Prologue
I was born the first child of the Cromwell clan, a delightful bundle of cherub for my mother and father to dote over. I was raised Highborn in my pack, attending the necessary classes and training sessions that come with being born royal. All in an effort to find my Goddess-given talent and to hone it. For generations, the women in my family all had what I would consider to be a silly excuse for a ‘talent’. My grandmother, for instance, was a talented chef. No recipe needed, and she would whip up a mouth-watering meal that could have won awards. She was a strong, steadfast and stubborn Luna in her day, but her abilities paled in comparison to my grandfather. He was, at one point in his life, considered the most powerful Alpha the western coast of North America had ever seen. No pack dared try to take his territory, no rogues tempted fate by setting foot on his land, not a single wolf in our pack stepped a toe out of line. My father was his first and only son and took over the title of Alpha when my grandfather had reached his eighth and final life. My mother filled the role of Luna and quickly became the most generous and welcoming Luna we’d seen in generations. Can you guess the gift she was born with? I was never particularly excited to find out what my own talent would be. Probably something useless, like gardening.
When I was four, my little sister was born. Abigail – an absolute angel. She was the perfect wolf princess and soaked up the traditions of our people, constantly bemoaning the day she would find her one true love. Two years after Abigail was born, the final Cromwell sibling was born. Kingston Cromwell - not-so-subtly named for the position he would eventually one day fill within the Olympia pack. When Kingston was just under a year old, the entire pack gathered for his Ceremony, the time in a young wolf’s life when their parents offer him up as the next Alpha and the Moon Goddess either accepts or rejects him. Little Kingston was easily accepted, and the pack celebrated the knowledge that one day he would Ascend. At seven years old, I already hated the customs of my kind. I was, after all, the first born. And did we not as werewolves worship a goddess? Why was it that only the male heirs mattered? Shouldn’t I, firstborn and female, be the first to be offered as the next Olympian leader? “You will rule one day, sweetheart. You will find your mate and be a beautiful Luna,” my mother would always say when I got vocal about my thoughts. She’d sweep my tangled mess of hair back into her hands and deftly braid it. The only thing a Cromwell woman could do, apparently, was hope her soulmate was an Alpha.
Well, that just didn’t sit well with me. Never had, never will. Abigail, on the other hand, reveled in it. She spent the vast majority of her spare time curating perfect scenarios in her brain of what her mate would look like or be like, how they would meet. And it wasn’t as if I was opposed to the idea of finding true love, but the idea that it was what would somehow make me worthy to be something to a pack was like an itch I couldn’t scratch. Annoying and ever present. Imagine my delight (and my parents’ abject horror) when I found out what my talent was.
