The letter was exactly the same as the last one. Pale yellow paper and envelope, handwritten script, it was addressed to James Edward Alexander Lestrade III. He knew my full name, but not my full address. The letters always came forwarded from the mansion.

Although I knew that Cal Henderson still thought I was bound to him by the arrangements our parents had made before I could talk, I had a sick sort of curiosity about the content of the letter. The last one had been so pompous and entitled that I’d pinned it to my fridge with an “I <3 NEW YORK” magnet just to remind myself why I wasn’t marrying him. I could do so much better.

I sat by the window and gazed down twenty-seven floors at the city below, reminding myself just how many other people there were between me and him. In the city, I was anonymous. He still thought I lived at that godforsaken mansion.

I took a deep breath and opened the letter, slowly unfolding the yellow paper.

Dearest James,

I grow weary of your silence. I know better than most that there is no expiry on grief, no time limit for mourning, but you owe me at least a response in regard to your wellbeing, and our arrangement. You are bound and betrothed to me, and it is my right as your alpha to know that our future is secure. I trust that you have stayed true, and will be ready when the time comes for us to be together.

I paused reading the letter to laugh softly to myself. I was still a virgin, but in no way was I saving myself for him. I hadn’t told him yet, but I had no intention of ever seeing Cal again, and hadn’t for almost a year. The letter continued:

On that note, I’d like to inform you that the time is coming soon. Within the year, I will be mayor of our city, and I will fetch you to be my omega. We will be wed in the spring. I cannot wait to take you into my arms, beloved James. Your porcelain beauty and clear blue eyes haunt my dreams. Please acknowledge this letter, beloved. My sanity depends on it.

Your Alpha,

Cal Henderson

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Which were hazel, by the way, green flecked with gold and brown, and not a single speck of blue. He didn’t even know the person he professed to love. He owned me, or so he thought, and those things seemed to be the same to most alphas. The sad part was that the way my parents had raised me, if he had just given me a little more attention over the years, actually visited and came to see me, I might have fallen in love with him. I was so isolated, chained to that mansion, literally at times, kept hidden from the rest of the world, a precious, untouchable jewel. It was the loneliest existence I could imagine. I’d actually even begun to long for Cal to visit, just so that I might have some human interaction, some entertainment. But I never liked him. And he never looked at my eyes. I didn’t haunt his thoughts. He had visited exactly five times over the course of my life. I was convenient, and when he came for me, I would be a toy. Nothing else.

I was starting to see the possibility of another life for myself.

I pulled my knit sweater in around me and let my attention fall back to the city below. The evidence of ruin was still left, where the bombs last year had destroyed so many city landmarks and taken so many lives. I immediately regretted that I had thought of the beautiful landmarks before the lives of my fellow shifters, and those few humans that got caught in the crossfire of the targeted attacks. Why did people mean less to me than objects?

The guilt washed over me, and then I realized why I felt so ambivalent about the massacre. My parents, my entire family, in fact, had died in the attacks, because they had been out celebrating Christmas Eve without me. Enjoying a freedom I wasn’t good enough for. Or was too good for. Whatever the justification had been that week.

That was the kicker. Their deaths were my freedom. The day I found out was the best day of my life. Good people had probably died in those bombings. They hadn’t discriminated. It wasn’t only my rich, terrible parents. I tried to remind myself of that. I was still trying to learn to care about other people, to believe they had the possibility for goodness, when I had spent my entire life with only myself to care for. Human decency. Wolves could have it, I had to believe that, or there was no point to any of my hard work in the past year.

I had gotten my own place in the city. It had big windows and I could walk to nearly everything. I had bought my own clothes, gotten my own hair cut. I had no idea if I looked good, but I was taking steps toward becoming my own person, and not the plaything of my family. I bought my own food every day. I chose what to eat and what to say and who to speak to, and that was the worst part of all of it. I had no idea how to interact with people I didn’t know. Often, despite my loneliness, I chose to speak to nobody at all.

