The second I found out my adopted sister, Serina, was pregnant with my mate Alpha Kael's pup, I prayed the Moon Goddess and begged her to sever our mate bond.   But then my mother, Victoria, told me the pup actually belonged to Serina and my little brother, Marcus, and Kael had only been covering for them.   I was just about to beg the Moon Goddess to reverse her decision when Serina and Alpha Kael both jumped into the sea and died. Neither of their bodies was ever recovered.   Victoria sobbed over Serina's belongings, clutching them to her chest and refusing to see me. The entire Silverpine Pack rallied around Marcus and voted him in as the new Alpha. Then, amid a storm of furious accusations and a petition demanding my exile, they cast me out of the pack.   The guilt ate away at me until my wolf stopped answering my calls. I lost all my shifter abilities, so I left the pack territory for good and disappeared into the human world.   At first, I found a job bussing tables at a seedy underground nightclub. But the moment I rejected a customer's harassment, I was fired on the spot.   Without an ID, I had nowhere to go. I ended up homeless, sleeping in a tattered tent beneath a bridge and surviving on expired food from government aid programs. Every night, I prayed to the Moon Goddess, begging her to forgive me for my sins.   Six years later, I was standing in line for free food when I ran into a family of three from the Upper East Side who were there volunteering.   And there he was.   Kael, the Alpha who was supposed to have died jumping off that cliff. His arm was wrapped around my adopted sister as he grinned and taught their little wolf pup how to hand out meals to the homeless people around us.   The sight hit me like a bolt of lightning. I was just about to storm over and demand answers when two people suddenly stepped in front of me, blocking my path.   Victoria and Marcus. Their faces were painfully familiar. Yet there wasn't a flicker of sympathy in their eyes. Only cold, sharp-edged wariness.   Marcus grabbed my wrist so tightly that his fingers dug into my skin, while Victoria spoke, "Don't go bothering them. If it weren't for you, they wouldn't have had to hide their identities and live in the human world all these years."   Tears blurred my vision. I stared at Victoria's face, searching for even the faintest trace of the warmth and affection she'd once shown me. There was nothing.   "But I'm your child too..." I whispered, my voice breaking.   She forced a thin, fake smile. "You're the one who was adopted, remember? Let it go, Elena. Do this for me, and let them have their happiness, all right?"   I glanced at Serina's perfectly bleached blonde hair and Kael's crisp, expensive suit. Then I looked down at my own feet. My sandals were tattered and full of holes. My feet were covered in old frostbite scars from the winters and oozing sores from the summer heat.   I laughed until tears streamed down my face. All that hell I'd willingly put myself through for the past six years had been nothing but a sick, twisted lie.

When I realized that my mate, Alpha Cassian, couldn't get Lucille out of his mind and had even shut me out of our mind link, I began making plans to leave with the rest of the pack.   Cassian had met Lucille while exploring human society. He described her as naive and helpless, a college student who had gone to a party one night and woken up a vampire the next morning. I reminded him that a vampire had killed my mother and warned him to be careful, but he accused me of prejudice. I asked him never to leave Lucille alone with our pack members. He agreed, then announced soon afterward that he intended to bring her into the pack.   He insisted Lucille was different from other vampires and had a heart of gold. Then our territory was hit by one strange, violent incident after another.   That was when I decided to sever my mate bond with Alpha Cassian.