1 Chapter 1: The Lone Girl

*Emory’s POV*

There was a radio playing.

Emory peered up into the cold New England sky and listened. She couldn’t tell exactly where the music was coming from; probably someone had a radio on their balcony.

New York City was full to bursting with apartments and lofts, so it was impossible to tell, really. The music was up-beat and emphatic, despite the dreary day. Emory shivered and pulled her ragged coat tighter around her thin frame.

She never thought she’d miss the tiny apartment she lived in with Jeff, with its threadbare carpet and battered wallpaper. Still, anything was better than being on the streets.

No, she told herself stubbornly. Don’t go back to him. Not again.

Jeff was unruly, lazy, and worst of all, violent. She’d left her childhood home at the age of sixteen to live with him, and now, three years later, she wondered if she was just as stupid as Jeff (and her mom) had always said.

Emory rubbed her fingers together in an effort to chase off the chill.

Winters were brutal in the city, and she hadn’t had a stable home in weeks. She’d made some money working odd jobs here and there, but she didn’t have many skills, and she’d dropped out of high school to live as Jeff’s dutiful (but unofficial) wife.

Now, she was wandering the streets of an overpopulated city, constantly looking over her shoulder and wondering where her next meal would come from.

Emory sat on a bus stop bench and tried to look as normal as possible. Just waiting on the bus, she mused, even though she had no money to pay and nowhere to go. She rubbed her fingers together again. Out of the corner of her eye, a man in a fashionable trench coat sat next to her. She didn’t pay him much attention.

A few minutes later, he got up without a word and moved on. Emory cocked her head in his direction, wondering why he hadn’t waited for the bus to show up. That was when she noticed a pair of fine black gloves bundled together in the seat next to her. She looked up after the retreating man.

“Hey!” she called, picking up the gloves and waving her hands. “You forgot your gloves!”

But the man didn’t stop, and when Emory examined them, she found they were fitted for a woman’s hands. Uncertainly, she pulled the luxurious gloves over her stiff, cold fingers and found they fit perfectly. She looked up again, spinning in a circle so she could find the man, but he was gone.

***

That night, Emory found a bed at a local homeless shelter to sleep in. The experience was terrifying; the room was cramped and dirty, and the other women were hostile to her.

Emory quickly left the next morning, and she spent the daylight hours passing out flyers for a local business. The work earned her enough money to buy dinner, so she pocketed the cash, grabbed some food, and lounged in the local city park.

When the daylight began to fade, she started to worry about where she’d sleep. She didn’t want to go back to the shelter, and she was starting to wonder if returning to Jeff and his vicious temper really was her only option.

Before she could fully make up her mind, the park and surrounding neighborhood grew dark. Unlike most places, New York City didn’t slow at night, growing quieter and more peaceful as people retreated into their homes.

Instead, it came alive like a forest of wide-eyed creatures, a whole ecosystem that thrived in the dark.

Emory had never had to stay out all night before; she’d always managed to find somewhere to sleep, somewhere indoors. The cold winter winds were almost unbearable, but it was the shadows she feared most.

Homeless people didn’t wander in the “nice” parts of the city, where crime was curtailed by heavy police presence and high-level security. This area was the bottom of the barrel, the land of crumbling businesses and impoverished schools.

Prostitutes mingled with drug dealers on street corners, and men who carried their homes in old shopping buggies occupied the sidewalks.

Emory sighed deeply and looked down at the fine gloves covering her hands. They were probably worth more than the rest of her outfit put together. Suddenly fighting the urge to cry, Emory stood up and walked with single-minded determination out of the park.

She ignored the hoots and hollers of the unsavory locals, many of whom stared unapologetically. Emory tucked her head into her sweater and tried to ignore them. She didn’t know where she was going, but she had to get somewhere safe.

“Watch where you’re going!” a voice demanded.

Emory looked up, startled, to see she’d run right into a filthy man carrying a bag over his shoulder. She flushed and hurriedly shuffled around him. Unfortunately, the man’s shout attracted even more attention, and eyes followed her as she rushed down the sidewalk.

“Hey, girl! Hey! Hey, girl! Come over here!”

Emory began to walk faster. She turned a corner.

Three men appeared ahead of her, and they each wore gritty, hard looks on their faces. Emory hesitated and then made a move to cross the street, but the trio of men followed her She turned and rushed back in the direction of the park, hoping she could lose them in the shadows of the tree-filled square.

They knew the park better than she did, though. Within moments, they’d cornered her and were circling like ravenous dogs.

