Chapter 1My roommate, Natalie Lowell, had a patroness. Not just any patroness - a Moon-blessed one with more gold than the entire Blackthorn Pack treasury.
And me?
I was the girl everyone pitied. The lowborn rogue wolf who worked three back-to-back shifts just to keep stale bread on the table.
At least, that was the lie I'd been fed my whole life.
While I scrubbed floors until my claws ached, Natalie was jetting across the Moon Courts and the Eastern Territories with her patroness. While I swallowed down instant noodles and ignored the way my wolf whimpered from hunger, Natalie was posting filtered photos from fancy dens and glittering Lunar Balls.
When I collapsed from a bleeding stomach ulcer - thanks to sheer exhaustion - my parents swore they couldn't afford a healer's ward.
I almost died.
Natalie's patroness flew her to the High Moon Court for a concert.
When I endured my research advisor's constant harassment just to get my graduation signature, Natalie's patroness donated a brand-new, five-story Moonstone Science Hall to Moonfall University.
Everyone in our dorm - including me - envied Natalie. They whispered about how lucky she was. How generous her patroness must be. How sweet, how doting, how ridiculously devoted that woman was.
And she wasn't even Natalie's blood.
Then Natalie posted a video from her twenty-first birthday gala.
My roommates crowded around my desk, squealing at the screen.
In the video, Natalie stood dead center in a pink designer gown, glowing like she'd been blessed by the Moon Goddess herself.
Behind her stood her patroness, staring at her with absolute adoration.
"This is insane!" one roommate gasped. "Look at the way she's looking at Natalie! It's like a Luna staring at her precious little heir. I'm SO jealous!"
I froze.
My wolf went rigid inside me. My blood turned to ice.
Because I knew that face.
I stared at the patroness in the video - and my lungs stopped working.
She looked exactly like my mother.
Same sharp cheekbones. Same cold, elegant smile. Same tiny black mole right above her upper lip.
In the exact same spot.
By the time the security guards stopped me at the hotel, I realized I'd walked there on autopilot. My wolf had been pulling me toward her scent before my brain could catch up.
I looked up at the towering, gold-lit facade of the Mooncrest Grand Hall, where Natalie's birthday gala was being held.
Quietly, I slipped around to the back alley, searching for a service entrance or a fire escape. My heart slammed against my ribs. My claws threatened to break through my skin.
I had to see it with my own eyes.
I had to know if Natalie's patroness was really my mother.
I hovered near the rear terrace, half-hidden in the shadows, when a familiar voice drifted down from the balcony above.
"How much longer do you plan on keeping Julia in the dark?"
My whole body locked.
My father's voice.
I looked up toward the terrace.
My father - the same man who usually sat in our cramped living room wearing grease-stained clothes and smoking cheap cigarettes - was standing there in a perfectly tailored dark wool suit.
Beside him stood my mother.
She wore an elegant forest-green silk gown, a pristine cashmere shawl draped over her shoulders, and the kind of calm, untouchable expression that belonged to a Luna who ruled an entire pack.
I stood there, frozen, watching the scene like it belonged to someone else.
My hand clenched around my phone. My wolf clawed at my chest, desperate to shift, desperate to run up those stairs and tear the truth out of them.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to demand WHY.
But my mother's next words nailed me to the spot.
"If we tell Julia the truth, what happens to Natalie? Her father died saving my life in that den collapse."
"Natalie has no one left but us. She is so delicate, Philip. She has never suffered a day in her life."
"How could she handle another daughter coming in to take away our love?"
"Besides, the witch-seer was very clear. Julia is destined for a hard life."
"If things go too smoothly for her, her success will drain Natalie's luck and ruin her future."
"All these years we've pretended to be poor to pressure Julia - even drugging her before her exams - wasn't it all because of what that witch told us?"
"But Julia is our only blood heir," my father muttered, his voice strained. "It isn't fair to her."
"Enough!" my mother snapped, cutting him off. "I know what I'm doing. Keeping things exactly as they are is best for everyone."
I huddled against the balcony wall, my entire body shaking uncontrollably. My wolf howled inside me - low, wounded, furious - but I clamped my hand over my mouth to keep the sound in.
In high school, I was the top-ranked initiate in the territory. Guaranteed to become the Moonchosen Scholar.
The school board had signed a contract with me.
If I secured the top rank, they'd award me a hundred-thousand-dollar Moon Grant - enough to cover my entire tuition and living expenses for four years of college.
For that money, I pushed myself to the absolute limit.
I woke at five in the morning and went to bed at two. My eyes were permanently bloodshot. My wolf was half-starved, half-mad, and I still kept going.
But on the morning of the Moonmark Exams, I overslept.
