Chapter 1

The beat of a pulse fills my ears, sandalwood and the smell of fresh rain after a heat wave fill my nose invading my senses, sending me wild. Desperation to find the sauce and sink my canines into his neck to make him mine, to mark my mate. I have no idea who he is, what he is like, not even a name but I don't care because I know I'll love him and he'll love me. I want him, I need him. My mate.

I can feel him calling to me for me to change, to shift as a bead of cold sweat, drips down my bare back. I crouch down, my body naked and as vulnerable as the day I was born, the dry leaves crumble under my bare feet, the wet grass tangling around my fingers. My back arches ready, waiting to shift. Nothing happens.

I feel a hot, steamy breath on my upper back makes me look up and I'm nose to snout with an enormous, spectacularly completely black wolf. Looking into his eyes, they are the bluest I've ever seen, like a waterfall, with white blue flicks in a perfect circular pattern around the pupil. My mate is so beautiful it nearly makes my heart stop.

I hear a deep primal voice in my mind "shift" and I try, I try to do as my mate says but I can't, why can't I shift. My mate huffs his warm breath at me, turns and trots away. " No no no!" I cry out "come back, I can do it, I can shift, wait please, NO!"

I wake up with a fright, bolt up right, panting out of breath, covered in sweat. "No no" whispering to myself, putting my head in my hands.

BANG BANG at my door scaring me for the second time already this morning. 'Fuck off' I think to myself. I look at the clock it 6am. 6am and she's hoovering the fucking hallway, banging the bloody machine into my bedroom door and she calls me selfish the stupid cow. I flop back on the bed, that dream again or is it a nightmare, either way it's been a reoccurring dream since I turned eighteen a few months ago, it's bad either I can't shift in really life but not even in my dreams are you fucking kidding me.

Because of my father's status it was important that I shifted as soon as I turned eighteen but I couldn't seem to do it. I'd start to, my bones would start to break and organs shift, but I'd get so far and then it's stopped, no reason, no explanation. Would just stop. This was very embarrassing for me but more for my father. His oldest and only child from his true mate, his heir, struggling to simply shift.

My stepmother on the other hand, she found it delightfully amusing, not in front of my father of course, no no, but when we were alone she'd let her thoughts and feelings about me be known. Painfully.

Father married the first one not even a year after my mother was gone. This step cow is the forth or fifth one I think. Can't be bothered to keep count anymore. They are all the same in the end. They act all nicey nice to me until the ring is on the finger and the "I do's" are said, then it's Cinderella and evil stepmother. But this one, she is the worst, at least the others didn't abuse me, not like she does.

Bruises and cuts heal but the mental games are harder to recover from.

It's hard to cope, especially when she's in one of her moods, which seems to be all the time lately.

It probably doesn't help that I've come of age and she feels threatened on a primal level. Fuck knows why though it's not like I can shift yet.

I sigh, closing my eyes. Maybe I can drift off until my alarm goes off in an hour. Who hooves at 6 in the fucking morning.