The site seems to be having some proxy issues and of course their previous sites don't have any way to contact admins. The site houses many of the novels that now have bad links due to their moving to an alternate site.
I was the bastard kid my aunt couldn't stand for eighteen years. Then one day, the new transfer twins cornered me in the school hallway — one of them holding my necklace between his fingers.
"Princess. We're taking you home."
"...sorry? What?"
"You're the missing granddaughter of billionaire Wolfhart. And we're your fiancés."
Wait… Wolfhart? THE Wolfhart — the million-dollar reward on TV?
And… did their eyes just flash gold? Humans can't do that… right?
My family wouldn't remember that tomorrow was my eighteenth birthday.
Or maybe they would. They just wouldn't care.
I woke at six in the basement. I had a list in my head before my feet touched the floor. Sweep, mop, laundry, breakfast. All of it finished before Aunt Margot and Darcy came downstairs.
That was the rule. Not a spoken rule — just what happened when you lived in someone else's house and they wanted to forget you existed.
Eighteen years ago, my father vanished. According to Aunt Margot, he was the kind of man who ran. He abandoned my pregnant mother without looking back. She d*ed bringing me into the world, and Margot collected what was left: the insurance payout, the monthly foster stipend, and me.
The money she wanted. Me, she tolerated.
The basement was mine because no one else wanted it. A bed with a rusted frame, a desk I'd dragged home from a yard sale for three dollars, and a closet full of clothes my aunt and cousin had thrown out.
"Not everyone would take in a bastard," Margot liked to say. She never whispered the word. She said it the way you'd say a fact about the weather — flat, obvious, settled.
By seven, I had the table set. Eggs scrambled, toast cut diagonally the way Margot demanded, orange juice poured into her tall glass. Margot came into the kitchen without looking at me. Picked up the remote. Turned on the TV and dropped into her chair like the house was her throne room and I was something that came with the furniture.
I rinsed the pan and listened.
"...billionaire Magnus Wolfhart has intensified his search for his long-lost granddaughter." The anchor's voice was bright with the thrill of someone else's tragedy. "Eighteen years ago, Wolfhart's only son passed away under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind a daughter. Wolfhart is offering a one-million-dollar reward for any information leading to the discovery of his granddaughter."
"Don't even think about it."
Aunt Margot's voice cut across the kitchen. She was watching me over the rim of her mug.
"I wasn't—"
"You were staring at that screen with your mouth open." She set the mug down hard. "Let me save you the embarrassment, Thea. You are not some billionaire's lost princess. You're a bastard who can barely keep her grades up."
My grades were a 3.8 GPA. I didn't correct her.
"And don't think I'm paying for college," she added. "I've fed you and housed you for eighteen years. That's more than you deserved."
"She probably can't even get in anywhere." Darcy examined a piece of toast like it had personally offended her. She looked me over — up and down, slow and satisfied. Her new blouse. My threadbare flannel. "No offense."
My grip tightened on the skillet handle.
"I'm applying to Veritas University," I said.
Darcy laughed. The sound bounced off the kitchen tiles. "Veritas? Nobody from our school has gotten into Veritas in, like, ten years."
Then I'll be the first.
Veritas sat on the other side of the country. Three thousand miles from this kitchen. Three thousand miles from the basement, the hand-me-downs, and the woman who called me a bastard when she thought I couldn't hear.
Six months until graduation. I just had to last six more months.
I grabbed my bag and walked out the front door before Margot could add anything else.
At school, the billionaire's face was everywhere. Missing-person posters with WOLFHART REWARD printed in red ink were stapled to every bulletin board, taped inside the bathroom stalls, slapped onto the vending machine outside the cafeteria.
Juno was already grinning when she found me. My best friend since second grade. She knew about the basement. She knew about Margot, about the hand-me-downs. Some mornings she left granola bars in my locker when she thought I wasn't looking.
"Happy birthday, Thea." She threw her arms around me in the hallway.
"Tomorrow, technically. But thank you."
"Birthday wish. Go."
I pointed at one of the Wolfhart flyers. "I wish you were his granddaughter. Then you could collect the reward and give me ten thousand dollars. That's all I need for tuition."
