Marked From Birth

"Oh, you worthless, pathetic girl!" The words struck Audrey before the physical blow did. Samantha's hand shoved Audrey's shoulder with the force of a girl who knew she had a wolf's strength brewing in her veins. Audrey stumbled, her knees hitting the cold, polished tile of the main hallway with a sickening thud. Audrey winced, her skin stinging, but she didn't look up immediately. She knew what she would see: Samantha standing tall in a designer silk dress, her glossy dark hair shimmering under the chandelier-a perfect image of a princess, if not for the ugly sneer twisting her lips. "Samantha..." Audrey's voice was a fragile whisper, trembling with twenty-one years of accumulated hurt. "What have I ever done to make you hate me this much?" Samantha scoffed, a sharp, metallic sound that echoed off the high ceilings. She leaned down, her expensive perfume-scented like lilies and cold rain-cloying in Audrey's lungs. "Just your existence is enough," she hissed. "You're a stain on this pack. A good-for-nothing human breathing our air." With a triumphant click of her heels, Samantha turned and walked away, leaving Audrey alone on the floor. Audrey slowly picked herself up, brushing the dust from her simple, faded cotton dress. It was a stark contrast to the opulence of the Moon Shadow Manor. As the firstborn daughter of Alpha Terren, she should have been draped in jewels. Instead, she was the shadow in the corner, the ghost behind the throne. She hurried toward her room, keeping her head down. She didn't want to run into her father. In this house, Alpha Terren was not a protector; he was a storm. Once inside her room-a cramped, bare space tucked into the far corner of the servants' wing-she leaned against the door and let the first tear fall. Her room held nothing but a narrow bed and a single, cracked mirror. It was the only place she felt safe, though "safe" was a generous word for a prison. Audrey's life had been a series of tragedies starting the very second she was born. Her mother, the beautiful Luna Elena, had bled out while holding Audrey for the first and last time. Her father hadn't seen a miracle in his daughter's eyes; he had only seen the reason his world had ended. Grief had festered into a cold, hard hatred that turned his heart to stone. Then came Luna Selene. Selene was a woman of sharp angles and even sharper ambitions. She had married Terren and birthed Samantha, but she lived in the constant shadow of a dead woman. No matter how much she tried to rule the pack, she knew Terren still kept Elena's memory locked in a secret part of his soul. Selene took that insecurity out on Audrey, and she had raised Samantha to do the same. They had tried to "get rid" of Audrey several times-"accidents" in the woods, "forgotten" meals-but somehow, she always survived. It was as if a guardian angel was holding her hand through the dark. The true rejection, however, had come on her eighteenth birthday. In the Moon Shadow Pack, eighteen was the year of the Awakening. It was the night a wolf was supposed to howl for the first time, and unique powers were revealed. Audrey had spent that night sitting on her floor, staring at the moon, waiting for the shift, the heat, the power. It never came. Morning had found her still human. Still weak. Her father's disappointment had turned into a permanent disgust. He stopped calling her by her name. He called her worthless. Then, two years later, Samantha turned eighteen. The house had vibrated with energy that night. Samantha's wolf had awakened with a burst of elemental power, a shimmering blue aura that marked her as special. The pack had roared in celebration. There had been a grand dinner with roasted meats, vintage wines, and music that shook the walls. Audrey hadn't been invited. She had been ordered to stay in her room so she wouldn't "embarrass the bloodline" with her human presence. She had spent that night with a pillow over her ears, weeping until her eyes were so swollen she couldn't see. Now, at twenty-one, she was a servant in her own home. She washed the dishes Samantha soiled, laundered the clothes Selene wore, and cooked meals she wasn't allowed to eat at the table. She was a ghost amongst the living, a girl whose only crime was surviving when her mother didn't. But as the clock ticked toward the midnight hour of her twenty-first birthday, the air in her small room began to change. The shadows seemed to stir. A strange, humming heat began to radiate from her marrow-a heat far more intense than anything she had felt before. The prophecy made twenty-one years ago was about to wake up.