Episode 1

Chapter 1: The Girl in the Attic

[ SERA ]

The Bloodthorn Pack is the second largest pack in North America, and its packhouse is exactly what you'd expect — a three-story stone building with enough bedrooms to house over a hundred wolves comfortably.

At the very top of that packhouse, past the storage rooms no one bothers with, through a trapdoor that sticks unless you kick it just right, there's an attic. And in that attic, there's a girl.

Her name is Sera. She's nineteen, but you wouldn't guess it. She's small — five-two, wrists you could snap with two fingers, a face that's mostly eyes. That's what happens when your meals depend on whatever the kitchen staff doesn't finish.

Sera is not a member of the Bloodthorn Pack. No initiation, no mind-link, no wolf. She cooks, cleans, scrubs floors, hauls water, and eats scraps. Some days that's cold soup. Some days that's nothing.

Right now, Sera was on her hands and knees scrubbing the third-floor corridor when someone kicked her mop bucket across the hall and dirty water sloshed everywhere.

"You missed a spot."

Delphine. Of course.

"I just did this floor," Sera said without looking up.

"And now it's dirty again. So do it again."

Behind Delphine stood two Omegas who always seemed to show up whenever Delphine needed an audience. And behind them, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, was Remy — Alpha Victor's nephew, seventeen, built like a wall, and the kind of face half the girls in the pack daydreamed about. He was watching the whole thing with zero expression.

Sera wrung out the mop and started over. Not because she was scared. Because she'd learned that arguing just made things worse. Delphine would go cry to someone ranked, and then Sera would be scrubbing bathrooms at midnight.

"You know what I don't get," Delphine said, trailing behind her. "Why Luna Odessa even keeps you around. You can't shift. You don't have a wolf. You can't use mind-link. You're literally just some random baby that showed up and never left."

Sera's hand tightened on the mop. Her mother was a she-wolf named Violet who arrived at Bloodthorn's gates nineteen years ago, sick, dying, carrying a baby. No one knew where she came from. Violet died within weeks. Luna Odessa took the child in — fed her, housed her in the attic with the roaches and the broken window, but housed her. A debt is a debt, and Sera has been repaying it in scrubbed floors and silence ever since.

"My mother brought me here," Sera said.

"Your mother died here," Delphine corrected. "There's a difference."

That one landed. Sera's face didn't change — years of practice — but something behind her ribs tightened.

Delphine noticed. She always noticed.

"Aww. Did that hurt?" She stepped closer. "Let me tell you something, rat. The day Luna Odessa stops feeling sorry for you, you're out. No pack will take a wolf-less girl with no family and no rank. You'd be rogue. You know what happens to rogue females, right?"

She grabbed the front of Sera's shirt and yanked her forward. Sera weighed maybe ninety pounds. Delphine was bigger, stronger, and loving every second.

"They get found by male rogues. And they don't ask nicely."

The two Omegas snickered. Remy said nothing. Did nothing.

Delphine shoved Sera backward and she stumbled but caught herself.

"So when I tell you to mop —" Delphine kicked the bucket one more time. "— you mop the fucking floor."

She turned and snapped her fingers at the two followers. "Let's go. This is depressing."

They walked off. Remy pushed off the wall and followed without looking at Sera as he passed.

Sera stood there, mop in hand, dirty water soaking into the knees of her pants. She picked up the bucket, refilled it at the utility sink, and started mopping again.

She was about halfway through when she heard footsteps behind her. Heavier, alone, no entourage.

"Here."

Sera turned. Remy was back. No Delphine, no audience. Just him, holding out a bread roll.

She looked at the bread. Then at him.

"Why didn't you stop her?"

Something crossed Remy's face — quick, there and gone. He didn't answer.

"Just take it," he said.

Sera took it. She was too hungry to have principles. She hadn't eaten since last night, and that had been a handful of cold rice.

"You need to eat more." He was talking to the wall, not to her. "You're going to pass out carrying those water buckets one day and nobody's going to pick you up."

"Is that concern? From a ranked wolf?"

"Don't push it."

Voices echoed from the stairwell. Other wolves coming up.

The switch was instant. Jaw hard, shoulders squared, the guy who'd just handed her bread gone behind a mask she'd watched him put on a hundred times.

"Clean this up properly," he said, loud enough for whoever was coming. "This floor is a mess." He walked past her without looking back.

Sera ate the bread in small bites, making it last. Trick the stomach into thinking there's more.

Now, about the wolf thing.

Sera doesn't have a wolf, as far as anyone can tell. Never shifted. Never heard a wolf voice in her head. Never felt the mind-link. Her first shift window came and went at fourteen. Nothing.

But she heals too fast. Way too fast.

Last month she sliced her palm open on broken glass — deep, should've needed stitches. She watched the skin close up while she was still washing the blood off. The gash on her knee three weeks ago? Overnight, gone.

That's not normal for a wolf-less girl. Sera doesn't talk about it, but she knows something is in there. Quiet, sealed up, waiting for whatever it's waiting for.

There's another thing Sera doesn't talk about: the blood.

Once a month, Luna Odessa calls Sera down to the medical room in the basement. Small blade, shallow cut on the forearm, blood collected in a glass vial. "Health check," Odessa calls it. Sera sits still, extends her arm, bleeds, and goes back to work. She's never questioned it. Odessa took her in. A debt is a debt.

What Sera doesn't know is that her blood is worth more than she can imagine. But that's a story for later.

After she finished mopping, Sera hauled the bucket up to the attic and collapsed on her pallet. She pulled out a jar from under her blankets — crushed mint mixed with aloe, homemade — and rubbed the paste on her wrists, behind her ears, along her neck.

In a pack where every wolf's scent broadcasts their rank, mood, and emotions like a radio signal, Sera had made herself invisible. If they can't smell you, they forget you exist. If they forget you exist, they leave you alone.

It was the one choice she had.

Through the floorboards, she could hear the packhouse buzzing louder than usual. Servants in the hallway, talking over each other.

"Wait wait wait — Luna Odessa told the kitchen to prep the west wing. The WEST wing. That's for visiting Alphas only."

"I heard it's Ironhowl Pack."

"Shut up. Ironhowl? The biggest pack on the continent Ironhowl?"

"And get this — their Alpha? Twenty-seven, never taken a Luna. Not once. Not ever."

"Oh my God, and Ingrid's being called back from Paris..."

"Girl. Do the math."

Sera pulled the blanket over her shoulders. An Alpha was coming. That meant extra cleaning, extra cooking, extra work for her, same amount of food.

But big visits also meant the kitchen would overproduce. Overproduction meant leftovers. And if she timed it right — got to the kitchen after midnight when no one was around — she could eat twice in one day.

That was worth thinking about. The Alpha of Ironhowl Pack was not.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***