Chapter 1

My father hated me for ten years.

He blamed me for my mother's disappearance. He hated that my face bore no resemblance to hers.

He adopted a girl who looked almost exactly like her — eight out of ten, people said — and spoiled her rotten.

He took her on trips around the world, brought her to Ice-Moon Pack gatherings, paraded her on talk shows, and announced to every werewolf in the territory that she was his one and only daughter.

Meanwhile, I wore ill-fitting hand-me-downs and slept in the servants' quarters.

He let her bully me, slander me, push me — a girl who couldn't swim — into Moonlight Lake.

He said I deserved it.

And I believed him.

Until the day I turned sixteen. That was the day Mom came back.

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Three days from now was my sixteenth birthday.

Every year, on that same day, Father threw a birthday banquet — for Vivienne Hartwell.

Every single classmate had received Vivienne's birthday invitation. Every one of them except me.

"Rosalind, don't take it personally," Vivienne said, drifting up to my desk with practiced sympathy. "It was probably the butler's mistake. He must have miscounted and missed one."

She stood there, her face a mask of apologetic innocence.

I kept my head down, working through my problem sets without so much as a glance in her direction.

I'd had nearly ten years to study Vivienne's tricks. I'd long since stopped being surprised by any of them.

"Vivienne, why are you even explaining yourself to her?" A classmate shot to her feet, indignant on Vivienne's behalf. "You're too kind, that's the problem. That's why she keeps walking all over you."

"Exactly!" another chimed in. "She's a servant's daughter, freeloading under your roof, eating your family's food, going to school on your father's money — and instead of being grateful, she steals from you. Anyone else would have thrown her out by now."

"She's nothing but an ungrateful little snake!"

"She's just jealous, Vivienne. Jealous of your family name, your grades, your popularity."

"Better she doesn't come at all. Last thing we need is for her to ruin a perfectly good birthday party."

"She lives at Hartwell Manor anyway — she doesn't need an invitation. On the mistress's birthday, shouldn't the help be there to serve?"

Laughter rippled through the room.

Vivienne waited until they'd had their fill, then spoke in her soft, unhurried way.

"Oh, please — I wouldn't ask Rosalind to do that. Other days, maybe, but that day is her birthday too."

She tilted her head, an artful little frown playing at her lips. "Rosalind, I'm so sorry. I did want to invite you to cut the cake with me. But Father said no. Can't exactly blame him, can we, after what you did? It's only natural he doesn't want you there."

I picked up my pen and threw it directly at her face.

"Get out."

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