Chapter 1

They dragged me out of the mountains after twenty years.

The people who did it were my biological family, the Winstons. They left me there as a child, a bad omen they had to get rid of. Now, they needed me back for something.

The city, Boston, was a cage of noise and sharp edges. The Winston estate was its gilded center. My father, Mr. Winston, looked at me like I was something he' d scraped off his shoe.

"Uncivilized," he said, his voice cold.

He hired tutors to "discipline" me. They tried to teach me which fork to use. I didn't understand. I didn't care. One night, for using my hands to eat, my father had the head of security hold me down while he struck me with a cane. The pain was a dull, stupid thing. It wasn't like the sharp, honest pain of a fall in the woods.

My mother, a woman who smelled of chemicals and desperation, forced me into dresses that felt like traps. She paraded me in front of her friends, their laughter like the cawing of crows.

"Our little wild child," she'd say, her smile tight.

My younger sister, Chloe, was their perfect daughter. She was beautiful, poised, and her eyes held a special kind of cruelty just for me. One afternoon, she cornered me in the garden.

"You smell like dirt and animals," she sneered, poking my arm with a manicured finger. "Daddy says you belong in a zoo."

Something old and deep inside me snapped. I didn't think. I just moved. My hand shot out, and my nails, untrimmed and hard, left four red lines on her perfect cheek.

She screamed.

The punishment was worse this time. My father said the wildness had to be cleansed. He and the head of security dragged me to the swimming pool, its blue water unnaturally still.

"We will wash the filth away," he said.

They pushed my head under the water. It was cold, burning my lungs. I thrashed, but they were strong. The world went dark at the edges.

Then, a voice cut through the chaos.

"What in God's name are you doing?"

Hands pulled me up. I coughed, water streaming from my nose and mouth, gasping for air on the cold tiles.

A man was standing there, his face a mask of fury directed at my father. He was young, handsome, and wearing a suit that probably cost more than everything my found family owned.

He knelt beside me, wrapping his jacket around my shoulders. It was warm.

"Are you alright?" he asked. His voice was gentle.

I couldn't speak. I just stared at him, my heart hammering against my ribs.

He was Ethan, a lawyer from a family as prominent as the Winstons. He stood up and faced my father.

"This is abuse, Winston. You could go to prison for this."

My father, for the first time since I'd arrived, looked uncertain.

From that day on, Ethan became my savior. He was the only one who didn't look at me with disgust. He defended me, spoke to me softly, and brought me food I could eat with my hands without judgment.

He even convinced my father to let me keep Fang, my coyote, on the estate. Fang was my only link to home, the only family I had known for twenty years. Seeing him in a large, fenced-in run behind the house was the only thing that made this place bearable.

I fell in love with Ethan. I fell hard and fast. He was my rescuer, my soulmate. He asked me to marry him, and I believed I had finally found a place in this civilized world.

Our wedding was a lavish, grotesque affair. Hundreds of people I didn't know watched as I stood in a white dress that felt like a shroud. I just focused on Ethan's face, on the promise of a life with him, away from my family.

That night, in our new home on the Winston estate, he gave me a glass of champagne.

"To us," he said, smiling.

I drank it. It tasted sweet, but a strange heaviness began to spread through my limbs. I felt dizzy, my thoughts turning to mud. I excused myself, needing air.

I stumbled out onto the back terrace, my head spinning. I leaned against the stone wall, trying to clear my vision. Below, near Fang's enclosure, I saw two figures. Ethan and a groundskeeper. Their voices drifted up on the night air.

"Is she out?" the groundskeeper asked.

"The drug is working," Ethan's voice was different. Cold. Empty. "She'll be unconscious soon. Get the cage ready. We need to get the animal to the vet tonight."

"What are we doing with its legs, sir?"

"Break them," Ethan said, without a flicker of emotion. "It needs to look like an accident. A wild animal trying to escape. The vet knows what to do. He'll euthanize it and harvest the organs immediately. Chloe's transplant is scheduled for the morning."

My blood went cold.

"She really loves that mutt," the groundskeeper said.

"I know," Ethan replied, and I heard the disgust in his voice, a disgust I'd heard from my family a thousand times. "It's a filthy, primal thing. Just like her. Do you have any idea what it's been like, pretending to love that... feral creature? But it was worth it. Its organs are strong, wild. The perfect match for Chloe's treatment."

The world tilted. The drug was pulling me down, a heavy, black tide. I fought it, clinging to the cold stone, my mind screaming. Fang. They were going to kill Fang. For Chloe.

I tried to stand, to run, to scream. But my legs wouldn't obey. My vision blurred, the two figures below melting into the darkness. I managed to stay conscious just long enough to see them approach Fang's pen, a cage in their hands.

Then, everything went black.