"Please Scarlet. Don't go..." Looking behind me, I give Jaxon a huge smile.
"Sorry Little bro... I have to." I turn away from the house ready to walk away from everything I've ever known.
"You know if you leave now they won't ever let you come back." He pleads with me once more.
"But you said it yourself... I'm Hopeless."
I have to go. He knows it. I know it. Everyone knows it. There is no place in this pack for me anymore. I can only hope my brother will do better and make our parents proud. Stealing one last look back to my younger twin, I smile softly. The pack might not be here, but I'm certain they can all feel the ties of the pack untangling itself from me as I depart. They got what they wanted, me gone. I am hopeless after all, and of course as we all know...
The Hopeless must go.
~*~
Scarlett Kyad is the firstborn daughter of the Opal pack's Delta. Fully capable of inheriting her family's legacy in the pack hierarchy, she'd rather keep to herself. With her head in books, and being two years ahead of her grade, most of the pack only sees her as a hopeless weakling.
When the day of her 16th birthday arrives, and her twin brother completes his shift, while she can not for some reason, she's officially deemed as one of the hopeless.
Left doubting her abilities and heart wrecked, she leaves the only place she calls home with no plans for her future.
A genetically unique but emotionally lost teenager must figure out who she is within her mixed-up, warring world of Shifters and Wolfstalkers.
*****
It wasn't Maddie's choice to be born a half-breed, half Shifter, half Wolfstalker -- a hunter of Shifters -- and it wasn't her choice to keep her identity a secret. But after trying to attend high school like any normal sixteen-year-old, things quickly spiral south when her Stalker uncle finds out about her and catapults her out of anonymity and into the awareness--or possibly the crosshairs--of The Order of the Wolfstalker. Maddie must think fast and figure out a way to keep herself and her family safe, or risk losing everything. Including her life.
[[word count: 70,000-80,000 words]]