I needed a second accountant to check my first accountant’s work. I was overwhelmed by the amount of money I’d inherited. I knew that I wanted most of it to go to charity, but I couldn’t yet understand if I would ever be able to learn the skills I needed to work and support myself. So how much should I keep? It seemed that I had enough money to last several lifetimes, and no intention of having children. It seemed wrong.

Omega wolf shifters were able to get pregnant and have babies, and for most of my life that had been the fate I was prepared for. I could barely care for myself, and I had no interest in being knotted by any alpha who wanted to own me. It didn’t seem to be in the cards anymore.

My empty apartment felt smaller than the single bedroom I had lived in most of my life. When I felt claustrophobic, like I did then, I would slip on my shoes and walk out into the bustling city, to find a coffee shop or a park bench to people watch from. Rushing for my door like I was racing to the exit sign of a burning building, I grabbed my keys from their hook by the door. I slid on a winter coat and boots and almost forgot to actually use the keys to lock the door before I left. Remembering at the last minute, I turned back and slid the key into the lock. It seemed strange to me, to be on the outside of a locked door. I was usually on the inside.

As soon as I left my apartment building, I was glad I’d worn my warmest coat. Crisp October air turned to November chill as the bony fingers of winter grasped for the last warmth in my blood. The last leaves suffered alone on their skeletal trees. My boots crunched over brown and orange leaves while older, wetter debris clumped in the street gutter after the previous night’s rain.

Someone bumped into me from behind and I jumped to the side. They rushed past, and I hung my head and kept walking quietly, more to the side of the street. I walked too slowly for the city, spoke too softly, apologized too much. Despite that, I had embraced this life as a trial by fire. It was completely different from everything I knew, and that was perfect. Everything I had known had made me miserable.

I shivered and tried to walk a little faster, I needed my slender body to generate heat. Wolf shifters generally ran warm, but I had never needed to use that ability to warm myself. The winter air gnawed at my ears until my jaw ached and I finally couldn’t stand it. I turned down the street toward the cafe. Hot coffee would solve all of my problems.

I passed a huge, wrecked lot where a new high-rise was being built. After the attack, construction companies had rushed to fill the voids the bombs had created. I didn’t know what had been there before, but it was strange to think that it had been a place where shifters gathered in a large number, a church or maybe a daycare, and now, some big real estate company was making money off of their loss.

A car rolled by me playing loud hip-hop and I jumped a little. I noticed a man behind me by a block, mostly by his scent. He wasn’t just a man. He was an alpha wolf; a strange one I didn’t recognize.

I turned back down the street and began to walk a little faster. I had been told every day of my beauty, my purpose. Those things I knew. I knew my soft auburn hair and pale skin and pretty eyes were too tempting for the average alpha to resist, and that was why I had been hidden away from the world. It was sick, but I’d been told that more than I’d been told ‘I love you’. To my family, I had been a very expensive possession.

A blood test had determined I was an omega when I was born. Blood tests were one of the things on the ballot this election, along with several other laws that dealt with shifters, and how they should be treated by society. After the terrorist attacks by Nux Industries last year, public opinion was shifting. Cal was right in the middle of it, so I stayed as far away from it as possible.

The alpha had followed me for three blocks. I was still a few blocks away from the cafe I'd been walking to, and what if he just followed me in there? I couldn't turn and face him down without looking crazy. He wasn't even necessarily following me. So I decided to test it. I waited until I passed an alley, and then ducked into it, turning quickly enough that he would have to be deliberately following me to see it. I walked a few steps down the alley and waited to see if he passed.

It felt like five minutes went by with my heart beating, and then the alpha stepped into the alley, a large silhouette blocking my only easy exit. I swallowed the lump in my throat and tried to summon my bravery.

"What do you want from me? I'm claimed," I said, lying through my teeth. I supposed I could always call Cal if anything did happen to me.

The alpha was tall, taller than most, at least six foot five, which put him nearly a foot above me. He had a thick beard and cruel, shimmering eyes that shone green even in the darkness. I thought I saw fangs when he smiled, as if he were already half-shifting toward his wolf form. I felt a shiver run down my spine. Should I run? What were the chances of outrunning him, especially if he shifted?

