Chapter One: Loop City

Silvia POV

I yawn as I lean on the the diner counter. Cook bangs down the plates in the open hatch behind me.

"Burgers," he says, then slams the hatch shut as soon as I pick up the plates. He's off for a smoke and a few shots of rum. After a year at this Diner I knows his habits but I don''t know his name. Nor do I care. There have been too many Cooks that I've worked for over the past four years.

I grab the plates and slow-walk over to the table of teenage boys. The burgers are overcooked and stink of old grease.

The boys ogle me as I bring them the plates. I hate the pink uniform. I pull it down, it rides up. Repeat over a full eight-hour shift. I look like a pornographic maid. I cut my hair short and spiked it up like a punk, pierced my nose and eyebrow and painted my nails black to compensate. But the cheap fabric clings like a second skin no matter what I do. It helps with the tips but most nights the few dollars extra I get don't seem worth it.

I remind myself that tomorrow is my day off and I think I sound almost cheerful as I reach the table.

"Eat up, boys," I say, setting the plates down in front of them, trying not to lean over too far. "We close in twenty."

One of them still manages to get his hand on the back of my thigh, nearly at the panty line. My wolf before I can even calm her down. Fer is pure instinct. When she senses danger (all the time), she forces me to react, ready or not. My hand whips around, the boy screams and snatches his own back, staring down in horror as four blood red welts appear on it.

I don't say anything. I've learned to brazen it out when Fer has had her way. After all, she did save my life once. I'm still paying that price.

They're stupid pups anyway.

There are seven of them. Five of them become quiet and start paying a lot of attention to the plates in front of them. One leans against the wall, his eyes unable to focus. He looks pale green and stinks of cheap alcohol. The one nearest me stands. He moves in close, threatening. Or so he thinks. He is tall though and I can tell that he doesn't know his strength. I'm wary.

"Apologise," he says.

I can tell he's acting. Putting on a show for the other boys. Four of them don't look up. One does. He looks much younger than the others. Probably someone's little brother their mom made them bring along. Not the best parenting decision.

He has wide gray-green eyes and round soft cheeks. No hint of any fuzz yet even. My stomach twists with grief as I think of my little brother, Didi. He would be older that this kid now. But in  my mind he still looks the way he did five years ago. Funny how that was one of the worst things I had to get used to here; not being able to curl up around Didi when he was having a bad dream. Feeling his soft curls tickle my nose as I whispered happy thoughts to him so that he would go back to sleep. Waking in the morning with a crick in my arm and my neck because I had also happy-thoughtsed myself to sleep.

"Enjoy your meal," I say, and I turn and leave them to it.

In the Wildlands they would have been blindfolded, stripped naked, taken out into the forest, and told to make their way back to the Pack. Survival. That's what these boys needed. A few days and nights out in the cold, dark forest with no moon to guide them. Let them meet their wolves there.

Instead they are boys who want to be men and have no idea how.

They run out as soon as I'm back at the counter, whooping and hollering and thinking they've done something brave and interesting by leaving an unpaid bill. They have also left the table in a mess. Food is strewn across the table, the sugar bowl upset, drinks spilled, salt cellar broken and--I feel the bile rise to my throat--there is vomit under the table. Will this city ever stop assaulting my senses?

I clean it up and pay for the bill out of my own takings. It's not worth fighting Cook over. I'll lose because he can just fire me and replace me with someone else more desperate. Besides, I want to go home, put my feet up, have a cup of tea. And a nice raw steak, adds Fer. I sigh. A wolf has got to eat.

I leave Cook to turn out the lights and clean up his own mess. That's the way Loop City works. No pack rules here. Nobody helps anybody else. You're on your own.

Outside, I take a deep breath of the city air. The stink of the burned burger meat will linger in my nostrils for a while. I stretch out and my back cracks. I look up at the full moon and my skin prickles. I close my eyes as the cold shiver passes like a wave through me. I try to make sure I'm not working the day after a full moon. Full Moons are hard here. I should have found my mate at my Naming. Instead Jedan found me and tried to force me to be his mate. I will never forget the terror I felt that night, his body pressed down on mine. The two of us shifting between wolf and human forms as he clawed and bit at me and I struggled to get out from under him. Suddenly the iron was just there, covering my claws and teeth, making each blow I managed to land on him a lethal one.

The curse that saved my life.

Now I spend Full Moons fighting my own body and instincts. The only thing I can do is to let Fer run the wildness off. I offer a silent greeting to the moon goddess. Remember me, I tell her.

I don't think she does.