CHAPTER 1

VENUS

Iwas utterly and completely alone.

Nothing but infinite trees surrounded me.

Not even the sound of a nearby bird was there to keep me company.

It was silent.

Trees and silence. Allowing my thoughts to fester.

I did this.

I pushed everyone away.

River didn't want me. I betrayed him.

Why would anyone want someone who ran away at the first sign of trouble?

Why would anyone want someone who didn't trust them? Who believed they could do the worst? Be the worst.

I didn't blame him for rejecting me. For leaving me all alone here.

Not in the least.

What else could I expect to happen by returning?

He might have been surprised to see me. But that's all it was. After the initial shock settled, it made complete sense that he would remember how I up and left him. Didn't even give him a chance to explain.

I couldn't just come back and pretend everything was normal. Go back to what it was before I broke his heart.

He didn't want me.

The sun faded away, its warmth no longer hugging me in its golden embrace. Now it was just me in what felt like a dark void of endless despair that threatened to swallow me whole as the shadows kissed the trees, whispering as they drew closer. Telling me all I had done. All my mistakes.

I had messed up not one, but two good things.

Griffin didn't want me either.

He told me to leave.

I screwed that up too. Pretended that I didn't want more and that my feelings were not growing like an avalanche rolling down a snow-covered mountain. Falling out of control and unchecked.

The shadows crept closer.

I was not honest with him. Didn't admit how I felt.

I hurt him.

And then I left.

Pushed him away and did exactly what he feared most from a relationship. Feared most from being vulnerable with someone. I abandoned him.

And now I had been abandoned.

Karma had cruel ways of making itself known.

I deserved every miserable, cold, bleak, dark second of it for the way I hurt them. Both of them.

Who knew how long it would take until he dared to open himself up again. Because of me.

All I did was flee when things got difficult, hurting the people around me as a result.

I fled my mother and my sister.

I fled my first love.

And my second.

I fled the friends that had taken me in and showed me nothing but kindness.

I fled that sense of belonging I had searched for my whole life and finally found.

And now I didn't deserve anyone to love or be there for me.

I didn't deserve it.

I deserved to be alone.

So I let that darkness consume me until my limbs were held tight in its cold embrace and my breath was ripped right from the lungs in my chest.

It swallowed me whole. Devoured me.

And I let it.

I lay there, staring up at the ceiling above my head. My breathing was shallow, but I forced myself to take in air.

Dream. Only a vivid, horrible dream.

Although, the feeling of being stuck was very real.

I hadn't had paralysing nightmares like that in a while. Unable to move or speak or escape, even when I realised it wasn't real.

But I was free from its grip now, even if I was not free from the feelings of guilt my subconscious was so clearly tormenting me with.

The scattering of glow-in-the-dark stars were a pale melon green in the morning light. On a cloudy night, when River and I weren"t able to go outside to admire the real things, these little plastic, glowing wannabes actually did well to replicate the sensation of looking out into the galaxy. Especially with the rough depictions of the constellations that Riv spent hours trying to get just right.

Just for me and my obsession with them.

He never really paid much attention to them himself, always called away by the wind that seemed to run through his veins and that sensation of being free. His focus was always on the trees and the leaves; on the earth.

The grounded one.

Grounded in nature yes, but also just grounded.

Whereas I lived with my head in the clouds. In a world of dreams and imagination. And clearly, it liked to get the better of me.

Whenever I'd wake from a horrible nightmare, those stars comforted me. They'd always done just that. Just like they did now. And for a moment, I forgot any time had passed at all since I had last been here and experienced them watching over me.

But the lingering remnants of the nightmare and the cold sweat that now coated my heated skin reminded me that time had in fact passed and things were not the same as they once were.

Everything about this place felt familiar. The cream linen sheets. The cloud like pillows. The early sun filling the room with warm light dancing against the wooden floorboards.

Even the beautiful wolf shifter who lay next to me, chest rising and falling with the gentle, calm breaths he took in his sleep.

It was peaceful. Everything about this place had always felt peaceful—except for that one night. Peace was the last thing I felt that night. And that was my last true memory of this place. A tainted one that no longer held the same meaning yet had still altered our lives in inconceivable ways.

A memory I was trying really hard to re-write in my head.

I took in another deep breath.

Because despite all the peacefulness—despite the homely comfort and familiarity—something still felt off.That peace was a fa?ade.

I felt like an imposter.

The place might have been the same. River might have even been the same. But I was no longer the same.

And being back, I had to find a way for this new Venus to belong.

Everything about this place—Saint Claire—had always seemed too perfect. It had almost always felt … fake. A perfect bubble over the town.

I had known that before; it was a feeling I had always felt. It gnawed at me deep down, had me questioning my luck—my life. Even when I tried to ignore it.

NowI knew that was because there was so much going on behind the scenes. So much that the oblivious people living here did not know. And while in my old life I was never as ignorant as the others, while I knew about the existence of wolf shifters, I had still been in the dark about a lot.

With all the knowledge I now had, I was able to slowly peel back the layers of that fa?ade to see the reality that I was sheltered from most of my life.

There was a darkness to the wolves I'd never known before. Not my wolves. But wolves. And it had been hidden from me. Lingering just below the surface where I couldn't see it.

And I couldn't turn a blind eye to it anymore. Couldn't pretend I was the same girl who was living the fairy tale.

Experiencing the sheer realness of the academy had shattered my rose-coloured glasses. Life for me couldn't be as simple as it had been before. I couldn't just slot back into my old role here living in ignorance, even if a part of me really wanted to.