I took a step backward. "What do you want?" I demanded again, trying to make my voice louder, more bold, even though I was stumbling backward over myself as he came closer and closer, his long legs closing the distance between us too quickly for my comfort.

"You know what I want. I smell you, omega. Not an alpha on you, either." He crowded me toward a large dumpster. I tried to move away from it, to get past him in the other direction, ready to run. He grabbed me and slammed me hard against the cold metal of the dumpster, and my head swung backward and smacked hard against the bin.

I screamed, the clouds of our breath between us in my dizzy vision. I reached for his jacket and pushed at him, kicking low, near his knee caps, but I hoped to catch his balls with the toes of my boot. The smell of garbage and alpha musk mixed into a revolting cocktail against my nostrils and they flared with disgust, which he must have seen, because he slammed into my face with his heavy fist and shoved closer against me.

I felt his long, hot tongue on my cheek and that was when I lost it. I snarled as my beautiful face shifted into a snout full of sharp teeth. My clothes tore and fell away from my body and I went for his throat, a small but vicious wolf tearing at a tower of a man. He grabbed my fur and tore, howling in pain as I clawed and bit. Besides silver and fire, wolf fangs and claws were the best weapons against another wolf. As soon as my fangs sank into his throat, he snarled and he shifted too, just as naked and feral as me. He threw me off of him, and I went flying in the alley, whimpering in pain as my bones broke, my spine shattered by the brick wall.

He was proportionately huge as a wolf, a dark, bloody figure in the alley. He limped over toward me, and I could see the blood dripping, sticky and matting his fur, pooling in palm-sized puddles on the filthy ground. The scent of copper burned in my nostrils. I could barely move. My body would heal, I had gotten in a worse blow in than he had, but the time it took might be the difference between life and death. He was still on his feet, and I was stuck, prone, praying he bled out faster than he could limp.

His pant was loud and wet in my ears, and as he stepped right up to me and leaned down, I felt his hot breath on my pointed, furry, oversensitive ear. I shut my hazel eyes and took a deep breath, ready for death.

A loud, alpha howl filled the deathly silence around us. My eyes flashed open, and the bleeding wolf above me lifted his head to gaze down the alley. He growled, hackles raised. I heard another howl, louder, more insistent, warning, calling all the wolves in the area. The wolf above me moved, his stance changing to block me from the howling alpha that had interrupted him. It could have been seen as a protective gesture, but I knew it was anything but. It was just defensive. Possessive. He thought the other alpha was challenging him for me. I had no idea what he was doing. All I heard was a sad, protesting howl, and something about it was so familiar that my pounding heart skipped a beat. I was left breathless by the sadness of it. Again, and again, the strange alpha howled.

The dumpster blocked my view of him, but he had my attacker's attention, completely. The bleeding alpha wolf was reared up aggressively toward the howling stranger, and slowly, I came to my senses enough to realize what was happening. I was being rescued.

My bones were beginning to heal. I crawled on my belly to the corner of the dumpster, as quietly as I could, so that I didn't pull the injured wolf's attention back to myself. He stepped further and further away from me with every howl the other wolf made. Just an inch further, and I could get a glimpse of him. My curiosity could very well have been the death of me. I shifted my paws forward inch by inch, and then...yes. There he was.

He was beautiful. Almost as large as the wolf who had attacked me, but far more gracefully shaped, his thick fur groomed and shimmering in the moonlight of the alley. I caught his determined amber eyes, and he nodded, just the tiniest movement of my head, combined with eye contact that sparked something deep inside my heart. I pleaded with him silently to understand that I couldn't run. I couldn't move my back yet, only my legs still worked.

Louder, the beautiful alpha howled. Several scents rushed to me at once, and I glanced around to see a few more wolves at the edges of the alleyway, moving in closer. I wasn't alone anymore. The bleeding alpha was outnumbered, and, I noticed, his posture had changed. He was beginning to slump.

He shouldn't have shown that weakness. Not with another alpha right there, challenging him for a mate. The wolf who had saved me ran forward and slammed my stalker to the ground, pinning him with a paw on his throat.