Chapter 1
Cara's POV
The morning starts the same way every morning starts.
She is on her knees before six, scrubbing the kitchen floor with a brush that should have been replaced two months ago. The bristles are so flat they barely grip anything, but she does not mention it. Mentioning things is one of the habits she broke somewhere around year three of living in this house.
She hears Ethan's footsteps before she sees him. She has memorized their sound the way you memorize a weather pattern, the weight of them, the particular drag on the right side, the way they slow when he has already decided to be angry about something. He comes into the kitchen and does not look at her. He opens the fridge and stares into it.
"There is no orange juice," he says.
"I will get it today," she says.
"I told you Tuesday."
"I know. I will get it today."
He closes the fridge. He turns and looks at her and she keeps her eyes on the tiles. She learned a long time ago that meeting his eyes in the morning tends to give him a reason to make the day harder.
"We have someone coming this afternoon," Ethan says. "An Alpha. Important meeting. The house needs to look like it belongs to someone who has things under control."
She sits back on her heels. "Which rooms?"
"All of them." He straightens his jacket. "And do something about your hair. You look like you slept on the floor."
She did sleep on the floor, or near enough, but she says nothing. She nods and watches him walk out.
His wife, Claire, comes downstairs twenty minutes later in a silk dressing gown, phone already in hand. She does not speak to Cara. She sits at the island and scrolls through something and then says without lifting her eyes: "The eggs better not be rubbery today."
"They will not be," Cara says.
This is her life. This is what seven years looks like when someone has decided what you owe them and never lets you forget it.
She was ten years old when it happened. The car went off the road on the way back from a pack gathering. Her mother died at the scene. Her father held on for two days and then let go. Cara was in the backseat. She woke up in a hospital without a scratch on her and looked at her older brother's face and understood, without anyone saying it directly, that this look was the new shape of her life.
She cracks the eggs into the pan and watches them set.
By two in the afternoon the house is clean enough to satisfy anyone. Cara has changed into the plain grey dress Ethan prefers she wear when there are guests. It communicates exactly what she is without requiring anyone to say so.
She is carrying a tray of water and sliced fruit toward the sitting room when the car arrives outside.
She sees it through the window. Black, unmarked, the kind of vehicle that does not need to advertise what it costs. Two men step out. One is broad and restless-looking, the kind of man who clocks exits the moment he enters a space. The other is leaner. Unhurried. He looks up at the house before he comes inside and for just a moment, through the glass, Cara gets a clear view of his face. He is not what she expected. He looks like someone who thinks before he speaks. She does not know why she notices this.
She is back in the kitchen when Ethan brings them through.
She listens to the introductions through the wall.
"Cade Mercer," the man says. His voice carries without any particular effort.
She goes back to the fruit.
Fifteen minutes pass before Ethan knocks twice on the wall between the kitchen and the hallway. Her signal. She picks up the tray and carries it through, sets it on the low table, and begins to arrange the drinks without looking at anyone directly.
"This is my sister," Ethan says. The casualness is so practiced it almost sounds real.
She does not look up.
"Cara."
She looks up then, because the man across the room has said her name, and he has said it the way someone says a word they are turning over to check the weight of it. He is watching her with amber eyes that are steady and exact and she has the sudden uncomfortable sensation of being seen rather than looked at.
"Sit with us," he says.
The silence that follows is enormous. She can feel Ethan going still beside her.
"She has things to attend to," Ethan says.
"Of course," Cade says. He does not push it. He simply nods and picks up his glass.
But as she turns to leave she catches him looking at her hands. She does not know what registers on his face when he sees them. She tucks them beneath the tray and walks back to the kitchen.
She does not think about him after that. She returns to the kitchen, starts the dinner preparation, and tells herself it is just another afternoon.
She is wrong. But she does not know that yet.