I missed the first two critical sections.
The scholarship was gone. My future was shattered. The contract was voided.
During that time, I nearly drove myself to suicide.
I blamed myself constantly. I told myself I was weak, that my body had failed me, that my wolf was broken - that I had let down my school and my self-sacrificing mother.
I spent every spare second working grueling shifts to scrape together tuition money, even after passing out from exhaustion three times at work.
I never complained. Not once.
And now, standing in the dark, I learned that the mother I loved had drugged me on the morning of my exams.
All because of a fake curse and Natalie Lowell.
I stared up at my mother on the terrace, my eyes burning gold.
"Aren't you afraid she'll hate us if she ever finds out?" my father asked.
My mother let out a soft, amused chuckle. The sound of it made my wolf bare its teeth.
Right then, my phone buzzed in my hand.
A MoonPay transfer from my mother.
Twenty-three dollars and fifty-six cents.
A text message followed:
[My sweet girl, I saw some college kids buying iced lattes on my way home from work, and I wanted you to have one.]
[I may not give you a luxurious life, but I want you to have what the other kids have.]
I stared at the exact, uneven numbers on the screen.
My fingers clenched so hard the glass creaked.
Up on the terrace, my mother's voice was dripping with smug satisfaction.
"She will never find out."
"Every couple of weeks, send her a random transfer with odd change."
"It makes her believe those few dollars are literally the last pennies I have to my name."
She took a sip of moonwine.
"Because she doesn't want me to overwork myself, she works herself to the bone doing part-time jobs."
"She's too busy fighting to survive and put food on the table to ever have the time or energy to look into us."
I stood in the alleyway, staring at the history of small, uneven transfers on my phone.
Every time I'd received those twenty-three dollars - or fifteen dollars and forty cents - I'd felt a profound sense of warmth and crushing guilt.
I had starved myself. Worked double shifts. Lived on instant ramen just to relieve her financial burden.
I never could have imagined that every single digit was a calculated move.
It was a leash.
A leash designed to bind me to a lifetime of guilt, keeping me drowning in the mud forever.
Chapter 2
Rage hit me first. Then betrayal. Then this hollow, empty nothing that made my wolf want to throw back her head and HOWL until the whole city heard.
But I didn't.
I swallowed it down. Forced my feet to move. I walked until I was a full block away from that terrace - until the fancy gold lights and the scent of champagne and lies were just a blur behind me.
Then I pulled out my phone and called her.
She picked up on the first ring.
"Sweetheart? What's wrong?"
Her voice was warm. Gentle. The same voice that used to sing me to sleep when I was a pup.
I almost cracked.
"Mother," I whispered. My throat felt like it was full of broken glass. "It's Advisor Tinsley. He keeps - he keeps cornering me in his office. Using my graduation thesis like a LEASH. He won't sign off unless I... unless I do what he wants."
Tears spilled down my cheeks. My wolf was pacing inside me, hackles raised, growling low.
"The way he looks at me makes my skin crawl. He sends messages late at night. Says if I don't cooperate, he'll block my graduation. Mother, please - I need help."
Silence.
Long, awful, stretching silence.
I told myself if she showed even a spark of anger - if she said one word in my defense - I'd hang up. Walk away. Pretend I never heard what I heard on that balcony.
But she didn't.
"Julia, he's a tenured advisor. We're just ordinary wolves with no rank, no gold, no influence. Getting you into that academy took everything we had. Can't you just... tolerate it? For a little while?"
My wolf froze.
"Tolerate it?" The words scraped out of me. "Mother, he TOUCHED me. He backed me against his desk. If I hadn't shifted and bolted - "
The terror I'd been holding in for an entire semester came flooding out. I was shaking so hard my teeth clicked.
"Then wear something more modest," she snapped.
A beat of silence. She must've realized how sharp she sounded.
She let out this weak, fake little cough.
"I'm sorry, sweetheart. Your mother is useless. If you're really that unhappy, why don't you just withdraw? Come home. I'll take care of you. I've raised you this far - I only want you to be happy."
Then she started coughing violently. Gasping. Wheezing like she was about to hack up a lung.
I listened to that performance.
And a cold, ugly realization washed over me.
It had ALWAYS been like this.
When I qualified for the territory physics program in middle school - she coughed. When I got invited to the Lunar Crest Summer Research Program in high school - she coughed louder. She'd take double doses of her pain tonic right in front of me. She'd make sure I saw her getting screamed at by den-keepers or working extra shifts to "afford my dreams."
And every single time, I'd crumble. Guilt crushing me flat.
I'd turn down every opportunity. Every. Single. Time.
She used my love for her to lock me in a cage.
But Natalie? Oh, she NEVER did that to Natalie.
