PROLOGUE
THE ALPHA’S ELITE werewolf fighters, the Sworn, came for my father on the night of my tenth birthday. As long as I live, I’ll never forget that night. Every detail is branded upon my mind with excruciating clarity.
The evening began dreamily. My stomach had been twisting in anticipation of presents and dessert all day. My mother had baked a cake and drizzled it with honey. A ring of honeysuckles plucked fresh from the edge of the forest surrounded the cake, and I spent all of dinner staring at it. My grandmother was there, her hair still dark brown with only a few silver streaks in it at the time, her eyes the same unclouded gray, but they were merry when she looked at me. She smiled more then, even though the world was full of danger and uncertainty, even though our country had been ruled by werewolf overlords since she was a little girl, and their magic had tainted everything, even our forests and the animals that lived in them.
My best friend and neighbor, who lived in a brown house accessible via a path through the tangled woods that surrounded our home, a dark-haired boy named Kassian, was there to celebrate with us. I remember how he stole a honeysuckle blossom from the bunch around the cake and passed it to me under the table, our fingers brushing against each other. I broke off the stem of the flower and pressed the hole that was left to my tongue when my parents weren’t looking. I’ll never forget how Kassian smiled at me when the bubble of summery sweetness spread across my tongue. His eyes crinkled and a dimple appeared in his left cheek. He knew honeysuckles were my favorite.
After our dinner of beef stew and cabbage, my mother lit the candles and dimmed the lights. They sang to me while I held one hand over my mouth to hide my delighted smile. I was getting too old to be so giddy over things like birthdays. But something about the candles, the cake, the singing, the smiling faces—all of it washed away the tension and strain on my parents’ faces. Even my grandmother looked happy for a moment in the light of those candles.
And Kassian. Kassian, my best friend since we were babies. In the last few weeks, I’d discovered that the way the sunlight fell across his hair made my hands sweat and my chest feel tight. I found myself daydreaming about touching his face, about holding his hand. And when I blew out the flames, I wished Kassian and I would be friends forever, whatever else happened between us.
The gifts came after the singing. My mother gave me a box wrapped in a flour bag. I opened it and found a honeysuckle-embroidered collar for my dresses that she’d knitted from her precious stash of yarns. After that came a doll, even though I was growing too old for them, its button eyes blue and its hair the same color as Kassian’s. My grandmother reached into her pocket and produced a wooden ring polished to butter smoothness, unwrapped and still warm from its place next to her hip. My father’s eyebrows lifted at it, and a wordless glance passed between them, but I didn’t understand the significance of their silent communication.
“It’s nothing,” my grandmother said then, in response, and my father grunted.
Then, my father’s gift. The box was heavy, and I set it in my lap, my whole body tightening with anticipation as I lifted the lid and dipped my fingers beneath the paper laid on top of the contents inside.
Something dense and soft met my hand. Fabric, black threaded with gold filigree that winked and flashed in the dim light of our kerosene lantern.
I lifted the gift from the box, and velvety folds spilled over my knees and across the floor.
A cloak.
One side black and gold, the other side a deep, vibrant red.
My grandmother drew in a sharp breath, as if someone had slipped a knife between her ribs.
“Dan,” she said to my father. “What are you doing?”
“It’s hers,” he replied, his voice flat and firm at the same time, the tone he used when he was feeling unyielding. “It’s always been hers.”
“Don’t be a fool,” she replied angrily.
I only dimly heard them, for I was captivated by the cloak. I spread my palm against the silky feel of it, tracing the embroidered flowers, turning the edge of it this way and that to admire the way the light bounced across the threads. Something about it seemed to call to me deep in my bones. There was power in this cloak. Magic. Tendrils of it teased my fingertips as I ran them across the fabric lightly. Touching it felt like an echo of when I’d brushed against the electric fence that ran around the fields where Farmer Eliazar, the only one in the village with a windmill that produced power, kept his cattle.
The sensation faded, leaving only fabric, but I knew what I’d felt.
My grandmother reached across the table and put her hands on the cloak as if to take it from me. A noise of protest tore from my throat. My father grabbed her wrists.
“Don’t,” my grandmother said again to my father. This time, it sounded like an order.
I lifted my head, and my stomach curled at my grandmother’s expression. I glanced from my father’s face to my grandmother’s in confusion. They were both grim.
My mother stood silently and busied herself with the dishes, leaving them to glare at each other. Kassian sat quietly, looking as confused as I felt.
“You can’t stop it,” my father said tightly.
My grandmother’s face went as rigid as a statue’s. “I can stop it,” she hissed to my father. “I’ll do everything in my power to stop it. I won’t lose her, Dan. Not Meredith.”
I was frightened. What did my grandmother mean, lose me? How was giving me a cloak going to cause me to be lost?
“Daddy?” I asked, the word scraping in the sudden silence.
“Later,” my grandmother said. “We’ll discuss this later.”
“There’s nothing to discuss,” my father said. He scooped up the cloak and put it back in the box. He closed the lid and put it beneath my bed that sat in the corner. “Who wants some cake?” he asked, forcing joviality into his tone.
My grandmother’s jaw tightened, but she allowed him to brush the matter aside for now. The tension eased in the room, and the lantern seemed to brighten. My mother returned to the table and straightened her hair with one hand. I remember how her fingers trembled against her forehead. She mustered a smile for me and asked, “How about an extra big piece, Red?”
“Don’t call her Red,” my grandmother said before I could speak. “Her name is Meredith. It’s a beautiful name.”
It was an old, stupid argument. My grandmother must have still been feeling surly to invoke it. I was a girl of many names. My family called me Red because of my hair, which had been red as a radish when I was born, and the fact that the word was nestled between the other letters of my given name, Meredith. It was a short, no-nonsense kind of moniker, and I never thought it was that pretty. It tasted like a lump on my tongue. Red. Short, easily shaped into a shout, a curt command, a snap. Friends called me Mere, and I was used to hearing that yelled by other children as they waited for me at the gate so we could venture into the edge of the forest to pick blackberries and search for fresh eggs. Only my grandmother and my teachers ever called me Meredith, which was prettier, but unfamiliar to my ears. The word was undulating, lispy, fancy. I used to practice whispering it to myself as I stared into the mirror, searching for myself in the sound of it. But I never seemed to find my identity in that name.