Violets and Ash

Chapter 1

They said it was raining when I stumbled into town, past the boarders so poorly protected even a critically wounded ten-year-old could slip through.

I had been walking for hours. I was told my feet were blistered and bloody with wounds that reappeared faster than they could heal, but that they paled in comparison to the thick slices covering my body.

I couldn't remember the pain, or the song they had said I'd been singing. I couldn't remember the feeling of the rain on my face, or the mud in between my toes.

The widow who had taken me in while I was sick and healing, who had begged her Luna and Alpha to take me off her hands once the night terrors and outbursts became too much, I couldn't remember her either.

My first memory began with him. The tender eyed doctor with the curly hair and friendly smile. I had giggled when his glasses slid off his nose and fell into my lap. Elijah was the first person who didn't treat me like a problem in need of solving. I told him my name that day, the only detail from my past life that I remembered.

And just a few days later, the small-pack doctor who had never wanted children of his own adopted me. The place I had left—the place I had no memory of it became a distant nightmare I would never be able to shake.

All too soon the townspeople's stares went from sympathetic to wary. The near endless flood of casseroles and chocolate chip cookies dwindled into long stares and whispered words. Instead of inviting me to play with their children, they would pull them away.

Even with their beloved town doctor as my guardian, I was an outcast.

In school the other children avoided me. They slowly made a game out of it, pretending I didn't exist. Even though I'd come home crying on numerous occasions, it was nothing compared to what awaited me in high school.

That summer was one of growth for all of us. Lanky baby-faced boys morphed into pimple-faced teenagers, swollen from the small amount of muscle they gained from their limited summer activities. Those same boys, who had squished their faces into looks of disgust whenever a she-wolf their age walked by, now chased them in flocks of strong-scented cologne and spearmint gum.

When the other she-wolves realized the newfound power they acquired in addition to their growing chests and backsides, it was only a matter of time before the games of chase began.

There would be many discoveries and realizations during those three long months, all of which marked the beginning of what would someday become adulthood. When high school rolled around, the children who once pretended I didn't exist were now infused with a newfound sense of courage that wouldn't cease.

Teenage hormones and cruel curiosity were the instruments of my destruction—and what a pretty picture they painted.

Scarlet splashed against tile, fabric splitting in two again and again, the sounds of prickling laughter as they tore at my skin—at the scars I tried so hard to keep hidden.

I was swept away, plunged into darkness that stung like ice water. It poured into my open mouth, down my throat in waves that stung and forced me to sputter for breath. The water thickened to slush in my lungs, leaving me frozen and suspended in darkness while a ghost wearing my face smiled down at me.

The last thing I remembered were the screams.

Voices that had deepened this past summer now rang out in shrill sopranos, only fading when the icy grasp of nothingness released its hold on me and sent me freefalling to earth—to the mess I had made.

Everything changed after my blackout.

I was dangerous. A menace. A ticking time bomb that would burn our little pack from the map before long. It didn't matter that I couldn't remember anything, that I'd been disconnected from my body like a hot air balloon thousands of feet above the ocean, desperate to land but destined to succumb to the vicious and violent waves far below.