Lily King Would Rather Howl Alone! — Bonus Chapter 1

*Fifteen Years Later*
***Lily*** 

“Wren is going to need all of us now, Lily,” she says without turning. Her voice is airy, with that edge of self-sacrificial drama she loves to perform.
We are probably into what must be the largest walk-in closet on this continent. It’s massive—like luxury showroom massive. Walls lined with backlit shelves, dresses draped like art, glass drawers full of silk and futility. Every inch of the place screams curated perfection. Just like her.
She stands at the vanity like she’s onstage, the mirror catching her from three angles. Her robe slips off one shoulder, red lips pursed as she reapplies another coat of her infamous blood-red lipstick. She doesn’t turn. 
Of course not. Why would she?
“This training program she got approved for in the Diamond Claw pack will be wonderful. It’ll strengthen alliances, and it’s such a perfect opportunity for her to meet other wolves. She might even find her fated mate, imagine that! Would you mind being a little interested in joining this family matters for once?”
I bite down so hard on my tongue that I taste blood.
I take two steps forward until my reflection stands behind hers like a shadow.
“I was your previous family,” I say, my voice low and sharp. “Can’t you please stop forgetting that for once in your life?”
*Like I’m not your mistake.*
Mother sighs—deeply, dramatically, as if I’d burdened her with another tedious truth she’d rather ignore. “This again, Lily?” She dabbles at the corner of her mouth with a silk tissue. “We’re past that. Wren is already packing her bags. You know I can’t go with her—Goddess knows I would if I could, but I can’t. I’m counting on you.”
Her chestnut eyes flick up to mine in the mirror, just briefly. “She’s not like you. She’s softer. She needs care. Oh, my poor Wren, all alone in a new place. She’s not even eighteen yet.”
I almost bare my teeth at her reflection.
Right. 
Poor Wren. 
Perfect Wren. 
The daughter she actually shows up for.
She might not recall or doesn’t care—the way I tried to hold her hand as she always left me alone here in the pack to do Goddess what with who-knows-who. I was nine. Maybe ten. Maybe younger. Old enough to know I wasn’t worth her time. And I was younger than Wren when I started to get used to it. 
Wren would never know how it felt, growing up with the knowledge that your mother would rather stay anywhere but take care of her daughter. Too busy begging for a male who should’ve rotted in the ground years before he finally did.
Cedar had to show up for her to even remember she had a daughter. If it weren’t for him, I would have been out of this fucking house a long time ago. I only tolerate her because of him and Wren. My sister is not to blame for the shitty mother I had. So fucking different from what she had—has.
“Horrible.” I deadpan. “How dare the pack say Wren would stay without her precious, dearest, mother,” I say, my voice syrupy with venom.
Mother turns, her gaze suddenly sharp. “It’s not just me, Lily. She’d be without her father, too.”
I scoff. “She can write you guys a letter. You know, phones can help, too.”
Mother gives me a scathing look. “Lily! It’s hard for your sister. New training, new pack. Just last week, while you were busy pretending to have something to do, she cried because she was going to miss us. Your sister is so pure, so innocent, Lily. She doesn’t have your, uh, cleverness. She’s young and naive. She needs her parents.”  
I snort out a laugh. 
Mother’s head tilts to the side, and her chestnut eyes zero in on me, assessing me. “You know why I chose you? To go with her?”
I shrug, bored. “Tossed a coin?”
“No. I chose you because it would be good for you.”
I blink. “Excuse me?”
“You’ve grown so much since you started training with Cedar. You’ve learned discipline. Skill. Strength. But there’s more out there. This program—Lily, it could really sharpen you. You don’t know what life can throw your way. I feel like you should go. Seriously.”
“And Az?” I ask, lips curling. “Let me guess: this would prepare me to be a good future Luna for the golden boy?”
“Well, you do want to be a good leader next to the future Alpha, don’t you?”
I stare at her.
*Am I not fucking enough?*
“I cannot be your first choice.” 
“You aren’t,” she says flatly, shoulders dropping. Mother has plenty of faults, but lack of honesty was never among them. 
And that is the thing about my mother—she would burn you with honesty and pretend she was doing you a favor.
I move in closer. I can hear her pulse. Painfully familiar. It is infuriatingly calm.
Heartbeats are like fingerprints, one of a kind, distinctive, not the easiest way to tell people apart, the scent is, but mother makes me so fucking angry. She doesn’t care if she wrongs anyone—her own daughter—in the process. She just expected that after treating me like shit for years, she can now, after meeting her fated mate—the true one—start to take care of me.
Her pulse is calm. 
She’s always been like this. Okay with everything. 
Okay when she left me behind. 
Okay when she forgot my birthdays. 
Okay after letting my father make my childhood a horror show. 
Okay now, talking to me like I hadn’t lived part of my life clawing my way through her neglect.
She was the first to hold me. She told me that once, like it meant something. But it didn’t. Because she was also the first to walk away.
She reaches for a necklace on the velvet tray in front of her. “Cedar would love it if you agreed to go,” she says.
There it is. The card she loved to play.
Of course she’s using him.
“I’ll think about it,” I say, voice tight. I can’t say no to Cedar.
She turns fully to me now, her silk robe whispering as she moves. “Why do you treat Cedar with warmth, and not me? I’m your mother, Lily.”
Oh, no. Not this conversation.
I exhale sharply and step back. “I don’t have time for this today.” 
“You used to be so sweet, you know,” she says wistfully, reaching for a pair of earrings. “When you were little, before—”
“Before puberty?” I sneer. “Before I stopped looking like your mini-me and started looking like my father’s sister’s clone?”
Her mouth thin.
Yeah, she hates it. The resemblance to my murderous aunt Kelly, the same one who tried to kill me and ended up leaving Cedar permanently blind in one eye. My mirror image.
Mother never says it. She doesn’t have to. It’s all over her face every time she looks at me. Like I’m the ghost of a mistake she made and can’t erase.
That’s what I feel.
“What could I do, Lily?” Turning to me, she asks finally, almost whispering. “Tell me.”
Her pity look. Her weakness. Everything. *I hate her*.
“You can’t,” I say coldly, clenching my fists so tight my knuckles ached.
“Lily...” Her eyes are starting to get glossy with tears, and it makes me much angrier. “Sweetheart... Not everyone is lucky to find their fated mate as young as you did.” 
I freeze.
She keeps going. “I was weak. I made mistakes. But I’ve tried, Lily.”
That soft voice. That fucking voice.
I want to scream at her, break something, cut the cord between us for good.
For a breath, everything stills. And then I shove the glass tray off the counter. It shatters, shards spraying across the floor.
“Why didn’t you wait for Cedar?” I voice my thoughts. She flinches as I step closer, staring down at her. “You were too impatient. Too selfish. So I got a monster instead of a dad!”
Her mouth opens. Closes. Nothing comes out.
“If you had waited for him, he could’ve been my father!”
My fists are shaking. I barely notice I’ve knocked over a tray of jewelry. Gemstones scatter across the marble floor.
“I hate you for that,” I whisper, eyes blinking hard. “I *hate* you for every birthday you forgot. Every bruise you didn’t see. Every moment I begged you to come home, and you didn’t.”
She’s crying now, quiet and useless.
“You don’t get to cry,” I snap. “*You* don’t get to cry. You get to live with it. Just like I do.”
I raise my hand and trace my own face like a curse. “You hate what you see, don’t you?” 
She whimpers, but I don’t stop. 
“It’s all your fucking fault, mother! Stay the hell away from me.”

🐺 🐺 🐺

I stuff another shirt into the backpack, forcing the zipper closed like I’m holding my ribs together. My hands are shaking—again—but I can’t stop. I won’t stop. Not until I’m gone.
Gone from them.  
Gone from her.  
Gone from *this.*
They always say breed matters.
You want a loyal dog? You get a golden retriever. A protector? A German shepherd. Something wild and beautiful? You find a husky and pray your fence holds.
But what do you do with a mutt born from a rabid thing? A violent thing? A thing bred for blood and dominance and fear?
What do you do with *me*?
Because I know what my father was. Everyone knows. A monster in wolf’s skin. A mate *forced*, not fated.
And if the sire is sick, if the blood is cursed… then what does that make his pup? Doesn’t matter how soft the mother is. Doesn’t matter how pure she is. It can’t clean the dirty in my genes.
I still carry his wolf color on my skin. His violence in the curl of my fists. His cruelty in the pack spaces I can’t fill no matter how fast I run.
I’m a thing that shouldn’t be.
The zipper breaks a little at the top, and I curse under my breath. Doesn’t matter. I sling the bag over my shoulder and pause by the window.
The forest is a shadowed promise.
And behind me? A pack that doesn’t want me. A mother who couldn’t love the parts of me that reminded her of her mistake. 
Az.  
My Azrael.
I feel his bond buzzing under my skin like it’s trying to burn its way back to the surface to make sure I’m okay. But I won’t let it. I can’t. I try to control my feelings so he can’t feel me.
Because what if I hurt him one day?  
What if I tear through the bond like my father did to everything?  
What if I’m already rotting on the inside, and I just haven’t smelled it yet?
I can’t reject him. 
I can’t say goodbye either. He would stop me. 
But this isn’t like when we were kids and he could solve all my problems.
The wind outside howls low, like it’s calling me. I climb through the window and hit the ground running.
I do not look back.