Born hollow where a pack-wolf’s spirit should be, Clara carries a dead woman’s soul and the corpse’s memories are waking. *** Four houses in six years. Every master dismissed me, and not one possessed the spine to say why. I am wolf-born, yet my beast has never breached the surface in twenty-four years. In our world, that failure earns half wages, a damp servant’s cot, and an official paper branding you defective at every estate desperate enough to hire you. I stopped begging for understanding at nineteen. Now I let them assume I am merely late. Hallowmere was supposed to be another kitchen to scrub. Another roof over my head. Then I climbed from the grain wagon into freezing mud, and every wolf in the yard turned toward me in the same heartbeat. The silence was worst. The Alpha emerged barefoot, November stone biting his skin, like a man summoned by a phantom. He did not ask my name or business. He stared as if a corpse had clawed free of its grave, then forced out one question: “Where did you get Helena Ward’s scent?” I had never heard her name. She had been dead five years. Yet my fingers knew the trigger of a hidden latch in a corridor I had never walked. My hands folded linen in a pattern only she used. And the order sending me to Hallowmere was signed nineteen days before I lost the position that brought me here. Someone orchestrated my arrival. Someone has pulled my strings for years. Now the only man who can keep me alive among these monsters is the Alpha—the last person to see Helena Ward alive, and the man who may have killed her. If her memories awaken completely, I may discover the truth—unless they bury me first.