Page 1 of The First Year

Chapter One

Roxy

Being a rogue female shifter would be better than this.

The thought rang through my head as I watched the battle die down. Vampires and shifters had been sworn enemies since the beginning of time, according to shifter legend, but all I saw was carnage.

Blood.

Death.

Senseless violence to some degree but also self-defense.

If I was rogue, this wouldn’t be happening. Or maybe it would.

I didn’t think the shifter council would’ve recruited me if I was bound for being an alpha of a high-ranking pack or running on my own through the forest with no group or family to back me.

“Is it over?” I remembered one of the other shifters asking me. I didn’t know her name or even when she began fighting next to me, but the blood on her clothes and the vamp claw marks along her shirt told me she had been there all the time.

I was only nineteen. They came to get me from my aunt’s home on my eighteenth birthday, before the cake. Not that there would be any cake. My aunt didn’t believe in birthday celebrations. Correction: she didn’t believe in celebratingmybirthday.

Either way, that night, I had been packed and ready to go. If the shifter council soldiers hadn’t come to recruit me, and by recruit, I meant draft me without consent, I would’ve been gone anyway.

My aunt was one of those who thought because I’d hit eighteen, I was ready to be kicked out of the nest.

I was, but not because I was one year older but because I was tired of being in a house where my surrogate parent hated me and showed it.

“I think it’s over. I don’t…I don’t see any more.”

“There were a group of vamps over that mountain, but they retreated.” The girl with flowing, red hair and bright green eyes scanned the field we were in. “There’s no one to report to.”

I let out a long breath, my chest still tight from the adrenaline of the fight. I let out a laugh. “What the hell do we do now?”

She began to speak but gasped instead. “You’ve been bitten.”

“What?” I patted my skin, looking for what she was calling a bite.

“It’s there. On your neck. You…you didn’t know?”

I rolled through the memories in my mind. My time in the shifter council’s army was a blur from the moment they came to get me until this moment. “Oh,” I said. “Shit. I had one latched on to my neck, but I didn’t know if he…”

We turned our attention to an incoming group of shifter soldiers. Ones whose sharp shoulders and tight jaws signaled someone in charge.

“The war is over,” one of them said. He regarded me with his head cocked to the side. A tingling fever started at the top of my head and before I could catch myself, I swayed a bit. “She’s been bitten. Take her to the healers. And be careful. She might turn.”

Turn?

Turn!

I was taken to the shifter hospital. Nothing more than a huge tent with beds inside. This was a war, after all. I didn’t expect the treatment of a hospital when we were still in the wake of such violence.

“Lie on the bed. Let’s look you over.” The woman practically pushed me down on the bed and put gloves on before touching my skin. “This is some bite. Deep too. Did they drink from you?”

I sighed. “I didn’t realize they bit me until someone else brought it to my attention. I didn’t really have my timer out when they did it.”

“Smart-ass,” she muttered.

“Are you feeling any symptoms?”

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