"Ten thousand? Out of a million?" She pressed a hand to her heart. "You are the cheapest best friend on the planet."
Then she stopped walking. Her eyebrows pulled together.
"Hold on. Wolfhart's son. He d*ed eighteen years ago."
"That's what the news said."
"Your dad vanished eighteen years ago."
I looked at her.
"Same year, Thea." She grabbed my arm. "The exact same year."
I didn't take it seriously. If my father had really been a billionaire's son, Margot would have dragged me to the Wolfhart doorstep years ago with a DNA test and her hand out.
Before Juno could push it, a wave of screams rolled down the hallway. The kind that came from the throats of girls who'd spotted something worth screaming about.
Two boys were walking through the crowd like it parted for them on instinct.
The one in front had pale hair and a jaw that looked like it had never relaxed. He didn't glance at anyone — just walked, shoulders straight as a blade, staring past every face like the hallway was empty. The one behind him had dark hair and a lazy grin, tossing a casual wave at every girl who caught his eye.
They didn't belong here. Their clothes were too clean, their shoes too polished. Everything about them said a different life.
"The Solvane twins," Juno whispered. "The intimidating one is Soren. The charming one is Ash. They're the ones who put up all the Wolfhart reward posters."
"Why would rich kids transfer to a public school just to find someone?"
"Who cares why? They're throwing a party tonight. Every girl in school is invited." She grabbed my elbow. "They're trying to see if the princess might be one of us."
I have a shift at the diner."
"Skip it."
"Juno, I need that money."
She chewed her lower lip. Then played her real card.
"Vesper's going to be there."
Vesper Aldric. Three years of watching him across the cafeteria, the library, the quad. I'd spoken to him exactly zero times.
"When are you ever going to see him at a party?" Juno pressed. "It's your birthday, Thea. At midnight you turn eighteen. Do you really want to spend it scrubbing plates at the diner?"
"I don't have anything to wear."
From her bag she pulled out a bundle of tissue paper. A dress — short, black, thin straps, a hemline I'd never been brave enough to attempt.
"Happy birthday. I'm not letting you turn eighteen in Margot's castoffs."
I ran my thumb along the hem. The fabric was soft. New. The tag was still attached — she'd probably saved up for weeks.
Nobody had ever bought me something new before.
The party was at an off-campus house, and it was packed.
I tugged at the neckline for the fourth time. The straps sat too low on my shoulders, the hem barely hit mid-thigh, and I was sure everyone could see the outline of everything. I felt like I was borrowing someone else's life.
Then I saw him. Across the room — tall, dark-haired, that straight-backed posture I'd spent three years memorizing. Vesper.
My stomach flipped. Before I could talk myself out of it, I was already crossing the room.
I tapped his shoulder. "Hey—"
He turned. Wrong face. Same height and build, but his smile was lazy and knowing — the expression of someone who understood exactly what he looked like and enjoyed the effect.
"Well, hello." His fingers caught a strand of my hair and lifted it from my face, slow, like he was unwrapping something. "I'm Ash. Ash Solvane." His voice dropped. "I hope you won't mistake me for somebody else a second time."
The twin. Up close, his jaw was wider than Vesper's, his eyes warmer. He was good-looking. I hated that I noticed.
My face burned. I opened my mouth —
"Don't waste time here." Soren appeared beside his brother. Side by side, the twins shared the same sharp cheekbones, the same height. Soren paler, Ash darker.
But their eyes.
From across the hallway this morning, I'd assumed amber. Up close, the color was something else entirely.
Gold. Pure, bright gold, like coins catching sunlight.
I stared. I couldn't help it. I kept waiting for the party lights to shift and reveal that it was just the amber glow playing tricks, but the color held — vivid, sharp, impossible.
Do humans even have gold eyes?
Soren caught me looking. His gaze snapped to mine. Something flickered — surprise, maybe, or recognition. He stepped toward me. I stepped back, but not fast enough.
His hand moved to my collarbone, and his fingers slipped beneath the neckline of my dress.
I froze.
