Chapter 1

“When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging and try filling it instead” stared at me in big blocky white letters. I stared at the motivation quote with the backdrop of an early morning beach of some crystalline blue ocean and wondered why I thought tacking that up in my locker was a good idea. I wasn’t even sure it made sense. “Robin Douglass, you are an idiot,” I whispered as I shook my head. That would explain why I’d think tacking up some silly quote would somehow change the insignificance and dullness of my life. 

I put the text books I didn’t need into my locker, hiding most of the idiotic quote from my sight. Just as I closed my locker, I heard a familiar voice. I looked up and my heart raced, just like the first time I saw Shaun Hunter back in kindergarten. 

He was everything an alpha could ever hope for in a son. With his matching chocolate brown eyes and hair, tall but not too tall, strong, but not overly muscular, Shawn was the definition of hot. On top of all that, he was the nicest, friendliest guy you’d ever meet. Shaun was always the first to help anyone in need and made friends wherever he went.

That’s how we became friends. It was the first week of kindergarten and I’d just lost my parents, and little five-year-old me would frequently burst into tears during class. All the other kids avoided me, but not Shaun.

Unlike the others, he’d comfort me or make me laugh. He seemed to know innately which I needed most. We became friends after that, and it should be no surprise that by the time I was ten or eleven, I had the biggest crush on him. Of course, I’d never tell him that. He was the son of an alpha and my parents, while they died in the alpha’s war against the vampires, were simple omegas.

It was that difference in status that caused our friendship to fizzle during middle school. The ever popular alpha’s son no longer had time for the social outcast that was the omega’s daughter. I don’t blame him. It’s the way of the pack. I just wish I didn’t like him as much as I did. I wish I didn’t hold my breath every time I was in the same room, hoping he’d notice me again and most of all, I wish my heart didn’t crack every time he didn’t. 

“God, can you get any more pathetic?”

The condescending voice tore my attention away from Shaun and to my cousin. She stood in front of me, her expression matching the nastiness of her tone, but I didn’t miss the cruel enjoyment in her blue eyes.

“Alisha,” I said flatly, adjusting my backpack. 

“Seriously, though,” Alisha said, a small, sly grin on her face. “You realize how lame you are, right? Shaun would never waste his time on someone like you.” She tucked a piece of her dirty blonde hair behind her ear. She’d dyed it a pale blonde color, but didn’t do it right, so it looked more dirty blonde. I thought it looked cheap, but her friends raved about how cute it was. 

Anger, irritation raced through me, but I knew better to say anything, so instead I stepped to the side to move around her. She moved with me, staying in front of me. “You do realize how lame you are? Right?” Alisha insisted, her grin turning into a smirk.

My heart sped, and I narrowed my eyes at her. “Yeah, Alisha, I do. Do you?”

Her brow furrowed. “What?”

“Do you realize how lame you are?” I said, crossing my arms under my chest. “I mean, I get Shaun will never waste a second on me, but you?” With a scoff, I went in for the kill. “All that…” I waved my hand over her. “All the ‘hey Shaun, how you doing, Shaun’ and he still doesn’t even know your name or asked you how you’re doing back. So tell me, Alisha, do you realize how lame you are?” I knew it was a mistake as soon as I started talking, but I couldn’t help myself. 

Anger replaced her shock as her face twisted. “How dare you! How dare you talk about me like that after you live in my house out of the pity of my mother, even after your parents got my dad killed? So how dare you?”

My anger grew. She didn’t know that. No one knew how my parents or my uncle died, only that they died near the end of the war. It wasn’t fair to him or to me that my aunt or her spawn of evil blamed him. I worked my jaw as I stared at her. In my mind, I pulled back my first and hit her right in that stupid button nose of hers, shutting her up for good. 

My fingers curled in a fist, but I took a deep breath. I shoved the desire to punch my cousin down into the pit of my being before I exhaled and shook my head. “Yeah, so I’ve been told.” 

This time when I moved around her, Alisha didn’t try to stop me, but I felt her glare on the back of my neck. I was going to pay to call her lame. As soon as she got home, she was going to go run crying to Aunt Lauren. Of course, my aunt wouldn’t even ask me about it and instead go straight to the lecture and probably the grounding part. I rolled my eyes and walked outside. The cool bite of fall made me shiver, but the air was fresh and clean and I felt a small weight lift from my shoulders. 

Remembering I was waiting for an email about a job application, I unlocked my phone and checked my email. My heart jumped as I saw the new email from the small general store chain. I opened it and read through it quickly. My stomach sank as if I’d eaten a tone of rocks.

Thank you for your interest in working with us, but at this time all positions have been filled. We’ll keep your resume on file…

My head dropped back against my shoulders as I let out a growl! Damn it! I shoved my phone back into my pocket. This wasn’t fucking fair! No one wanted to hire me because I didn’t have experience, but how the hell was I going to get experience if I didn’t work? Not every seventeen-year-old out there has been working since fifteen or sixteen. This wasn’t fair! I started walking toward the woods. No way was I going home now. I couldn’t deal with my family right now.

What was I going to do?

This was a small town and there weren’t a lot of options. I’d already applied to every store or fast-food joint in town that was in our pack’s territory or neutral ground. No way could I go to a vampire controlled part of town. That was just asking for trouble, and that was the last thing I needed.

What was I going to do? I had to get out of here. Staying in this town with this pack… I couldn’t… I couldn’t live my entire life like an unwanted outcast. My mind raced, trying to think of what I could do as I walked into the small cropping of woods just north of my aunt’s house. With a sigh, I looked up into the trees, my fingers running across the rough bark of the trees. The smell of earth and pine helped ease some of the darkness of my emotions. 

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath when suddenly my next step met nothing but air.

WHAT?

With a gasp, I fell forward. Too shocked to scream, I plummeted like a stone. My breath gushed out of me in a grunt as I hit the damp bottom. 

Great. Perfect. Now, this was a typical perfect day for me. 

The dull throb of pain and shock rendered me paralyzed, so I stared at the earthen wall for a good thirty seconds. I blinked a few times as the pain over took the shock and I groaned. I looked around me and up at the top of what was a ten-foot hole. With another groan, I checked myself for injuries. No injuries, but I felt my backside caked with mud. My aunt was going to give me hell for that one if I lived long enough to get home.

This hole wasn’t just some kind of sinkhole or anything like that. This was a hunter’s trap and just not any kind of hunter, but a fanatical hunter.

Hunters were humans who sought to protect humans from the supernatural and fell into two groups. The guardians who hunted the crazed and murderous supernaturals. Someone like me had nothing to fear from the guardians. Like how actual witches didn’t need to worry about being burned at the stake and all that, but being tied to one was still freaking annoying. 

Staying true to my luck, this hole belonged to the second kind of hunters — Fanatical hunters. They were nothing more than cults that preyed on us supernaturals to fuel their manic beliefs. They enjoyed things like lynching and torture.

If I wanted to live to see my eighteenth birthday, I had to get out of this stupid hole now!