allisonannem
Hayden Rose Ateara has always believed there are some things in life you simply can't plan.
After two years away at an elite arts academy, eighteen-year-old Hayden returns to La Push with an honors diploma, an associate degree in fine arts, and absolutely no idea what she wants to do next. She expects a quiet summer filled with paint-stained hands, days teaching children at the local art program, evenings on First Beach, and enough time to finally figure out where she belongs.
She doesn't expect Sam Uley.
The serious, frustratingly handsome boy she remembers from home has changed while she's been gone. Now he's bigger, quieter, surrounded by a suspicious group of boys who disappear into the woods at strange hours-and, for some inexplicable reason, suddenly determined to be wherever Hayden is.
Coffee becomes conversation. Conversation becomes friendship. Friendship becomes something Hayden never planned for.
But Sam is keeping a secret.
The childhood stories Hayden grew up hearing about spirit warriors, enormous wolves, and creatures that hunt beneath impossibly cold skin were never just legends. The forests surrounding La Push are protecting something ancient, and Sam is standing directly at the center of it.
Then Hayden discovers the most frightening secret of all:
Sam has imprinted on her.
To him, she became the center of the world in a single heartbeat.
But Hayden refuses to let fate decide who she loves.
If Sam wants her, he'll have to earn her.
And he does.
Slowly, through terrible brownies, perfectly made coffee, paint-covered afternoons, ridiculous pack arguments, family dinners, whispered secrets, and ordinary moments that somehow become extraordinary, Hayden begins choosing him too.
But beyond the safety of La Push, something is changing.
The Cullens have returned to Forks. Bella Swan has come home. Old treaties are being tested, more boys are disappearing into the forest, and the quiet life Hayden thought she was building is becoming tangled