Isla's POV
"Happy birthday to me," I whisper to the cracked mirror in my tiny room, my voice barely making a sound.
Eighteen years old today. Eighteen years of being invisible. Eighteen years of waiting for this exact moment.
I pull out the bus ticket from under my mattress and run my thumb over the printed letters: SEATTLE. Departure: 11:45 PM tonight. In less than fifteen hours, I'll be gone from this pack forever, and nobody will even notice I'm missing.
The thought should make me happy, but my chest feels tight instead.
Through the thin wall, I hear Celeste's laugh—bright and musical, the sound of someone who's never known what it feels like to be unwanted. Her bedroom is three times bigger than mine. Actually, calling this space a bedroom is generous. It used to be a storage closet before they shoved a mattress inside and told me to be grateful.
I grab my backpack, checking for the hundredth time that everything's ready: two changes of clothes, my life savings of $487 stuffed in an old sock, and a photo of me as a baby that I found in the trash once. In the picture, someone's holding me and smiling. I don't know who. My parents—the people who raised me—never smile at me like that.
My stomach growls. I skipped dinner last night because Celeste threw a fit about me "stealing her leftovers," even though Mom had specifically said I could have them. But Celeste cried, and Mom apologized to her, and I went to bed hungry.
Again.
I tiptoe down the hallway, trying not to make the floorboards creak. Dad's already eating breakfast in the kitchen—I can smell the bacon from here. My mouth waters, but I know better than to hope there's any left for me.
"Morning," I say quietly as I enter the kitchen.
Dad doesn't look up from his newspaper. Mom's pouring coffee like I don't exist.
"It's my birthday," I add, hating how small my voice sounds.
Mom finally glances at me, and for one stupid second, I think she'll remember. Maybe she'll smile. Maybe she'll say the words I've been waiting eighteen years to hear: We're proud of you. We love you. You matter.
Instead, she says, "Celeste needs a ride to school early. She has cheerleading practice."
My throat burns. "Okay."
"You can walk," Mom adds, turning back to her coffee.
Of course I can walk. I always walk. Even when it's raining. Even when it's freezing. Celeste gets the car. Celeste gets everything.
I grab a piece of toast from the counter—just one slice, the heel that nobody wants—and Mom's hand snaps out, slapping my wrist hard enough to sting.
"That's for your father's lunch," she snaps.
"Sorry," I mumble, even though there's a whole loaf of bread right there.
I leave without eating, my stomach churning with hunger and something worse—shame. After eighteen years, you'd think I'd be used to it. You'd think it wouldn't hurt anymore.
You'd be wrong.
The walk to school takes forty-five minutes. My worn-out sneakers have a hole in the left sole, and I can feel every pebble through it. Other pack members drive past me—some honk and laugh, others just ignore me. I'm used to both reactions.
I'm the girl without a wolf. The freak. The embarrassment.
In our pack, everyone shifts by their sixteenth birthday. Most shift earlier. But me? Eighteen years old today, and still completely human. Still weak. Still worthless.
At least, that's what Kieran Blackthorn tells me every chance he gets.
My stomach drops the moment I see his truck in the school parking lot. The massive black pickup with tinted windows that everyone recognizes. He graduated two years ago, but he still shows up at school sometimes to "check on pack youth." Really, he just comes to remind everyone that he's the future Alpha and they're all beneath him.
Especially me.
I try to walk quickly toward the school entrance, keeping my head down. Maybe if I'm fast enough, he won't notice me. Maybe today, on my last day in this pack, I can just slip by unnoticed.
"Well, well, well."
I freeze. That voice makes my skin crawl and my heart race at the same time, and I hate myself for both reactions.
Kieran Blackthorn steps out of his truck, and even though I don't want to look at him, my eyes betray me. He's tall—over six feet—with black hair that's always slightly messy and ice-blue eyes that see right through you. He's wearing his usual leather jacket, and his friends are climbing out of the truck behind him, already laughing.
They smell blood in the water.
"The birthday girl," Kieran says, walking toward me with that predator's grace that all Alphas have. "Eighteen years old today, right, Isla?"
I don't answer. I've learned that nothing I say matters anyway.
"Did your wolf come in at midnight?" he asks, circling me like I'm prey. His friends form a loose ring around us, blocking my escape. "Did you finally shift?"
My cheeks burn. Everyone's watching now. Other students stop on their way into school, phones out, probably recording. This will be all over pack social media by lunch.
"Answer me, Isla." Kieran's voice drops lower, and there's something in it that makes my wolf—the wolf that doesn't exist—want to whimper and submit.
"No," I whisper. "No shift."
"Speak up," he orders. "Nobody can hear you."
"I didn't shift!" I say louder, hating the way my voice cracks. "Okay? I'm still wolfless. Still a freak. Are you happy now?"
