“I have to leave Torma,” I murmured, mostly to myself.

Simone shot me a sympathetic stare, reaching out to grab my hand. She’d heard this from me before, but she didn’t understand how serious I was. I couldn’t do this any longer.

My family line was tainted in Torma.

My legacy, and that of any children I had, all but destroyed.

After decades running with the Torma pack, the Callahan name had been reduced to two shunned wolves: Mera Callahan, an almost-turned shifter, and Lucinda Callahan, a drunken she-wolf who barely remembered she had a family name.

Nothing worth fighting for any longer. Not here at least.

As far as I was concerned, the solstice full moon couldn’t arrive fast enough.

3

The rest of the day passed uneventfully. I was ignored, which allowed me to get to my four classes, hand in all assignments, and even eat lunch in peace. My back and chest stopped hurting after a while, and if it weren’t for the memories of their assault, I’d almost have felt normal.

The violent thoughts tended to linger for longer than the pain.

“You know Victor won’t let you go,” Simone said as we stood outside the school, watching the cars zoom off. The weekly pack meeting was on Mondays, so they’d all be heading out to the alpha’s land soon.

I didn’t bother to answer. It was a circular argument that we’d had many times.

“No one leaves Victor’s pack, Mera! Not permanently. He won’t allow it. I suggest we ask for a vacation away and then just see how long we can take before they order us back.”

I shot her a smile. “He’ll let me go,” I said assuredly, stepping off the path now that the parking lot was clear. Surely, Victor would accept it was better not to have a “tainted” wolf like me in the pack.

“He changed his last name to Wolfe,” she called after me. “He’s an egomaniac who requires control and power over everyone.”

I waved once before setting off, backpack in hand and an ache in my chest. Simone was trying to save me from making a big mistake, I got it, but she hadn’t lived my life.

Sometimes, the harder choice wasn’t really that hard at all.

The heaviness in my body faded as I got closer to the downtown area. I was heading to my afterschool job, the one lifeline I had—and the key to my escape from here.

The town of Torma had about ten thousand shifters, with a bustling main street, where my workplace was located. “Good afternoon, dearie,” Dannie called from the back room as I stepped inside, the bell tinkling above the door.

“Hey, Dan,” I called, dropping my bag in the drawer behind the counter.

Dannie, the wanderer, was a newish recruit into our pack. She’d shown up here ten years ago, just after my father’s murder, and had somehow gotten herself added to our register faster than anyone in pack history. She didn’t have family here, at least none that she admitted to, and was one of the few not to treat me and my mother like lepers.

“Oh, darling, what happened to your chest?” she asked, breezing out with a box in hand, wild, blond curls piled on top of her head. Dannie was of indeterminate age, with only a few lines around her blue eyes. She also fancied herself a bit of a fortuneteller, and even though I wasn’t a believer, the lady often knew things that she shouldn’t have.

Like the fact that I was sporting some tender spots between my breasts, despite new clothing covering the evidence.

“Just Jaxson and Torin putting me in my place,” I said, leaning forward on the counter. “I’m fine, though. It’s only a graze and barely hurts now.”

For a second, her eyes were no longer sky-blue; instead, they were a murky purple that reminded me of potions and midnight-kissed lagoons.

“I’ve traveled to many lands in my lifetime,” she said. “Met more alphas than I could count. Torin is rising among the list of my least favorite, and that’s saying something.”

Turning my head to the door, I double-checked that no pack members were entering. Dannie said shit like this all the time, and in this pack, that sort of “treason” was a highly punishable offense.

Thankfully, to my knowledge, she’d never actually been caught.

“You shouldn’t say that out loud,” I warned, because I cared about her eccentric ass.

She dropped the box, waving me off. “Girlie, I’m not scared of that overgrown fleabag. You should take me up on my offer of putting him in his place the next time he oversteps with you and your ma.”

A nervous chuckle left me, but I didn’t argue with her. She was a harmless, batshit-crazy old shifter. But I loved her because she’d been more like a mother than my own in the last few years. And this job had basically saved my life.

“I’ll get the new order shelved,” I told her, snatching up the pile already unpacked on the bench.

Dannie’s Books was the only bookstore in town, and long before I’d worked in these four walls, I’d been a regular customer. Books had been my saving grace for years. An escape from my mundane, sometimes seriously terrible life. And it was pretty much why I’d been extra-pissed to spend hours reading that stupid story for my school assignment.

Never waste time on bad books. There were too many amazing stories out there waiting to be discovered.

Wandering into the shelves, I breathed deeply, absorbing the incredible and unique smell that only books had. The older books in the “used” section smelled different to the new ones, and despite the chemical undertones that my shifter nose picked up, I loved all the scents. Basically every good memory I had in the past ten years was here. With Dannie, and especially with the books.