Two fingers hooked something from beneath my neckline and pulled it free. My necklace. The small wolf fang pendant, yellowed with age, swinging between us on its thin chain.
"Where did you get this?"
His voice was flat. His eyes were not.
I snatched the necklace back. The cord dug into my neck before it came free, and I stumbled two steps away, pressing the tooth flat against my chest.
"I found it in a junk pile. It's worthless."
That was a lie. The necklace was the only thing my father ever left behind. Not a letter, not a name. Just a tooth on a leather string, so cheap that Margot hadn't even bothered to sell it. She'd tossed it in a garbage bag when I was five. I'd climbed out of my basement bed in the dark and dug through old clothes until my fingers closed around the cord.
For years I wore it because I thought it connected me to him. But I was eighteen now, and I knew better. The man who'd left this necklace was a stranger who hadn't bothered to stay. I kept wearing it anyway. Not for him. For me. A reminder that no one was coming, so I'd better keep walking on my own.
Soren studied me for a long second, his gold eyes flat and unreadable. Then he turned away like I'd stopped existing.
Neither of them looked back.
Juno pulled me onto the dance floor and we danced badly and loudly to songs I didn't know. For a while I forgot about the basement, about Margot, about the necklace and the stranger with gold eyes. I was just a girl at a party, in a dress somebody loved her enough to buy.
Then the clock hit midnight.
Juno grabbed both my hands and squeezed. The bass swallowed everything, so she leaned in close and said it right against my ear.
"Happy eighteen, Thea."
My throat tightened. Standing there in the middle of all that noise and cheap colored light, holding on to the one person who had never let me down — I felt happy. Just happy.
Then my skin caught fire.
It started in my chest — a low heat that spread outward through my ribs and into my arms. My fingers trembled.
"Thea? You're really warm. Are you okay?"
"Fine. Too crowded. I just need air."
I pushed into the hallway. The party thinned here — fewer bodies, cooler air. It should have helped. It didn't. My legs didn't feel right — loose and slow, like the signal from my brain was arriving a half-second late.
Then the noise h*t me.
Every voice sharpened. Every laugh, every clink of a glass, every bass note punched into my skull at full volume. I pressed my palms over my ears but it didn't help. I could hear someone whispering two rooms away. I could hear ice rattling in a cup across the house.
I kept walking. My shoe caught on something and I pitched forward.
I h*t something solid and cold.
Hands caught me before I reached the floor. One gripped my arm, the other pressed against my upper back. The chest I'd crashed into was wide and rigid, and the person behind it didn't budge. Not even a step.
Soren looked down at me. His gold eyes narrowed, but something was different now. He wasn't annoyed. He was paying attention.
He didn't let go. His grip shifted from my arm to the back of my neck, and he pulled me closer. Close enough that I felt his breath graze the top of my head.
His face was angled downward, his gaze fixed on a spot just below my collar — not my face, not my chest, but a specific point on the skin at the base of my neck. He was reading something on my skin.
His other hand reached for the edge of my neckline.
I screamed. And I slapped him across the face.
I locked the restroom door and pressed my back against it.
My palm was still tingling. The right one — the one I'd used to slap a stranger across the face at a party I shouldn't have come to, wearing a dress I didn't own.
I turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on my face. My hands shook.
Something moved in the mirror.
For half a second — less than that, a blink — my reflection wasn't mine. The shape in the glass was low and dark, with a narrow skull and bright eyes that caught the light like coins. A wolf. Standing where I stood, watching me watch it.
I jerked backward. My hip h*t the edge of the sink.
When I looked again, it was just me. Wet face. Wide eyes. Juno's black dress. My own stupid reflection.
Too many people. Not enough air. That was all.
SOREN
The girl bolted.
One second she was in my arms, the next she was gone — stumbling backward, hand over her mouth, shoving through the crowd. The left side of my jaw burned where her palm had connected. She h*t harder than I expected for someone that small.
I hadn't been trying to undress her. I'd caught a mark on her neck — a small, dark shape peeking out from under her collar. It could have been a bruise. It could have been a tattoo. Or it could have been the crescent birthmark that every member of the royal bloodline carried.
I needed to see it. She screamed before I could.