From the day Natalie moved into our dorm, my mother called her EVERY night. Sent her thousands of dollars every week. Donated five million to the academy just so Natalie wouldn't face a single inconvenience. Paid for elite internships that made Natalie's resume glow like the moon.
I was her blood daughter.
Natalie was a stranger.
I opened my mouth to say something - anything - but the line went dead.
She'd hung up on me.
I stood there in the dark, phone pressed to my ear, listening to nothing.
Then my mother's voice drifted down from the terrace again.
"Tell Blake Tinsley to push harder."
My whole body went rigid.
"He needs to disrupt her life enough that she can't graduate on time. Better yet - make sure she has no spare time to earn any gold."
Blake Tinsley.
My advisor.
I'd complained to the academy elders. I'd written letters to the Moon Council. Nothing ever changed.
Because my own MOTHER was the one pulling the strings.
And I'd endured it all in silence - terrified of stressing her out. Terrified of being a burden. Terrified of the guilt she'd drown me in.
I sank down onto the cold concrete of the alley. My claws scraped the ground. My wolf curled up inside me, whimpering, wounded.
I let the tears fall.
Silent. Ugly. Endless.
I cried until the hotel lights dimmed and the streets went quiet and the only sound left was my own heartbeat.
Then I stood up.
I wiped my face. Straightened my spine. My wolf lifted her head.
No more tears.
My mind was completely clear.
Chapter 3
I marched straight into Elder Edith's office and slapped a signed registration scroll onto her desk.
"Elder Edith. I want in. The National Physics Championship."
She blinked. Then a slow, warm smile spread across her face.
"Julia? You finally changed your mind?" She leaned back in her chair, her wolf's eyes glinting with approval. "I was hoping you would. I held onto the registration list two extra days just in case you came around."
She picked up the scroll and scanned it. "You're absolutely sure this time?"
"Yes." My voice didn't waver.
The National Physics Championship was a big deal - a joint competition across every major wolf academy on the continent. Top placement meant a massive gold prize and an automatic invitation to an elite, fully funded research exchange program overseas.
I'd hesitated before. Because I was worried about leaving Mother alone. Because guilt had its claws in me so deep I couldn't breathe.
Now?
I had NOTHING left to lose.
So I threw myself into preparation. I went back to my high school routine - studying day and night, barely sleeping, my wolf pacing restless circles inside my chest.
Then Mother called.
"Julia, how are things at the academy? I heard from someone that you registered for the national physics competition."
I gave a quiet sound of agreement.
Her voice lit up like I'd just handed her a gift. "My girl is so smart! Just do your best, okay? Don't put too much pressure on yourself. Just being selected is already an honor."
A pause. Then, softer: "Do you have enough gold? Let me send you some. You need a nice outfit for the presentation. We can't let the other students look down on you."
And then - right on cue - she started coughing. Violent, hacking, lung-tearing coughs.
A packmate's voice drifted through the receiver. "Julia? Is that you? Your mother's cough is getting worse. She's coughing up BLOOD now. You need to come home and take her to the healer's den!"
Mother immediately barked at the neighbor. "Be quiet! I'm FINE!"
Then, soft and sweet into the microphone: "Julia, don't listen to her. I'm perfectly fine. You focus on your competition. Don't worry about me."
The coughing continued. Loud. Agonizing. Echoing through the speaker like a performance.
I listened to every carefully orchestrated second of it.
She was trying to force me to back out again. She wanted guilt to drag me back to her side like a dog on a leash.
But this time, I just swallowed the bitterness and kept my voice flat.
"Mother. I'm not giving up this opportunity."
Dead silence.
Then, after a long pause, her voice came back - cold, stripped of all that fake warmth.
"I know you can win, Julia."
For the next few days, I blocked out everything. Focused entirely on my mock exams. My wolf pushed me harder than I'd ever pushed before.
The day before the official competition, Elder Edith burst into the study hall, waving my practice paper like a victory flag.
"Julia! Look at this score! An eighty-nine! That's ten points higher than last year's national winning score! If you perform like this tomorrow, first place is YOURS!"
I stared at the red ink. My heart pounded with something dangerous.
Hope.
On the morning of the competition, I arrived early at the academy commons, waiting for the pack shuttle to take us to the Grand Hall of Sciences.
Natalie Lowell was already there, standing near the shuttle, watching me with a smug, knowing smirk.
An icy dread curled through my stomach. My wolf's ears flattened.
A moment later, Elder Edith stepped off the shuttle. She looked at me - and her expression was heavy, complicated, and drowning in disappointment.
"Julia. You cannot board this shuttle."
My blood ran cold.
"You're DISQUALIFIED from today's competition."
