Chapter 1 The Unwanted Child

Sienna's POV

The rock hit me square in the back.

I stumbled forward, my knee scraping against rough ground. Pain shot through my leg, but I didn't cry out. Crying only made them laugh harder.

"Run faster, wolfless!" Marcus shouted behind me. His friends howled with laughter—real howls that came from real wolves inside them. Wolves I'd never have.

I pushed myself up and kept running. The forest was close. Just a little further.

"She's so slow!" Another voice called out. "My baby sister shifts faster than her!"

More laughter. More rocks. One grazed my ear, and I felt something warm trickle down my neck. Blood. But I couldn't stop. Not yet.

The trees finally swallowed me whole. I ran deeper into the shadows where pack kids weren't supposed to go. Mom always said the deep forest was dangerous, but nothing there scared me more than the kids behind me.

My lungs burned. My legs shook. I collapsed behind a massive oak tree and pressed my back against the bark. My hands trembled as I touched my ear. Red stained my fingers.

"Sienna!" Marcus's voice echoed through the trees, but it sounded farther away now. "You can't hide forever, freak!"

I held my breath. Counted to ten. Then twenty. Then fifty.

Silence.

They'd given up. They always did eventually. I was boring prey—too weak to fight back, too slow to make the chase fun.

I pulled my knees to my chest and finally let the tears come. Hot and angry and painful. I was seven years old, and I already knew I'd never belong. Not here. Not anywhere.

The Shadowcrest Pack valued strength above everything. Strong wolves. Fast wolves. Wolves who could shift before their eighth birthday and hunt before their tenth. I had none of that. The pack doctor said my blood tests showed I was completely human—no werewolf gene at all. A mistake. A defect.

My parents tried to hide their disappointment, but I saw it anyway. Dad stopped teaching me pack history. Mom stopped taking me to pack gatherings. My older brother, James, pretended I didn't exist when his friends were around.

Even at home, I was invisible.

A sound broke through my crying—a small, pained whimper. Not human. Not quite wolf either.

I froze, wiping my eyes quickly. The sound came again, weaker this time. Something was hurt.

Every instinct screamed at me to run back toward home. But something else pulled me forward. Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe it was loneliness recognizing loneliness.

I stood up on shaky legs and followed the sound.

The whimpering grew louder as I pushed through bushes and stepped over fallen branches. My heart pounded. What if it was something dangerous? What if—

I stopped dead.

There, caught in a hunter's trap, was a wolf cub.

Not a werewolf cub in human form. An actual wolf—small and gray with the most unusual silver eyes I'd ever seen. Blood matted its fur around the metal teeth of the trap that crushed its hind leg. The cub looked up at me and whimpered again, too weak to even growl.

"Oh no," I whispered, dropping to my knees beside it. "You're really hurt."

The cub tried to snap at me, but the movement made it cry out in pain. I could see its leg was badly broken. If I left it here, it would die. Wolves didn't survive injuries like this alone. Especially not cubs.

I should get help. I should run back to the pack and tell the adults. They'd know what to do.

But would they help? Would they care about a regular wolf when they barely cared about me?

"I'm not going to hurt you," I said softly, reaching out slowly. "I just want to help. Please let me help."

The cub's silver eyes locked onto mine. For a moment, I forgot how to breathe. Those eyes looked almost human. Almost like they understood me.

Something warm spread through my chest—a feeling I'd never felt before. It was like sunlight breaking through clouds, like the moment right before something important happens.

My hands moved before my brain caught up. I touched the cub's fur, and that warm feeling exploded outward. My palms started glowing—actually glowing—with a soft golden light.

I gasped and tried to pull away, but I couldn't. The light traveled from my hands into the cub's body. The wolf stopped whimpering. Its silver eyes went wide.

The trap's metal teeth loosened. I pulled them apart with strength I shouldn't have, and the cub's leg came free. The broken bone shifted beneath my glowing hands, straightening, healing, becoming whole again.

Then the light vanished. I fell backward, dizzy and confused. My hands looked normal again. No glow. No warmth. Nothing.

What just happened?

The wolf cub stood up on all four legs. Its hind leg—the one that had been shattered seconds ago—worked perfectly. The cub tilted its head, studying me with those impossible silver eyes.

Then it did something that made my heart stop.

It bowed its head. Like a pack member showing respect to an alpha.

"I... I don't understand," I whispered.

The cub stepped closer and pressed its nose against my hand. Its fur was soft and warm. For the first time in my life, I didn't feel alone.

"You should go," I told it, even though I didn't want it to leave. "Find your pack. Be safe."

The cub licked my hand once, then turned and disappeared into the shadows of the forest. I watched until I couldn't see its gray fur anymore.

I sat there in the dirt for a long time, staring at my hands. They looked normal. Small. Weak. Human.

But they'd glowed. They'd healed a broken bone. They'd done something impossible.

The pack said I was nothing special. They said I was broken and useless and weak.

What if they were wrong?

I finally stood up and started walking home. My knee still hurt from falling. My ear still bled from the rock. But something inside me felt different. Bigger. Like I'd just discovered a secret the whole world had been keeping from me.

When I reached the edge of the pack village, I saw Marcus and his friends laughing near the training grounds. They didn't notice me. They never did.

I touched my hands together, trying to make the glow come back. Nothing happened.

Maybe I'd imagined it. Maybe the loneliness had finally made me crazy.

But then I remembered those silver eyes bowing to me. I remembered the warmth spreading through my chest. I remembered feeling powerful.

I walked past Marcus without looking at him. Let him throw his rocks. Let them all laugh. They didn't know what I'd just discovered.

I didn't know what it meant yet either. But I knew one thing for certain:

I wasn't as powerless as they thought.