Kill. Me. Now.

“I gotta go … find Kaja.” I spun on my heel and strode away, mortified, pausing to call over my shoulder, “Thanks for the food.”

Why did I say that?

As female alpha heirs, we were expected to stay virgins until we took a breeding mate. Most never followed the rules. I did. My dad said it was important to him and one day I’d understand. Pretty sure that was never going to happen though. I’d just freaking admitted my V-status to the four Midnight princes.

Kill me now.

I rolled my shoulders, trying to dislodge the discomfort settling there. Maybe it wasn’t as big of a deal as I was making it. Maybe they didn’t care as much as I thought.

Sucking in a deep breath, I decided to take a peek over my shoulder and see. If they were staring, I’d leave the planet and go live on Mars. If they weren’t, they’d probably already forgotten about it.

Here we go.

Four sets of yellow eyes tracked me like prey, and my stomach flipped.

Mother Mage, have mercy.

Mars it is. Right after I find Kaja.

Pushing my virgin confession from my mind, I scanned the beach for my BFF. How long ago did Kaja leave to find her sisters? Ten minutes? Fifteen? Twenty?

I jogged away from the princes and sexy-but-possibly-herpesy Beo playing volleyball and looked over the crowd. Evil Barbie glared back at me, but other than that, I found no one I really knew, besides when I was serving food to them. Heading up the beach back toward the wooded path, I hollered, “Kaja? Nell? Rue?”

Nothing.

Maybe I’d missed them and they went the other way. I spotted a set of rocky cliffs melting into the sand. A great place for football or tag but too far away to see whether people were there. If nothing else, it was a good place to hide. The sun had fully set, and only the moon lit my path.

When I got away from the hubbub of my schoolmates on the beach, I picked up on the sound of someone sniffling up near the cliffs. The sound was high-pitched enough to identify the person as a female, and those broken sobs meant she was crying.

“Stupid Nai,” she wailed.

I pulled to a stop in the sand as her words and voice registered. Was this Kaja? Was she upset that I’d lingered too long to hang with the boys?

“Kaja?” I called, picking up my pace and drawing closer. The overwhelming scent of seawater and sunbaked sand made it difficult to scent my friend by smell.

“Nai?” she called back, her voice breaking. “I’m over here.”

Her voice came from behind a rock jutting up out of the sand, and I jogged toward my friend’s voice. I turned the corner … and nothing was there. “Kaj—?”

My breath caught in my throat as a massive wolf launched from a nearby sand-dune right at me. His mottled fur was impossible to distinguish in the darkness, only that he had a multitude of dark gold and brown shades.

The thought barely registered before the wolf crashed into me. We toppled, and he pinned me to the sand with a teeth-baring snarl.

Shock ripped through me, and I brought my forearm up, just in time, as he lunged for my neck. My vision turned white, and I screamed with agony as his jaws shattered the bone in my forearm.

Shit. He’s trying to kill me.

The searing pain overwhelmed me, slowing my thoughts. Nausea roiled through my stomach, and I whimpered.

Pull it together, Nai! You know what to do in a fight.

Breathing through the pain, I grabbed the back of the wolf’s head and then shoved my own forearm deeper into the wolf’s mouth to gag him.

The wolf choked and instinctively loosened his jaw, but I wasn’t done. I’d practiced this a million times with my dad—although not injured and bleeding like this. Adrenaline coursed through me, keeping most of the pain at bay.

I pushed back harder, still holding the animal’s head and pressing my forearm into his mouth, climbing to my knees. The wolf fell backward, gagging, and yanked his head away from me, releasing my arm from his jaws. I’d been able to get to my feet, which increased my chances of survival, but it would take a few days for the damage on my arm to heal—even with our quick healing regeneration.

Time to go on the offense. I called up my wolf, there just under the surface, but when I tried to shift. Nothing.

Dammit! Plan B.

Reaching out, I grasped the wolf by the back of the neck, bunching his fur into my fingers. It was risky, but there was no way I could run from this fight. He’d attack me from behind and then leave me to bleed out. Whoever this wolf was, he wanted me dead.

I drove my knee into the animal’s neck, aiming for the larynx but hitting the wolf in its chest instead. It yipped and tried to back up, but luck was on my side. Still holding its neck skin in a firm grasp with my good hand, I drove my knee forward a second time just as the animal dipped toward me. The crunch of bone made me grin as my knee smashed into its throat. As the wolf tore loose from my hold, the glint of broken glass caught my eye. Perfect. Reaching over, I grabbed for the broken bottle while blood continued to pour down from the open gash in my arm, saturating the sand. After picking up my makeshift weapon, I then faced the wolf.

“Let’s dance, asshole!” My vision tunneled, but if I showed weakness, I was dead. 91.5% of these fights were bluffing. I might still die, especially if I fainted from blood loss, but I needed to appear strong. “Come on!”

The animal lowered its head, wheezing and sputtering. Hopefully, I’d smashed his trachea. Go, me. Dad would be proud … if I lived to tell him. I sucked in a deep breath through my nose to scent the wolf.

Male musk and heavy pinewood smoke, something wolves did to mask their scent. Of course it was a male. Females didn’t initiate dominance fights nearly as often as males. I stared him in the eyes, begging my wolf to come to the surface.

Come on, baby. Shift and tear this guy in two.

The wolf stilled, cocking his head to the side.

My wolf hesitated, and shame burned my cheeks.

Not again.

“Nai?” Noble called.

His voice was far off, but it was enough to spook the wolf. He snarled at me before darting into the trees.

“Coward!” I screamed as my legs crumpled. I collapsed in the sand, dropping the glass shard and staring at the stars above me while they swirled.

Shit. My arm hurt. As the adrenaline from the fight wore off, pain throbbed through my arm from my wrist to my elbow. I panted, trying to maintain consciousness while blood seeped through my fingers and soaked into the sand.

Someone set me up. They set me up good.

This wasn’t a dominance fight. That was done in front of peers and witnesses. This was a mother-freaking ambush.

Even though I didn’t know why, I did have an inkling as to who could’ve set this up. No matter how many times my father and I did that damn drill, calling up my wolf when under duress had always been my biggest weakness. Only someone from Crescent could know that.

But was Nolan’s wolf that psycho? He would benefit from my death, but to do it like this, in a dark patch of forest without anyone around, it was low, even for him. I wasn’t aware of any other enemies though.

So before I died here, bleeding out on the sand, I wanted to know one thing:

Did my freaking cousin just try to kill me?

If I survived, I’d ask him with a sword in my hand for good measure. The coward.

“Help!” I managed to get out before weakness pummeled me. How was there so much blood? I leaned over and saw the stained red sand around my arm. It was clumpy; my gash was still free-flowing.