and human forms as he clawed and bit at me and I struggled to get out from under him. Suddenly the iron was just there, covering my claws and teeth, making each blow I managed to land on him a lethal one.
The curse that saved my life.
Now I spend Full Moons fighting my own body and instincts. The only thing I can do is to let Fer run the wildness off. I offer a silent greeting to the moon goddess. Remember me, I tell her.
I don't think she does.
Sylvia POVI'm thinking of the moon and how it will feel to run through the moonlight, keeping pace with the others like me--the ones they call Rogue. We never speak. We don't have to. They suffer as I do when it's full moon.The park is silent as I cross it, every leaf and blade of grass coated with the goddess's golden paint. A solitary owl hoots and I sense the tremors within brush and hedge as small creatures seek shelter.The boy takes me by surprise and he shouldn't. IHe jumps out in front of me with a yell. It's the lanky boy with the floppy black hair and pimply face from the diner. The one who acts like the others' Alpha. I sense his humans step out of the shadows. It's like the saddest pack in the world. I decide to name him Alpha-boy.I berate myself for not paying attention. Because now Fer is on high alert and ready for a full transformation. Chill, I mindlink her, This doesn't need to be a big thing. Transf
Sylvia POVI wait. The way we learned as pups. You wait, you use your senses, you make your choice. Only then do you act. You never second guess yourself.(It’s our best and worst trait. Stubborn as mules – try stubborn as werewolves).This was a trained hunter. Has Firewolf sent a hunter to avenge Jedan? Four years after his death? It makes no sense.I slow my heartbeat and still my muscles. Fer, help me, I mindlink my wolf. With her help I extend my senses into the darkness around me. My eyes, aided by Fer’s, adjust minutely to the gloom. There is no movement beyond the rustle of leaves on the trees around me. Suddenly a small creature dashes out from behind a garbage can. My heart pounds at a zillion beats a minute. But I don’t move.You know what to do, Fer whispers to me.She is right. There is only one course of action now. I crouch and I'm already running when feel her take ov
Sylvia POV There have been nearly sixty full moons since I came here. Next month will be Wolf Moon again, making it exactly five years I have been here--and my twenty-first birthday. You would think that the torment would grow familiar. It doesn't. Each time it feels new and different. It's hell. Without a pack, without the binding force of destiny, without a mate, my own body punishes me. The ache is everywhere at once even as my heart yearns for my love, my love, my Vuko. On these nights his name is the heartbeat that drives me through the night along the pathes, through the city streets, onto the highway where I run with the others like me--all of us desperate to outpace our ache, our desire, our hunger, our grief. Before the Cold Moon reaches the horizon and the dawn blushes its way toward day, we stop. My limbs are trembling and my paws leave bloodied tracks as I pad back toward my apartment. The ache is not gone, only dul
Vuko POV I'm yawning so hard my jaw cracks and then, just when I'm mid-yawn, I sneeze because of the dust from the training ground. Anahita thrusts a coffee at me and I've never loved a member of Waterwolf pack more. "Where's your Beta?" she asks, sipping at her coffee while we watch the younger pack members warm up. One of the benefits us Named claim is the right to not warm up properly and stand around drinking coffee while the young ones go through their paces. "Abir?" I say, "Beta Abir is doing whatever the hell he pleases." She looks at me and I know she wants to say more. Anahita is about ten years older than me and a different pack. She's Waterwolf to my Firewolf. But while I had a shitty older brother who would beat me to near death and call it training, she has been the older sister I dreamed of. Silvia would always take me to her first after Jedan had been at me and Silvia would bind my wounds and tell me to be patient because one day I was going to be bigger than Jedan.
Vuko POVHe's big and I haven't seen him before. I glance at Ana but she's transfixed. Her eyes are wide. I'm guessing she hasn't seen him before either.The other Alphas have begun to crowd the field. Among them is Didi's father. He steps forward."You are not Ironwolf," he says.Didi--and Silvia's--father was once an imposing sight. Tall with silver hair, he was the only one who ever stood up to my father. Since Silvia's banishment though, he has become stooped, old.At first I think he is talking to Didi. But he is addressing the giant who will be Didi's champion.Didi answers for his champion. "No, he is not Ironwolf," he says to his father and I'm relieved that there is still respect in his voice. But he is also resolute, "You need to step aside, Dad. This is a new pack. My pack. You have no jurisdiction over us."I'm aware of the murmuring of the crowd at the edge of the field. Didi has just declar
Vuko POV Beta Abir disapppears again for the rest of that afternoon. I feel like an idiot going from pack to pack asking if they've seen my Beta so I give up after a bit. Nobody had seen him but apparently my battle against the champion has gained me some fans. Ana has to rescue me from one waterwolf who is all but sitting in my lap rubbing against me. The waterwolf (Tina? Bettina? Trina?) is really pretty and sweet. I admit that I was enjoying the attention. But mostly I was embarrassed. I'm male, I'm nearly twenty-one and I've been separated from my true love for four years. Can you even imagine how hard that is? Ana has little sympathy. "Your face!" she keeps saying, then bursting into laughter till the tears are running down her face, "Mr I-defeated-a-giant-but-turn-to-jelly-with-the-girls." Not like jelly at all, I want to say, but keep that to myself. As I finish my rounds, with Ana at my side as a sort of female-attenti
"Say that again," I say to Frey, unable to believe my ears. We are standing on the edge of the training field, the sky darkening around us, a chill in the air. I think about Winter coming and Beta Abir's news that Didi is planning an attack on the stores. I shiver. That would mean the destruction of his own family's pack too. Surely not? "I have information about Silvia, where she is," says Frey again. Silvia. For the past four years no one has said her name. Let alone told me where to find her. I have spent every day of the four years tormented by how I wasn't there for her. The night that was meant to be ours. Her Naming Ceremony. We had told each other that our wolves would find each other that night. It would be an early blessing from the Goddess--a confirmation of the destiny we have always believed in. We could not believe that the Goddess would make us wait another five years. We were such fools. So when Beta Abir came to me the afternoon befor
Silvia POVThe wolf looms in the alleyway, his fur almost blue-black. The streetlights behind him tip his dark fur with a glow like fire. He looks like he's just escaped from hell. He stalks closer, his lips drawn back from his mouth in a drooling, growling snarl.Silvia Ironwolf, the hunter mindlinks, You have been avoiding me.That's all the invitation Fer needs. I feel her push at me and I know this is her time. I glance at Luka--all of his attention is on the dark wolf--before the sweet-pain of my shift takes over and then I am Fer, standing with my tail and head held high, my paws planted firmly on the asphalt. She is unafraid. I am unafraid.Or so I tell myself.I do not know you, says Fer and I'm so proud of how fierce and low her voice is, You have terrorized this child. Explain yourself.I have a message for you, says the wolf.They say you see the attack fir