JULIA
*29 years ago*
By the time I’d gotten to high school, I had one goal. Get out of this shithole.
While perhaps there may have been some advantages to being a part of the beta family, no one was untouched by the poverty caused by communism. And while most had accepted this as a card they’d been dealt, there had always been a fire deep within me that knew—yes, just knew—that I was not meant for this middle-of-nowhere country bumpkin life. In my heart, I could sense that I was too big for the pack I’d been born into.
My older brother would be beta one day, even if it was in some half-dilapidated pack, where the electricity didn’t even work half the time. Being a beta’s daughter, however, meant that I wasn’t destined for anything more than to be some nobody forest-boy’s mate. If I sta