For just a second—less than a heartbeat—something flickers across Kieran's face. It almost looks like guilt. But then his cruel smile returns, and I know I imagined it.
"Pathetic," he says, and his friends echo the word like a chant. "Eighteen years old and still completely human. Do you even count as pack anymore?"
Tears burn behind my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. Not here. Not in front of him. I've survived eighteen years of this—I can survive one more day.
"Just leave me alone," I mutter, trying to push past him.
His hand shoots out, grabbing my arm. Not hard enough to bruise, but firm enough to stop me. The touch sends a weird electric shock through my skin, and I jerk away like I've been burned.
Kieran flinches too, his eyes widening slightly. Did he feel that?
"What—" he starts to say.
But then the school bell rings, and I run. I don't care if it makes me look weak. I don't care if his friends laugh. I just need to get away from those ice-blue eyes and the confusing feeling that something just shifted between us.
I make it to my first-period class and collapse into my seat in the back corner—my usual spot where nobody notices me. My arm still tingles where Kieran touched it.
Probably just static electricity.
My hand drifts to my pocket, feeling the outline of the bus ticket. Just a few more hours. Just survive until midnight, and then I'm free.
The morning drags by in a blur of classes where teachers forget to call on me and students talk over me like I'm invisible. At lunch, I sit alone in the corner of the cafeteria, eating the free meal that the school provides for "underprivileged students." The label used to embarrass me. Now I'm just grateful to have food.
Celeste walks past my table with her perfect friends, and one of them wrinkles her nose. "Why does the cafeteria let strays eat here?" she asks loudly.
They all laugh. Celeste laughs the loudest.
I stare at my tray and count down the hours. Seven more until I can leave for the bus station. Seven more hours of surviving.
My last class is calculus, and I'm barely paying attention when it happens.
2:47 PM.
Fire explodes through my veins.
I gasp, clutching the edge of my desk as pain rips through every nerve in my body. It feels like my blood is boiling, like my bones are breaking and reforming, like something massive is trying to claw its way out from inside my chest.
No. No, no, no. Not now. Not today.
"Ms. Thorne?" My teacher's voice sounds far away. "Are you alright?"
I can't answer. I can't breathe. The pain is everywhere, consuming everything, and my vision starts to blur at the edges. Through the agony, one word echoes in my mind over and over:
Wolf. Wolf. WOLF.
My skin starts to glow—actually glow—with a golden light that makes the other students gasp and push back from their desks.
The windows crack.
All of them.
Simultaneously.
Power floods through me like a tidal wave, and suddenly I can hear everything—every heartbeat in the room, every breath, every whispered prayer. I can smell fear and confusion and something else, something wild and electric.
My eyes snap open, and I know without looking in a mirror that they're not brown anymore.
They're burning gold.
"Someone get the Alpha!" a student screams.
No. I need to run. I need to get out before—
The classroom door explodes open, slamming against the wall so hard it leaves a dent.
Kieran Blackthorn stands in the doorway, chest heaving like he ran here. His ice-blue eyes lock onto mine, and the entire world stops.
A golden thread snaps into place between us—visible, tangible, impossible to ignore.
The mate bond.
Every cell in my body recognizes him. My wolf, finally awake after eighteen years of silence, screams one word with absolute certainty:
MATE.
And from the look of complete shock on Kieran's face, his wolf is saying the same thing.
My bully. My tormentor. The person who made my life a living hell for years.
Is my fated mate.
"No," I whisper, the word barely audible over the ringing in my ears. "No. This is impossible. This is—"
Kieran takes a step toward me, his hand outstretched, his face cycling through emotions I've never seen before: confusion, wonder, hunger, and something that might be fear.
"Isla," he breathes, and my name on his lips sounds different. Reverent. Like a prayer.
My wolf wants to go to him. Everything in my new instincts is screaming at me to run into his arms, to accept the bond, to let him mark me and claim me and make us whole.
But my mind remembers everything. Every cruel word. Every public humiliation. Every moment he made me feel like I was nothing.
And I realize with crystal clarity what I have to do.
I stand up, power radiating from my skin, making the lights flicker. My voice comes out steady and strong—the voice of someone who finally has a wolf, who finally has power, who is finally done being a victim.
"I, Isla Thorne," I say clearly, loud enough for everyone in the room to hear, "reject you, Kieran Blackthorn, as my mate."
The golden thread between us shatters like glass.
Kieran's face goes white. He staggers backward, clutching his chest like I've stabbed him through the heart.
Maybe I have.
But before he can say anything, before anyone can stop me, before I can second-guess the most important decision of my life, I run.
I shift mid-leap—my first shift ever—and a silver wolf with glowing amber eyes crashes through the already-cracked window, leaving behind the life I've always known and the mate I just rejected.
Behind me, a howl shakes the mountains—anguished and desperate and heartbroken.
But I don't look back.
Not even once.