“What’ve you got there?” one asked, tugging at her coat pocket.

“I saw her pocket some cash earlier,” another mentioned.

Emory’s eyes widened. How long had they been watching her?

“You got money, girl?” the first demanded to know.

Emory shrugged tightly, suddenly afraid to speak. ‘Just give them the money’, she told herself, but somehow, she knew the ten bucks in her pocket wouldn’t make them go away.

The tallest man snatched her from behind and yanked her roughly to his chest. Emory’s eyes widened, and she tried to scream, but it only came out as a little squeak.

“Please,” she managed at last. “Please, just let me go…You can have it…”

“Oh, we can?” asked the shorter man, leering. The other held her in place, and tears poured down Emory’s face. The man approached casually, and Emory flinched when he shoved his hand in her pocket and pulled out the pitiful wad of cash.

“Well, this’ll buy at least a fifth, right?”

He nudged open her coat and peered at her body. “But this… this right here is worth a lot more.”

“Let me go!” Emory exclaimed suddenly, shocked at the volume of her voice. Still, the men just laughed.

“I don’t think so,” the tall man holding her hissed, his breath reeking of alcohol. “Hey, Phil – “ The tall man paused. “Where the hell did Phil go?”

The other two men looked around and realized the third was nowhere to be seen. That was when Emory, still locked in the tall man’s arms, noticed a pair of golden eyes lurking in the darkness. Her heart lurched painfully in her chest. The eyes were watching them, bobbing up and down close to the ground in a fashion nothing less than predatory.

A rumbling growl locked the two remaining men in place. The sound was low, guttural, and feral. It seemed to emanate directly from the shadows, as if they’d grown sentient.

Suddenly, a massive creature leaped from the darkness and snatched the shorter man to the ground. His scream was bloodcurdling but brief. One minute he was there, and the next, he was gone, dragged into the eclipse created by the park’s tall old trees.

Emory’s jaw dropped, and the tall man released her with a jerk before reaching to a gun he’d hidden at his hip. He’d barely touched the handle when the giant creature appeared again, this time from behind, and they crashed to the ground together with the creature on top.

Emory scrambled back as the two twisted and turned, jet-black fur enveloping the man’s life-and-death struggle. She finally found her balance and darted away, only to duck and hide behind a tree. From there, she peered through the low branches, her eyes wide and her chest heaving.

The man shouted and wrestled with the creature, but there was a vicious snarl and the snapping of bone, and suddenly he fell still. The creature stood over him, panting, and then turned its large lupine head in Emory’s direction.

She quickly moved back behind the tree, her eyes closed and face wet with tears. After a moment, nothing had happened, so she chanced a peek out from behind the tree.

It was a…wolf.

Emory had seen wolves on television and at the zoos, but this was unlike anything she’d ever witnessed. It was twice as large as she would have expected, with jet-black fur and glowing eyes the color of amber.

As she watched, the wolf snatched her attacker’s body in its jaws.

She thought it might eat him, her stomach turning at the thought, but instead, it dragged the body out of the open clearing. When the wolf re-emerged a moment later, and it peered around one more time, as if looking for her.

Then, as Emory watched in shock, the wolf shifted and changed under the cool winter moon.

The fur melted away, the claws retreated, and the lupine head smoothed into a human head of jet-black hair that matched the vanished fur.

The wolf, Emory realized, had transformed into a human man.

Even now, the stranger was nearly as extraordinary as his wolf form. The sight of him took her breath away. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and, well, naked, it seemed, although his lower half was hidden by bushes.

He quickly retrieved a pair of black slacks and pulled them on, and Emory’s eyes unwillingly found the ‘v’ of his hips formed by the tight muscles in his stomach. After pulling on a white button-up shirt, he stepped out of the shadows, and she caught her first real look at his face.

He was Asian, with high cheekbones and thick, dark brows. His eyes, even in this form, were an unnatural shade of luminous gold, and he had the slightest dark stubble along the line of his jaw. He looked like a man in his early thirties, but something profound in his gaze made him seem much older.

After buttoning up his shirt, he raked his fingers through his disheveled hair and peered back in the direction of the shadows he’d come from.

Unable to stop herself, Emory emerged from her hiding spot and stepped out into the cool moonlight. She felt as if she were moving underwater, each movement slow and fluid.

The man looked up at her, eyes wide with surprise. Emory understood very suddenly that he’d thought she’d run off.

Now, he knew. She’d seen him… and he’d seen her.