My Family Forgot I Existed, So I Left Them Behind novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Locked Out
At Odette's moon gala Imogen's mother asks if they have met, and Imogen walks out of the pack in front of the hall; in the snow a man's voice says, There you are.
At nine o'clock on my sister's birthday, my father raised a glass and thanked the pack for coming to celebrate his only daughter.
I watched him do it on my phone, standing in the snow outside the pack house.
My sister had gone live on her phone.
Hundreds of people were watching, and so was I.
On the screen my mother wiped her eyes, and my father said the moon had blessed his family twice over.
I looked up from the phone and saw the same toast through the ballroom window, forty feet away.
My family stood inside the light.
I stood outside it with snow in my hair.
For three months nobody had answered me.
My texts in the family group sat unread.
When I opened the mind-link and called for them, I got nothing back, not even static.
Last week the locks on the house were changed.
Tonight the invitation to the Moon Blessing had gone to every pack in the valley, and the only person it had skipped was me.
I walked up the gravel to the front doors.
The guard on the steps was the man who had taught me to ride a bike on this same drive.
He looked straight at me.
"Invitation only, miss," he said.
"It's Imogen. You know me."
"I'm sorry, miss. I don't have an Imogen on the list."
I almost laughed.
I put my hand on the door, and he caught my wrist, gently, and held it.
Behind him the doors opened and my mother came out for air.
She was in the navy dress she wore for every pack event, with her hair pinned up the way I had pinned it for her a hundred times.
She saw me and smiled politely.
"Hello, dear," my mother said. "Have we met?"
Every guest on the steps turned to look.
Somebody's phone was already up.
"Mom," I said. "It's me."
"I'm sorry. Are you one of Odette's friends from the college?"
I waited for the joke to break on her face.
It didn't.
She looked at me with the soft, patient face she used on guests who had lost their way, and my chest went hollow.
"Beatrice," the guard said quietly. "I'll see her off the property."
"Oh, no need. Let her warm up first. It's freezing."
She patted my arm and went back inside.
The warm kindness was the worst of it.
A hand closed around my other elbow, and I turned.
My sister had slipped out through the side door with a coat over her silver gown.
Odette's blonde braid was pinned with tiny moonstones, and she was smiling at me, glad to see me.
"Imi," she said. "Oh, thank God. I told you not to come."
"They don't know who I am."
"They're angry. They're punishing you for the fight." She pulled the second coat around my shoulders, and it smelled like her perfume. "Mom's acting. She'll get tired of it by Sunday, I swear. Go to a motel tonight and let me smooth it over."
"She asked if we'd met."
"She's good at holding a grudge, you know that." Odette squeezed my hands. "I'll fix it, Imi. Trust me. Please, go."
Behind her, through the window, I saw the family portrait on the wall of the ballroom.
My mother, my father, my sister.
There was a pale rectangle on the wallpaper beside it, where a fourth frame used to hang.
My hand was in my coat pocket, and in my pocket was the chip of white moonstone I had taken from the shrine the night of the fight.
It was warm against my fingers.
It had been warm for three months, and I had never once told anyone.
I took my hand out.
Odette was still holding my other one.
She had not asked me where I'd been sleeping, or how I'd been eating, or why the whole pack had to pretend.
I should have noticed that.
I noticed only that she was crying, and it looked real.
"Fix it," I said. "You can have until Sunday."
Then I pushed past her, because I knew exactly what I had to do.
The ballroom doors were open.
I walked in with snow still on my boots and went down the middle of the room.
The music stopped.
My father turned from the toast with his glass in his hand and looked at me and did not know my face.
"Rhys Harlan," I said, loud enough for the live feed to catch it. "I am Imogen, your oldest daughter, and I am leaving this pack."
Nobody said anything.
"I release my place at your table and my claim to your name. If you want me back, you will have to remember me first."
My father frowned.
"Young lady, I don't know what this is about," he said. "Please, someone help her out."
So I stepped out.
I stood in the snow again, in the dark beyond the pack house lights, with a stranger's coat on my back and nowhere to go.
My phone said eleven percent.
The cold climbed up through my boots.
I started walking toward the road.
Then a voice spoke inside my head, low and rough and not one I had ever heard.
*There you are,* it said. *Three months, and I finally found you.*
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend