His Cold Heart, My Broken Fate

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Chapter 1 — Mira

The floor was cold and hard under my hands and knees. Like stone. Like it had always been.

Outside, the storm was tearing the sky apart. Thunder cracked. Lightning split the darkness. Wind beat against the windows so hard I thought the glass would give. And through it all, the full moon stared down at me like it was waiting for something.

I was powerful. I could shift whenever I wanted to, not just on a full moon like most wolves. That strength lived inside me like a fire I could never quite put out. But strength didn't mean freedom. Not here. Not in this house.

The door flew open.

Celia walked in the way she always did — like the air in the room belonged to her. She picked up a bowl and a candle from somewhere and slammed them onto the table, her face twisted with something that wasn't quite anger and wasn't quite hate. It was both.

"It's your birthday today," she said. The words came out like something dirty she wanted off her tongue.

My chest locked up. I pressed my palms flat against the floor and tried to breathe.

Then I saw him behind her.

My father's eyes found me before he even stepped through the doorway. That look. I knew it. I had known it my whole life.

"I told you to stay away from that table!" he roared.

I opened my mouth to say I hadn't touched it. I hadn't been anywhere near it. But the words stuck in my throat because it didn't matter. It never mattered what I actually did. It only mattered that I existed.

My mother died the night I was born. He never let me forget it.

"I didn't kill her," I said. My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to.

That was enough.

"How dare you talk back to me!"

His fist hit my face before I could flinch. The force sent me down hard, my palm scraping raw against the floor. I tasted blood. Warm and metal and familiar.

I tried to get up. I always tried to get up.

"You're a bastard!" he screamed down at me. "My beloved is gone because of you. My heart has been rotting since the night you came into this world and I will never forgive you. Never."

I had heard those words so many times they should have felt dull by now. They didn't. They still cut exactly the same.

He grabbed his mug off the table and threw it at my face. The coffee hit first, scalding, and then the ceramic shattered across my cheek. I couldn't see straight. Everything went blurry and hot.

I heard him walk away. Heard him tell someone to deal with me.

The maid came. She grabbed my arm and hauled me out of the room the way you drag a piece of furniture you don't want anymore.

"You b***h," she muttered under her breath. "You always add to my work."

She dropped me in the hallway and left.

I lay there on the ground. Head pounding. Skin burning. Stomach empty. I couldn't remember the last time I'd eaten.

I had promised myself I wouldn't cry anymore. I had made that promise so many times.

I broke it again.

The tears came and I let them, because there was no one there to see and nothing left inside me worth holding back. This was my life. This was all it had ever been.

But somewhere beneath the pain, beneath the hunger and the cold floor and the sound of the storm, something else was burning too.

Quiet. Patient.

Waiting.