Chapter 1

The Girl Without a Name

My name is Riley. Or at least, that's what my only friend, Emma, decided to call me. My pack never named me. Said I was cursed. Said no mother would claim me, and no father would acknowledge me. I was just "the orphan."

Raised on the edge of the Black Hollow Pack’s territory, I lived in a leaning shack behind the Omega quarters. It was a moldy shed with a sagging roof and a rusted latch that barely kept the door shut. They gave me leftovers—what they scraped off plates and didn’t feed the dogs. I never got training, not officially. When the full moons came, they chained me up in the root cellar of the old barn, as if the cage could hold in something dangerous.

Each day was a routine of humiliation and survival. I woke before dawn, slipping out of the shed and using a cracked mirror nailed to a fence post to comb through my tangled dark hair with a fork I stole. I washed my face in cold water I collected in jars when it rained. My clothes were always secondhand—sometimes third. Thin, torn, and smelling like mildew.

I started the mornings scrubbing the floors of the Omega kitchens. "Move it, mutt," snapped Marlene, the head kitchen attendant, as I dragged a mop across the tiles. She waved a wooden spoon like it was a scepter, ruling over the pantry kingdom.

“Yes, ma’am,” I murmured, keeping my eyes low.

After chores, I walked to the training field with a bucket of dulled wooden swords. I wasn’t allowed to spar, but I cleaned up after the others—sweeping dirt, collecting gear, fetching water.

One morning, Caleb, the Alpha’s son, sneered at me while swinging his blade. “Hey, shadow girl. Make sure you polish this after I’m done.” He tossed the sword at my feet like I was nothing.

I bent down to grab it, forcing my trembling fingers to stay still. “Of course.”

He grinned at the others. “At least she knows her place.”

But even then, I knew. My place wasn’t here. Not really.

Schooling came next. In the dusty old cabin they used as a classroom, we studied pack history, strategy, and power hierarchies. I wasn’t given a desk. I sat cross-legged at the back of the room with a broken chalkboard slate.

Emma always found a way to sit close. Daughter of a healer, she had kindness stitched into her bones.

“Seriously,” she whispered, flipping a page in her textbook. “Does Caleb even know what a treaty is?”

I stifled a laugh. “He thinks it’s a kind of steak.”

“Exactly.”

Instructor Hayes looked up. “Miss Bennett. Miss Riley. Something you’d like to share?”

Emma smiled. “Just a vocabulary lesson, sir.”

After school, most kids gathered in the mess hall, where warm meals and long tables offered a comfort I was never welcome to join. Emma would bring me food wrapped in napkins—an apple, half a sandwich, sometimes cookies she sneaked from the pantry.

“Your mom’s going to catch on,” I warned.

“She already has,” Emma said with a shrug. “She told me not to waste good food. You’re not a waste.”

I looked away, pretending to focus on a squirrel in the bushes.

Evenings were the worst. The pack settled in for the night with fires and laughter. I returned to my shed alone. I lit a stolen candle and read the only book I owned—an old fairy tale Emma gave me, with pages falling out and a spine held together by string. I memorized every word. It was about a lost girl who found her name in the stars.

By the time I was ten, something felt… off. I healed too fast. I didn’t get fevers or bruises like the others. I could hear thoughts if I focused hard enough—emotions, mostly, like waves under the surface. One night, I caught a scent in the woods behind the shed—something ancient and bitter, like snow and smoke.

Emma was brushing my hair when I told her.

“You don’t smell like a wolf,” she said quietly. “Sometimes I think you smell like lightning.”

I blinked. “That’s… weirdly poetic.”

She smirked. “Or maybe you’re just weird.”

At thirteen, the hate sharpened. Caleb started targeting me in public—tripping me in front of elders, calling me ‘shadow freak.’ Others joined in, whispering behind their hands or laughing when I passed.

“You’ll never be one of us,” he told me, pressing a hand to my throat after pushing me against the school wall. “No one wants a mutt like you.”

He wasn’t wrong. But that didn’t make him right.

Then came the lesson that changed everything. Instructor Hayes was reciting the tale of the Great Divide—the story of how the packs were formed after the Curse.

“That’s not true,” I said, too quickly.

His head turned. “Excuse me?”

“There were packs before the Divide. Before the Curse. It’s in the old records… in the archives.”

His eyes narrowed. “How do you know about the archives?”

I didn’t get to answer. He struck me across the cheek.

“Lies,” he hissed.

Caleb stood. “Want me to help silence her, sir?”

He didn’t wait for an answer.

They dragged me outside and tied me to the punishment post.

Emma screamed my name.

And then… something inside me broke open.

There was silver light, heat, screaming—then nothing.

When I woke, the medical cabin smelled like antiseptic and panic. Emma was beside me, clutching a damp cloth.

“Riley,” she whispered, “you exploded.”

“I what?”

“You burned the post to ash. Caleb’s arm is… bad. Really bad. You screamed and everything glowed and—”

I sat up. My skin tingled.

“I think my wolf woke up.”

Emma shook her head. “That wasn’t a wolf. That was something else.”

Rumors spread. People stared. Even Marlene stopped yelling. The Alpha’s gaze turned calculating.

“You need to leave,” Emma told me one night under the stars. “There’s a school. Duskmoor Academy. It’s hidden. Safe.”

“For what? Runaways?”

“For people who don’t fit the mold. Supernaturals. Hybrids. Mystics. It’s protected by the Council. No one from here can touch you once you’re accepted.”

“Do you really think I’d get in?”

She smiled. “I already applied for you.”

“You what?!”

“Used the name I gave you. Riley Bennett. Sent them everything. Your grades, your test scores. Even that essay you wrote about the lost girl and the stars.”

My chest tightened. “You really think they’ll take me?”

“They already did. This came in today.” She pulled a thick envelope from her satchel. Duskmoor Academy. Wax seal. My name in gold lettering.

I stared.

For the first time in my life, I was seen.

“I can’t leave without you,” I whispered.

“You have to. I’ll follow as soon as I can.”

We made a pact. Swore it on the moon.

To escape.

To learn who I really was.

To fight for the life I’d never been allowed to dream of.

Something was awakening in my blood—something not quite wolf, not quite human.

And I was done hiding.