A Pack of Their Own novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Left Out
At her cousin's swearing-in, Mom calls four names and not Winona's; when a rogue attacks and Winona takes the blow, her family runs to the twins, she refuses the third SUV, and her wolf wakes a year early as a stranger at the gate says: mate.
Mom called four names across the front steps of my uncle's pack house, in front of three hundred wolves, and mine was not one of them.
"Older twins, younger twins, over here! The photographer wants the whole Alpha family!"
I was standing a foot from her, holding her purse.
My brother and sister walked past me in their good suits, and the younger two raced each other up the steps.
Mom took her purse out of my hand without looking at me.
"Thanks, honey. Go find my cousin, he'll want someone to talk to."
I'm Winona, I'm nineteen, and I'm the middle child of the Alpha family, stuck between two sets of twins.
It had been a two-and-a-half hour drive from our pack in three black SUVs. Mom had put me in the third one, with the folding chairs and the cooler.
Today my cousin was taking over the Moon Rise pack from his parents, because he had found his mate.
Six packs stood on the lawn to watch him swear.
Dad was at the bottom of the steps, shaking hands with Alphas I had never been introduced to.
Every time another Alpha's car pulled into the lot, Dad found me a job at the far end of it.
I walked back to the steps anyway.
The photographer lifted his camera and stopped.
"Is this everyone?" he asked.
"That's the whole family," Mom said.
"What about the girl in the gray jacket?"
Mom laughed, warm and easy.
"Oh, Winona hates being photographed. Don't you, sweetheart? You told me so."
I had never told her that.
Every face on the steps turned to me, waiting for me to agree.
"I'll sit this one out," I said.
It was easier than watching her smile fall.
My cousin Dale jogged down from the porch in his dark suit and hugged me so hard my feet left the ground.
"I saved you a seat in the front row," he said. "Right next to me. Don't let anyone move you."
"Your mate's going to want that seat."
"My mate can have the other one."
He was the only person in my family who ever saved me a chair.
I sat in the front row and watched my family smile for the camera.
Dale's father raised his hands, and the lawn went quiet.
"We are here today," he began.
Then something gray came out of the tree line.
It was a wolf, a stray, so thin I could count its ribs, and it was not slowing down.
It was running straight at the steps, where the younger twins stood at the edge of the family photo.
They were fourteen.
Nobody near them moved. Everyone was too far away or too slow.
I was the closest.
I do not remember deciding. I remember my chair going over and the grass under my hands.
The stray hit me in the shoulder instead of the twins.
Its jaws closed, and I felt bone give. Then I was in the air, and then I hit the stone gatepost with my whole back.
When I could see again, I was lying in the grass and the stray was dead. Two of Dale's guards were standing over it.
My shoulder was open. My jacket was soaked through.
I heard my family run.
They ran toward the steps, toward the younger twins, and Mom was screaming their names.
"Are you hurt? My babies, are you hurt?"
The older twins stood around them, checking arms and faces.
Dad put a hand on each of the younger ones' heads.
None of them looked at me.
I lay there bleeding and counted. One. Two. Three. Four.
Dale dropped to his knees beside me.
"Healer!" he shouted. "I need a healer now!"
Dad finally looked over, across all those people and all that grass.
"She's fine," he said. "She's a Hargrove. Winona, stop bleeding on the lawn, you're making a scene."
Dale stared at him.
"Uncle, her shoulder is open."
"Then she can sit in the third SUV until we're done here," Dad said. "We'll go home after the ceremony."
Mom didn't even turn around.
I pushed myself up on one arm.
Three hundred wolves were watching me, and my own family was watching the twins.
"I'm not getting in," I said.
My voice shook, but it came out clear.
Dad's head turned.
That was when something inside my chest stood up.
It was not a feeling. It was a someone, and it was heavy, and it was awake, and it spoke a single word to me, very low.
Mine.
Heat tore through my back. My fingers curled into the dirt, and the nails that came out of them were black and thick and as long as my thumbs.
The wound in my shoulder pulled itself shut while the whole lawn watched.
Somebody gasped. The healer who had finally come running stopped dead ten feet away.
"That's not possible," she whispered. "Wolves don't wake before twenty."
I stood up. Nobody offered me a hand.
Across the lawn, at the open gate, a man I had never seen was gripping the iron bars so hard they bent.
He was tall and dark-haired, with a scar on his chin, and he was staring at nobody but me.
His lips moved.
Even from there, I heard him.
"Mate."
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