Fifty Shades of Grey Can't Hold a Candle to This Book novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Happy Birthday to Me
On her eighteenth birthday Orla scents her mate and hears him deny her in front of the school; she stops lowering her head.
My mother poured my coffee at five in the morning, the way she had every morning of my life.
She never let me make it myself. That was the one rule in our cabin kitchen.
"Happy birthday, baby." She kissed the top of my head. "Eighteen. This could be the day you meet him."
"Meet who?" I said, although I knew.
"Your mate." Her eyes filled, and she turned to the stove. "Drink up."
I drank. The coffee was thick and bitter, and my head went slow and foggy, the same as always.
My wolf lay down inside me. She had never said a word to me.
The other girls in the pack said their wolves started talking at thirteen. Mine only paced and sighed.
My mother, Rose, was the head cook at the pack house. She fed two hundred wolves three times a day, and nobody crossed her.
I was an omega, the lowest rank there is, and a senior at Blackpine High with two weeks left to survive.
I caught the bus with my hair still wet from the kitchen sink.
Melody Kensley was waiting at my locker when I got in.
Her father was the pack's beta, and she wore his ring on a chain around her neck.
"Happy birthday, Orla," she said, and held out a cinnamon roll wrapped in a napkin. "I swiped it from your mom's tray at breakfast. Don't tell her."
"Thank you, Melody." I took it. "I won't."
"Eat it before first period. She counts those."
She grinned and went off down the hall with her friends.
The morning went by with nobody else touching me. By lunch I almost believed the day might pass quietly.
Then the cafeteria doors swung open and I smelled woodsmoke.
Under it was cold pine, and under that something warm and sweet that made my knees weak.
My mouth watered. My wolf stood up inside me so fast I nearly dropped my tray.
I put the tray down on the nearest table. I walked outside because I could not stand there breathing it in front of everyone.
The scent followed me to the bench by the far fence.
"You."
I looked up.
Cade Ransom stood over me. He was the alpha's son, and he would be the alpha one day.
Every girl in school had watched him walk the halls for four years. I had stayed out of his way for all of them.
He was tall and bearded and his eyes were a pale, hard blue.
They met mine, and heat ran down my arms to the ends of my fingers.
My wolf said nothing. She did not need to. The word was in the whole of my body.
Half the school had followed us out of the cafeteria, and they were watching from the steps.
Cade saw them too.
"We aren't mates," he said, loud enough for every one of them to hear.
I stood up. My knees were not steady.
"Then why are you shaking?" I said.
He was. His hand was a fist at his side, and it was trembling.
His jaw went tight. Somebody on the steps laughed, and the laughing spread.
"Because you smell like the pack's kitchen," he said. "You're an omega, Harrow. Don't make this into something."
I did what I always did. I lowered my head.
"Cade!" Melody came down the steps with her friends in a line behind her. "Baby, what are you doing out here with her?"
She looked at my face and then at his, and she laughed out loud.
"Oh, no. You thought it was you?" She stepped up close to me. "He is mine, you little slut. Say it."
I said nothing.
She slapped me across the cheek.
My head snapped sideways. The sting spread out hot, and the whole yard went quiet to watch.
"Melody, enough," Cade said. He said it too late, and too softly, and I saw something cross his face that I could not read.
Melody drew her hand back to hit me again.
I caught her wrist in the air.
I did not decide to do it. My hand simply closed, and held.
Melody's mouth opened. She pulled, and she could not pull free.
For the first time in my life I did not lower my eyes.
"No," I said. "Not twice."
Nobody on the steps made a sound.
I let go of her. Her wrist was white where I had been holding it.
Cade was staring at my hand, and then at my face, and he took one step back from me.
I picked up my bag and walked past all of them to my next class, with my head up.
At home that night my mother poured me a second cup, the way she always did before bed.
"Drink it while it's warm," she said. "You look tired, baby."
She went out to lock the chicken coop.
I carried the cup to the sink and I poured it down the drain.
For a long moment nothing happened.
Then my wolf lifted her head, and I heard her for the first time.
"About time," she said.
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