"That," Ash said from behind me, "looked exactly like sexual harassment."
"It wasn't."
"To her it was. You grabbed the back of her neck, Soren. What did you think she was going to do — hold still?"
I like her, Nox said. My wolf. He spoke when it suited him. If I had hands, I would slap you too. Just for fun.
I shut them both out.
Eighteen years ago, Alpha King Magnus Wolfhart's only son was k*lled. An ambush, swift and planned. The prince had told his father only two things before he d*ed: that he'd found his fated mate, and that she was pr*gnant.
He never said who the mate was. Never gave a name, never brought her to the palace. The king searched for years — sent wolves to every pack on the continent. Nothing.
Then a seer arrived. She couldn't see the princess's face, but she saw the location: a human high school, in a human city. The king finally understood why his son had kept his mate hidden.
She was human.
In the wolf kingdom, that was almost unheard of. It explained the secrecy. It explained why eighteen years of searching among wolf packs had turned up nothing. The seer saw something else: the ones who would find the princess were from the Solvane bloodline. My bloodline.
Find his granddaughter. Bring her home.
The party thumped around us. Ash had found a couch and draped himself across it. A girl was sitting on the armrest, twirling her hair. Another handing him a drink. He looked perfectly at ease.
I hated how little he cared. We had a mission. A real one, with real stakes. I'd already reviewed the student roster, cross-checked birthdates against the prince's year of d**th. Ash had reviewed the drink menu.
I stood by the wall with my arms folded. Every scent in this house was human — perfume, alcohol, sweat. Nothing useful.
Then Nox went quiet. Truly quiet, the way he did when he was tracking prey. A low vibration moved through my chest.
Wolf, he said. Faint. But it's here. In this building.
That wasn't possible. Ash and I were the only wolves anywhere near this party.
Where?
Moving. Toward the back of the house.
I walked. Through the kitchen, past the dancers, past a couple pressed against the wall. The scent grew stronger — thin and unsteady, like a signal that kept cutting out.
If the princess had been raised human, she wouldn't know what she was. Her wolf might be dormant, unstable, surfacing for the first time. The scent would be exactly like this — weak, intermittent, impossible to pin down.
The trail converged on a single door at the end of the corridor. The women's restroom.
She was in there. Or she had been.
Nox pressed forward inside my chest, alert and certain.
She's here.
THEA
The necklace was gone.
I noticed the next morning, standing in front of the bathroom mirror after my shower. My neck was bare. The leather cord, the tooth — gone. I pressed my fingers to the spot where it usually sat and felt nothing.
My chest squeezed.
I tore through my morning chores faster than usual. Margot shouted something about the eggs being cold as I grabbed my bag and ran out the door.
It was just a necklace. A worthless necklace made of old leather and a dead animal's tooth. I had no reason to feel like someone had punched a hole through my ribs.
But it had been on my neck since I was five. Thirteen years. It was the only thing I owned that had a story behind it, even if that story was about a man who left.
I went to the school restroom first thing. Got down on my hands and knees and checked under the sinks, behind the trash can, along the baseboard. Nothing. My necklace wasn't there.
I stood up, wiped my palms on my jeans, and turned to leave.
"Looking for this?"
The voice came from behind me. Cold, flat, unhurried.
Soren was leaning against the hallway wall outside the restroom door. My wolf-tooth necklace dangled from his fingers, the leather cord swinging in a slow arc.
"Yes." I reached for it. "Give it back. Please."
He raised his hand higher, lifting the necklace out of my reach. With his other hand, he caught my chin between his thumb and forefinger and tilted my face up.
"What is your problem?" My voice cracked.
He didn't answer. His gold eyes moved over my face, down my jaw, down to the bare skin of my neck where the necklace should have been.
Then he lowered his head.
I felt the tip of his nose brush the side of my throat, just below my ear. His breath was warm and slow against my skin, and something in my chest seized up. Not pain. Not exactly fear. Something deeper, something I didn't have a word for.
I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. My pulse slammed so hard I was sure he could feel it through my skin.
"It's you," he said quietly. "The girl from the restroom last night."
His lips were close enough that I felt the shape of every word against my neck.