I'd have to figure out where I stood now. How I could help. As well as face the group of friends—River's pack—that I had left months ago.

Sadly, they weren't the first group of friends I'd had to leave. The ones I'd made in the city were on that list too.

After learning that the boy I'd loved for basically my entire existence was a cold-hearted killer, I'd thought I'd never set foot in this pack house again. Let alone spend another night in this comforting bed. But my wolf shifter—the one I had left in order to pursue the path of a supernatural hunter—was not a killer at all. He was a hero. And I was wrong. So very wrong.

Which meant that the whole fling I had with that intimidatingly irresistible hunter for the last four months was wrong too.

Right?

Or was coming back to River wrong?

I couldn't decide.

But I also couldn't shake the gnawing feeling of guilt that plagued me for cuddling my former lover last night—even though I technically had every right too. Yet I didn't dare do more out of respect for the one who had been warming my bed before last night.

Even so, the stupidly gorgeous and annoyingly sexy smirk of a certain dark-haired Knight flashed before my eyes. Griffin.

Griffin fucking Gray. The son of Thea Gray and the heir to the whole Gray Knights operation. And the person who I'd recklessly been falling for … prior to coming back here.

After the months I'd spent training at the compound in New York City, that felt like my home now.

It was where I was truly beginning to find myself. Where I felt like I finally fit.

So I didn't know where that left me when it came to Saint Claire and this pack—my former family, until I wrongly decided I couldn't trust them anymore.

I had so many questions. So many inner battles I needed to figure out.

But everything was all twisted up in that overworking brain of mine.

I had come back to Saint Claire for a number of specific reasons: (1) to apologise to my best friend—that very wolf shifter who I loved for most of my life—while making sure he knew that I was here to support him in whatever way I could; (2) to protect the innocent, helpless humans, as was my new motto as a member of the Knights; and (3) to help the pack of wolf shifters who were being set up for a string of brutal deaths in the area caused by rogue wolves.

While those were my objectives, being back in River's presence was comforting, reassuring and scarily familiar. I could see myself easily falling back into my old ways. And I didn't know how I felt about that. Not yet anyway.

Upon reflection, sleeping in his bed last night had been a mistake—a comfort, but definitely loaded with mixed signals. I wouldn't let it happen again until I figured this out. And I would—figure it out, I mean.

I turned, taking in the serene sight of River sleeping, a golden hue that always seemed to follow the boy glowing around him. My heart ached when I thought of the last time I stared at someone like this. When I was waking up to Griffin only a mere two nights ago.

Griffin and I were casual. That was always the deal. Friends with benefits, even when it started to feel like more. He was emotionally unavailable and I was terrified of heartbreak. Which left us in a weird limbo of treating each other like more but never talking about what we actually were to one another. As much as my heart craved it to be something stronger, and possibly created phantom signs in my head, it wasn't anything other than sex.

Mind-blowing, incredible sex.

And maybe a hint of lust. And desire. And longing.

But all of that had been built on the foundation of my ex-love being a murderer. And now that he wasn't, I had come back. Leaving Griffin behind.

In that moment, I wasn't picking one over the other. I was just doing what I needed to. Giving River what he deserved.

Even when Griff asked me not to.

Even when he asked to come with me.

This was something I needed to do alone.

The image of him leaving his room, that door slamming behind him, felt so final. Felt like his goodbye.

He had told me to go back to River. Those were his parting words; he was done.

He didn't want drama. He didn"t even want a relationship.

I understood why he was so upset though. After basically toying with each other for months, I finally gave in to him, only to leave.

Things were easy—happy—between us and whether we admitted it or not, we both gave each other something that the other was missing.

And then I ripped it away by telling him I was going back to see my ex.

Griff might not have been the type to do the whole boyfriend thing, but even I knew that leaving was a sensitive topic for him. A wound that he would likely not recover from any time soon.

And there was no way he'd put up with what I would be dragging him through. Especially not now. Not after the pain that danced across his eyes before he walked out on me.

But if it was just casual, why was there so much pain in that goodbye?

I knew it was over. And it fucking hurt. The thought of losing the person I had become the closest to all over again, hurt.

I had confided in Griffin. Trusted him. Relied on him. I'd grown attached. Even when I knew I shouldn't have. But despite my best efforts, I had.

He'd been there for me in such a crucial and pivotal time of my life. One that changed me completely.

He saw the death of the old Venus Stone and the resurrection of the new one. He helped mould and shape her. Train her. Forge her.

And I loved this new version of her. Of me.

So as much as the fear in me would relish in running away from him like I had once done with River, I couldn't do that again. A girl had to learn from her past mistakes, right?

I'd give him a few days to cool off and then I'd get in touch. Try to make things right and fix that friendship. Apologise. Make sure things ended on good terms.

I'd seek closure early this time.

Because I was a Knight now—or at least close to being one. Which meant we'd still be in each other"s life in some capacity.

We agreed to keep things casual. Surely that meant we could get through this obstacle and go back to what we were before we gave in to that temptation—even if that was sexual-tension-filled-friends with way too much chemistry.

The warm body beside me stirred and I turned back to face the wolf shifter that I'd missed dearly.

His eyelids fluttered and then warm honey blazed into my own hazel.

This. I'd deal with this first. Focus on this for now.

The rest would come later.

I prepared myself for the tender, smooth timbre of River's voice that I knew so well but almost forgot.

"Good morning, Angel."