Not sure how many words you want for an excerpt, so here’s the first (short) chapter…

Elvana

You need to disappear. Don’t trust him, Elvi…

My mom’s last words echo in my ears as I stumble down the hallway of the Four Points hotel. As the Night River Luna, she should have been in a pack hospital, floating on a pheromone cloud, not dying alone in a strange bed. My dad told me she was too sick for shifter medicine and was in the best hospice care facility in the country. I’d wanted to fly to her side, but when I’d begged him to let me go to her, he’d said the hospice was on lockdown. Pandemics, vulnerable patients… Only one visitor allowed, and Mom was asking for him.

Motherfucking lying rat bastard!

A wave of rage and grief slams into me, and I stumble into the wall. It makes me look down at my Doc Martens, cherry red and scuffed even before I traded them for a pair of Bally pumps on eBay. I’m dressed in my standard college outfit – skinny jeans, a faded band tee and a khaki bomber jacket – and while I love my look, I wish I’d worn something better. Something more serious, more respectful, so my mom would know at least one person in this fucking world was mourning her right.

I’d been there to hold her hand, to hear her last words, but she could have so easily died alone. I only found her by accident. Paige, her useless-as-fuck assistant, had been acting cagey for days. Even though Mom was meant to be in a hospital in another state, Paige kept finding reasons to hang around our townhouse. Like helping herself to Mom’s designer purses and trying to act like they were gifts. So when I finished class early and found her leaving the house with Mom’s Gucci purse over her shoulder, I followed.

Three. Blocks.

That’s how far away Mom had been for the last weeks of her life. Not in another state, but dying on a strange pillow, surrounded by tourist brochures and a goddamn mini bar.

I collide with the wall again and have to suck in a tight breath. Everything is a lie. Mom told me it all. She and dad weren’t really mates, and she only called herself Luna for my sake. Another alpha had given her away. Handed her over like a box of Cubans to pay off a debt and to keep my dad sweet. My mom had always told me she was a European Old Blood, but she was really the only omega in a nameless pack from Boston. She grew up dirt poor, her family’s only hope when she met the asshole who traded her away.

Lucas Ferrier.

I don’t know much about him, except that he leads the biggest pack on the East Coast next to my dad’s and is based in Boston. He turned up to a few interpack events over the years and he always looked at me with a strange little twinkle in his eye. Like I was the butt of some insider joke.

And I am. A tragic fucking joke.

I stare down at the signet ring my mom pressed into my hand just before she slipped away. It’s her Luna Ring, with a pair of angel wings stamped on the top. She wanted me to have it, whispering that if I didn’t take it, some hotel maid would rip it off her finger in her dying moments. I thought Paige’s purse-snatching was making her paranoid until she told me the truth. The ring is another lie. It’s not a sign of her status in the Dark River Pack, but a symbol of ownership, put on her finger before an alpha traded her away.

“With my death, the contract ends, Elvi. Alpha Ferrier will come for you. You were never part of the deal.”

“Mom, don’t worry about that. I can look after myself…”

“Elvi, this ring proves you are his. Hold on to it and use it when the time is right. It’s the only thing I can give you that’s mine.”

She was so foggy from all the medications scattered on the nightstand, I could barely understand her, but I’ll never forget the lost look in her eyes.

Bouncing off the wall, I scurry towards a potted plant by the elevator. I throw up so violently my knees hit the floor, but I barely feel it. The puke comes out of me in a hot, burning gush. But it’s my tears that hurt more. Wild, feral streams of pain and grief that come straight from my wolf.

Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom…

Fuck. It hurts! I can’t get the image of her lifeless face out of my head, and I bend over my knees until my hair scrapes the carpet. The stink of cheap shampoo and dirty feet burns my wolf’s sensitive nose. Because there’s no way to disguise what this is. A random stop for faceless strangers. And a shitty place to end up dead.

But I have to get a grip. My wolf is high strung at the best of times, but right now she’s a hair away from losing it. She believes Mom was her Luna, and she needs the pack around her to share in her grief. But there’s no pack now. All those shifters who used to look at us so strangely – now it makes sense. I thought we were kept separate to protect us, but we were just two deluded omegas traded away to pay a debt.

I get unsteadily to my feet, my hand scraping against the elevator button. I should go back to the house to arrange the funeral, but I don’t want to leave. I want to stay and protect my mom from greedy maids and grabby Paige…

I pull my phone from my pocket and scroll to one of my few contacts. It’s a new number, and I don’t expect him to answer, but I still shiver as it starts to ring. I’ve called Arben Marku so many times over the years, and he never picks up, but maybe this time he’ll sense how badly I need him. I tap the phone nervously against my ear, but then the ringing stops. No message bank. No recorded voice, telling me to call again. That gaping hole in my chest just grows wider at the endless silence, and I close my eyes, trying to imagine what I would say if he did pick up. Mom’s dead. And dad’s not far behind if I have anything to do with it. Given that Arben is the Dark River Pack’s assassin, the irony should make me laugh. But as I drop the cell back in my purse, rage pulses through me instead.

I always knew Roan Bisha was an asshole, but I’d thought he was our asshole. I’ve seen the way other alphas look at him. They all want to be him – or at least, be firmly on his good side. And the females? He’s good-looking, rich, and arrogant, but there’s something more about my dad. Something that sets him apart in a jungle of predators. An aura, Paige once said, that warns you not to get too close, but makes you desperate to do so at the same time. I’d gagged behind her back, but she’s not wrong about the first part.

My dad is deadly.

But even the most dangerous alphas have to answer to Death.

I rummage in my purse, checking the gun is still there. I can shoot – it was something my mom insisted on. Darryl, her minder, taught me. An ex-military alpha, he looks like a grizzly bear stuffed in a suit. I thought he was taking care of us, but Mom just told me the truth. No one was ever looking out for us. They were working for my dad, which meant looking out for him. Keeping us off his radar, out of the way, the good little omegas who never made waves.

But not anymore.

A fever grips me as I toss the fake Luna Ring in the puddle of puke and slam my hand against the down button. And then I grip the gun like it’s a lifeline.

I’m going to make my dad own up to his bullshit.

And then I’m going to shoot that motherfucker in his lying face.

And if any other asshole – including Lucas Ferrier – gets in my way, I’ll put them in the ground, too.