Unwritten Daughter — Cain Drexen Rejects Wren

Payne Drexler, reject Winhale as my mate. He rejected me in front of 300 people. Then my family forgot my name for a year. Tonight, I forgot theirs back.

I rolled my bike down the gravel with the engine dead, past the gatehouse, past the cameras my brother installed and never once checked. At the end of the drive, I stopped and looked back at the house I was born in. 22 windows, every one of them lit, Inger.

Not one of them looking for me. Goodbye. You won't miss me. I'll miss you anyway. That's the part that makes me pathetic. Then I kick the Ducati awake and let it scream. My name is Wren Hale, the fourth child and only daughter of Alpha Marcus Hale and Luna

Eleni Hale of the Iron Veil Pack. 300 years of bloodline, three older brothers, and a father who used to call me his last good thing. Used to. One year ago tonight, at my 17th birthday, my mother covered the pack hall in ingo and otred because I refused to wear pink, ink, black candles, dark plums, my grandmother's silver. Four months of planning

who hates parties and she got every single detail right. Then Cain Drexen walked in, heir to the Drexen pack, my mate. I'd scented him at fifteen and spent two years counting down to the night he could claim me in front of the packs. He stood under my mother's black candles, looked at me in my green dress, and said it loud enough for three hundred wolves

to hear. I, Cain Drexter, reject Windhale as my mate.