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Chapter 1

DEATH. This word had always given Isabella goose bumps. Although she knew it was inevitable, now that she knew how much time she'd left. It seemed silly to be afraid. She just lived in the moment, sinking into the now - forgetting her terrible fate - and when she heard this song, she knew she could escape her reality for a few minutes.

Isabella and her brother were in her ghost-walled bedroom, draped with maroon curtains and lacking in warmth. An unmade bed covered in navy blue sheets kissed the south wall, a rocking chair danced by the window, and the wooden desk held a computer, a sound system, and a mismatched mountain of papers.

A dirty sock peeked out from under the bed, linens served as a rug, and an empty pizza box from two nights earlier played hide-and-seek whenever the door was closed or opened - her room hadn't been this clean in five years. And it took a lot of effort to get it to that state. For the first twelve years of her life, she'd been forced to clean it by her mother's scowls.

"Bella," Leslie said hesitantly. "Bella?"

"Isabella." She corrected almost instantly and turned her gaze to him. Bella sounded girlish, childish.

"Isabella ." He gasped with exhaustion and hopelessness, looked her in the eye, and folded the page he was reading in half. "Man, your music is giving me a headache. Can I turn it down?" He laid the book on the bed and it closed on its own.

She nodded; it took him long enough. Lee fully gained his werewolf abilities. A werewolf is a human being with the ability to turn into a wolf.

He smiled. "That's why you're my favorite twin." He leaned over the headboard of the bed and switched the music to background. "I'll be done with this by tonight." He flashed the too-thick book in her direction.

She snorted. Of course he'd be done with it by tonight, that was why he'd brought the latest William Gibson. "I thought you were done with that series. Maybe I just hate that Holly Black. She's got all your attention now."

She didn't understand his obsession with books. He wanted to go into publishing after school, while she - well ... she wasn't sure. Doctor, maybe join the military, scientist.

When she looked at her brother, he smiled devilishly. "When I'm done with Ironside, you'll have me all to yourself."

As she answered him, she stared straight ahead into the dark night wonder of flowing rivers, petrified trees, a canopy of glass, and yellow rocks racing across the mountains. "Whatever."

In Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming - where a constant sun globe beamed down on the transfigured beauty of Yellowstone Lake with its roaring, clear, blue water, where Grand Prismatic Spring is egg-shaped and boardwalks accompanied its edges, where the grasslands - fresh and golden - were the mother of over a thousand species of wildlife. Here the werewolf park had retreated to a secret civilization where humans dared not enter.

After the number of werewolves decreased alarmingly due to the constant hunger of the Wendigos, their ancestors decided to form packs. This made it easy to fight en masse. To defeat a single Wendigo, it took more than a hundred werewolves.

They led as normal a life as was possible under the circumstances without attracting the attention of the outside world. Only older - over two hundred years old - wiser werewolves were allowed to have contact with the human world. With these years, one should be able to control oneself enough not to attack humans.

A few minutes later, Lee spoke up again. "Do you think Dad will let me go to a club on my birthday?" he asked.

"No."

"He always takes things too seriously."

"Tell me about it." She leaned heavily against the windowsill, crossing her arms and legs. "He's just anxious. And you know his obsession with Wendigos."

A wendigo is a purely man-eating beast that indulged in cannibalism. He was constantly starving for werewolf meat, and no matter how much he ate, he always felt like he was starving.

"Ugh." He picked up his book. "That's just a crazy legend. Wendigos are to us what we're to humans: just a crazy fascination. Although..." he paused and looked up. "We don't make millions writing about these creatures." The disgust was clear in his voice.

"Then why do you hate them so much, huh?" her eyebrows lifted questioningly. "Dad's right. They're evil; they've no respect for humanity."

His face was already half absorbed in the book. "But Bella -"

Her glare interrupted him.

"Isabella ." he said snootily, running a hand through his hair to fan a mixture of lemon, mushroom, and sunflower into her nose. "We were five the last time we saw one." He lowered the book and looked at her briefly. "Don't you think they're extinct?"

She shrugged. "I don't know."

"Okay," he said. He took a deep breath. "Let's assume they're still alive. Don't you think they'd have attacked by now? They can't starve for that long."

"Well ..." She made herself comfortable, lifted herself up and sat on the windowsill. "Don't forget that we're not the only thing they can feed on. They could be hibernating, too."

"All at once? No, I doubt it." He shook his head. "They prefer werewolves, and we're the only ones of our kind in this village."

She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. She tried not to think about what they'd just talked about. She felt the pounding waves of her heart beating against her chest. Isabella closed her eyes and counted down from ten to drive away the fear. It's going to be okay. I'll be fine.

"Let's play Scrabble." She finally said when she realized she couldn't get her breathing under control.

"What's the point? You always win."

Yikes, "What am I supposed to do while you read?"

"I don't know." His voice sounded dismissive; obviously he'd rather be reading. "Go bug someone else. Mom, Dad, I don't know."

"You're not funny."

"You call that a sibling." He met her gaze, and his face softened instantly. "How about we play Scrabble tomorrow all you want?"

"And chess?"'

"And chess." He agreed through clenched teeth, his gaze already wandering wildly across the page.

She stared dejectedly out the window. A dog was rummaging in the trash can. It was a husky or an Alaskan malamute, she didn't know which. He stood in a territorial posture. He could've been beautiful, exotic even, but then he looked up and she flinched, averting her eyes involuntarily. His eyes were a luminous mystery, perfectly suited to that of a night.

But that wasn't why she looked away. The familiarity she saw in them was overwhelmingly unbearable: grief, lost innocence, and the need to belong - she knew the same strange but rare demonic affliction bore witness in her own eyes - seemed like a terrible revelation.

Her lips tightened, refusing to let out a growl as she sensed her sister before Callie opened Isabella's bedroom door.

Lee shook her head disapprovingly at Isabella.

When the door opened, a gush of air swirled around the room: spaghetti and ground beef. Isabella inhaled slowly, her eyes closed, her throat tightened, her tongue pushed out to lick her lips. Her stomach growled in approval.

"Food, damn it," Lee was already descending the stairs. His footsteps made the wood protest bitterly. Within seconds, his footsteps came to a halt; a chair made a screeching sound as it slid against the tiles. Isabella gritted her teeth hard. Lee slumped heavily against her.

"Callie," she hissed in a hushed whisper. Isabella didn't turn to look at her. She didn't need to. She knew the sight that awaited her: Callie's jerky hands would tremble slightly, gripping the doorknob with unnecessary tension.

Her steps were calculated and hesitant. "Don't worry, Isabella ." she said in a soothing motherly voice that Isabella didn't understand. Callie was only five years older. "You'll find your mate. He's out there somewhere." As strong as her voice was, she couldn't hide her uncertainty.

Isabella didn't want to roll her eyes. She really didn't want to, but she couldn't help herself. Callie was just so naive.

"What're the odds?" Isabella looked down at her feet. Her shoulders slumped and she exhaled loudly. Now Isabella understood how Atlas felt, carrying the whole world on his shoulders. "For five years I've searched, for five years I've hoped." She met Callie's steady gaze and almost instantly Isabella's eyes glazed over. "I don't want to die. I don't want to leave Dad." That thought scared her more than the infamous Wendigo. An involuntary shiver ran up and down her spine, and a sudden surge of heat exploded in her body, finally settling on her heart, which pounded with deadly speed. She buried her shaking hands under her arms.

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