Marked From Birth

g in her veins. Audrey stumbled, her knees hitting the cold, polished tile of the main hallway with a sickening thud. Audrey winced, her skin stinging, but she didn't look up immediately. She knew

fe had been a series of tragedies starting the very second she was born. Her mother, the beautiful Luna Elena, had bled out while holding Audrey for the first and last time. Her father hadn't seen a miracle in his daughter's eyes; he had only seen the reason his world had ended. Grief had festered into a cold, hard hatred that turned his heart to stone. Then came Luna Selene. Selene was a woman of sharp angles and even sharper ambitions. She had married Terren and birthed Samantha, but she lived in the constant shadow of a dead woman. No matter how much she tried to rule the pack, she knew Terren still kept Elena's memory locked in a secret part of his soul. Selene took that insecurity out on Audrey, and she had raised Samantha to do the same. They had tried to "get rid" of Audrey several times-"accidents" in the woods, "forgotten" meals-but somehow, she always survived. It was as if a guardian angel was holding her hand through the dark. The true rejection, however, had come on her eighteenth birthday. In the Moon Shadow Pack, eighteen was the year of the Awakening. It was the night a wolf was supposed to howl for the first time, and unique powers were revealed. Audrey had spent that night sitting on her floor, staring at the moon, waiting for the shift, the heat, the power. It never came. Morning had found her still hu