Chapter 3

I was sixteen the first time I saw him.

He was sitting on the curb outside the empty house next to ours. Skinny. Pale. A backpack with one broken strap. A bruise on his jaw that nobody had asked about.

My mom watched him from the kitchen window for a week. Then she put extra food in my lunch tin and shoved it into my hands.

"Take this to the boy next door, Wendy. Nobody's feeding him."

That's how it started.

His name was Jesse. He was seventeen. He told me his father had "sent him out here for the summer." He didn't say why. The neighbors said why.

"He's the bastard. The Alpha's bastard from over in Crimson Fang. The pack didn't want him so they dumped him on the human side with his mother."

I didn't know what an Alpha was. I didn't care. He had a bruise on his jaw and my mom had made him dumplings.

I brought him food every day for a month.

By the end of that month he smiled when he saw me coming.

Kids at school whispered.

"His mom's a mistress. He's half-blood wolf. He's dirty. Don't sit next to him, Wendy."

I turned around in my seat. I said it loud enough for the whole row to hear.

"Don't talk about him like that. Jesse's the best person I know."

I made it up a little. I had to. Somebody had to make it up for him.

A girl elbowed me. I looked up.

Jesse was standing in the doorway. His eyes were red. He'd heard every word.

I got embarrassed and bolted.

That night he caught up to me outside the school gate. He didn't say anything for a whole block.

Then his fingers found mine.

"Wendy. Thank you. You're the best person I know too."

I didn't pull my hand away.

We walked home like that. His palm hot against mine. My face hot against the cold air. My heart doing something it had never done before.

We were a couple by Halloween.

He told me he'd love me forever.

He told me we'd go to the same college. Buy a tiny house. Get two cats. One orange, one black.

I believed him.

I was sixteen and his hand was warm and nobody had ever looked at me the way he looked at me, like I was the only safe thing in the world.

On my eighteenth birthday I waited for him on the porch with a cake.

He was late.

When he finally came home, he wasn't alone.

A woman stepped out of the car behind him. Pretty. Soft voice. Smiling at me like she'd known me for years.

"You must be Wendy. I'm Jesse's mom."

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