Chapter 1
Wren
With a final stroke of my paintbrush, I take a step back to admire my handiwork. The canvas in front of me boasts three lumpy looking figures. The heads are too large, the bodies awkwardly shaped, the facial features skewed. Really, it’s impossible to tell if I had been attempting to paint people or some sort of alien.
It’s perfect.
A knock on my door has me wiping my face with the back of my hand—but I’m sure I just smeared blue paint on my forehead.
“Wren Sofia Messina, look at the state of you!” Mother crosses her arms disapprovingly, eyeing my clothing with distaste. It was all I could do to get her to let me buy a pair of denim overalls—she only agreed because I swore I would only wear them while painting.
Looking at Mother is like looking at a mirror twenty-five years into the future. Her raven black hair matches mine—her gray strands covered by the best hairstylist in Hope Springs, California. Her eyes, the same amber as mine, dart to my canvas, and I make sure to put on my most proud smile. “Look, Mother!” I nod at the painting. “It’s me, you, and Father!”
My mother’s lips tilt up in self-satisfied amusement. My parents like that I paint because they think it keeps me compliant. They see a young woman with absolutely no talent kept quiet by the concession of letting her have a hobby.
“Very nice, darling.” Her voice is condescending as fuck. “You need to get dressed. Pack Caruso is coming for dinner tonight. We’re to discuss the re-launch of Nest Luxe.”
I stiffen.They’recoming? Tonight?
“What about Pack Robinson?”
“They’ve terminated our arrangement.” The mild amusement from earlier vanishes as her expression goes stone cold. “You’ve seemed to have managed to run off yetanotherpack. Really, Wren, I don’t see how you think you can be the face of a luxury nesting store and still act the way you do.”
The face of a “luxury nesting store”. Ha.
I used to think I hated being ignored, but I think I hate my parents trying to cash in on my new designation more. Apparently nesting items would be much easier to smuggle drugs inside of than ballgowns and suits. They’ve been in talks to buy the business from the current owners, and want to make me their poster girl.
My worst fucking nightmare. Standing by myself in an awkward pose in front of a backdrop, trying not to look constipated as fuck as they dressed me in scratchy as hell fabrics and flashed cameras at me…just the memory makes me want to die.
And now I find out the pack I was stringing along bowed out early? I really thought I could squeeze a few more weeks out of Pack Robinson.
Or as I like to call them in my head, Pack Number Six. They really were the best ones yet. Mild mannered, notentirelymisogynistic, and easy enough to ignore on our mandated outings.
Plus, they aren’t offensive enough to make masking my social anxiety impossible.
It was almost easy, actually. I’d been agreeable, but not too agreeable. A little stand-offish, but not enough to make them uninterested in pursuing me.
It’s all part of the plan.
The plan to get out from under my parents’ thumbs.
The plan that makes sure no pack ever wants to take me as their omega.
The plan that ends with Theodore Leopold Covington the Third proclaiming his undying love for me as we make a break for Starbrook City.
Well, the part about Teddy professing his love might just be wishful thinking, but Starbrook City really is the destination.
This scheme of ours may not have been perfect or foolproof, but it’s been the only hope I’ve had to hold on to since Teddy and I came up with it in the back of the coat check room.
But now, it’s an entire year later, and I’m so damn close to finally having enough to start over in Starbrook City.
I still remember the time my grandparents—back when they were both alive—took me to Starbrook City for my thirteenth birthday. We went to the theatre, a science museum, and, the one that’s stuck with me the most, an art gallery.
The colors, the strokes, the way that an artist could convey such complex emotions by simply putting color onto a canvas blew my thirteen-year-old mind. I decided right then and there that I wanted to be an artist. When Grandfather bought me some supplies to get started with, and I made my first piece, he told me something very important.
I must never let my parents—especially Father—see what I can do. They would never let me continueif they knew I was good at it. It’s a threat to their control, if I have something that I can do to provide for myself.
So here I am, grinning like a loon in front of my mother acting disproportionately proud of my two-minute scribble.
