CHAPTER 1

The van smelled like leather conditioner and pine spray, and there were vacuum lines on the floor mats. I sat in the back seat with my jaw clenched so tight I could feel my teeth creak.

Dad's care at Brookfield: $8,200 a month. Caleb's tuition, deferred twice: $30,000. My checking account as of this morning: $2,800. The last check from my unemployment had been deposited on Tuesday, and that was what was left after rent and my car payment.

My mother's second job at the Walgreens pharmacy — the one she hadn't told me about, the one I'd figured out from the register sounds behind her voice on a Tuesday-night phone call — paid $15.50 an hour. She told me with Dad at Brookfield, she had time for a second job. But her knees swelled by Thursday and she hadn't complained once.

A million dollars. That was the number. A million in my bank at the end of the retreat, regardless of outcome — whether the virus took or didn't, whether I stayed or walked. Juniper Wolfe had underlined that phrase in her cover letter. Regardless of outcome. Dad's care for ten years. Caleb's graduation. Mom off the pharmacy counter. The million was mine for making it through three days.

Three days was nothing. I'd survived three years at Aarden Capital. I could survive three days in the woods.

The second million — for a confirmed pregnancy — I hadn't let myself think about yet.

The van turned off the county road and the gravel changed pitch. The driver, who had said twelve words to me in ninety minutes, said the thirteenth through seventeenth: "Five minutes to the gate."

I pressed my palms flat against my thighs and held still. Three years as Richard Harwick's executive assistant had taught me how to hold still. I'd been good at it — so good that when he asked me to draft the termination letter for a man whose wife was dying of cancer, no severance, no buyout, just the letter and the box by the elevator, he'd been genuinely surprised when I said no.

He fired me, of course. My only regret was that I couldn't quit, but I knew I needed the unemployment. I didn't care about my references anymore. Anything was better than this. But five months of unemployment and the checking account dropping every week. And then Naomi sent me a news story and the SSP website with a note that said before you say no, do the math.

I did the math. I signed the contract. I was here.

The landscape had been changing for the last hour. Suburbs to farmland to forest, the trees getting taller, the light going green. The towns thinned out — first the strip malls, then the gas stations, then the cell signal. I watched the bars on my phone drop one by one. By the time we turned onto the private drive I had nothing. No signal. No map. No way to call anyone and say actually, never mind, come get me.

I put the phone in my pocket and left my hand on it. The screen was warm against my thigh. Useless, but familiar.

There was a stone block wall, and iron gates so cliche they could have come out of any gothic movie. They swung inward and the drive curved through a corridor of hemlocks so tall the afternoon light dropped to a green half-dark. The driver rolled the window down and something in his posture relaxed.

"Welcome to Cairnwood," he said.

I rolled my window down too as he slowed down. I could hear the crushed stone crunching under the van's tires, and the air was green and cooler than it had been at the airport. Under the scent of leaf litter and fresh air, there was a note that made the hair on my arms lift.

Warm. Animal. There for a second and then gone again. I leaned forward, but it stayed gone. The rows of trees on either side of the drive opened up, and I felt my eyebrows go up involuntarily.

This was Cairnwood.

The photos in the glossy brochure they'd sent when I signed up on the website were like something from a summer camp for rich teenagers or out of an 80s teen film. There was an entire lake, reflecting the cloudy sky silver and lined with dark green spruce trees. Then the lodge. Fieldstone and timber, two stories, a roofline that followed the ridge. The glass windows shimmered in the light, the glass warped with age. A porch ran the full width, deep enough for the chairs that lined it, made from wood that matched the building. A wide green lawn with carefully tended flowerbeds lining the drive was carefully, intentionally welcoming.

It screamed money in a way that would have made my old boss light up with greed.

There were other vehicles in the drive, with other women getting out, unloading weekender bags and rolling suitcases. I didn't know how many of us there were, but somehow, this was more than I'd expected.

The van stopped. "Good luck this weekend," the driver said. No other comment. I wondered how much he knew. The Shifter Survival Project wasn't secret, after all. Even if I hadn't told my family about my weekend plans.

I stepped onto the flagstone path with my one bag and the animal smell hit me again, stronger — not from the lodge but from the tree line, the dark band of forest fifty yards behind the building. The wind came off the trees and my stomach turned over, slow and heavy.

I walked up the porch steps and into the lodge. The front door was heavy, oak with brass fittings, and when it opened the great hall swallowed me.

Two stories tall, full of dark wood furniture, rugs that probably cost more than my entire life, and people. Somehow, I hadn't expected there to be so many people, even after seeing the size of the estate outside. Mostly women, a few men scattered around, some with drinks already in hand, some sitting straight-backed and quiet with the same clenched look I was probably wearing. Staff moved between them with trays — water, wine, something sparkling. A few men stood near the back of the hall, talking in low voices, and I clocked them immediately because they were all built the same way: tall, handsome, uncomfortable to be here but not actually nervous.

Those are the wolves. The thought arrived fast and certain. In 24 hours, you're going to be naked with one of those men. And more.

I shook the thought off and tried to focus on what was in front of me.

A woman near the fireplace was laughing with two others, clipboard tucked under her arm, heels that should have been ridiculous on the hardwood floors but somehow weren't. She caught my eye across the room and something in her expression sharpened — not unfriendly, more like recognition. She held up one finger to the women she was talking to and crossed the hall toward me.

"Hadleigh Stafford." Not a question. She extended her hand. "Juniper Wolfe. We spoke on the phone."

Her handshake was firm and her smile was warm and her eyes were already cataloging me — my bag, my shoes, my posture, the set of my jaw. I recognized the assessment because I used to do the same thing for Richard. Read the person walking in. Figure out what they need before they ask.

"You're in room 4, on this wing, second floor," she said, handing me a key card from her clipboard without looking down at it. She'd memorized the assignments. "Dinner's at seven in here. Informal — sit anywhere, talk to anyone. The bar's open. Tomorrow morning's the orientation briefing, and then we'll go from there." She paused, just long enough for it to register. "How are you doing?"

It was a real question. I could hear that. She wasn't checking a box. I'd been able to hear it on the phone, and it was the only thing other than the contract that had made me feel comfortable enough to sign up. Even if I was second-guessing myself now.

"I'm fine," I said, because it was true enough.

She looked at me for one extra second, and I had the distinct feeling she'd heard that exact answer from every woman who'd ever walked through that door.

"Room 4," she said again. "There's a pack on your bed with everything you'll need for tomorrow — don't worry about it tonight, just let it sit there and be mysterious. The tub in your room is original to the house and there's basically unlimited hot water, so if you need a break before dinner, that's my professional recommendation." She squeezed my arm, brief and real. "I'm glad you're here, Hadleigh."

I didn't need to be told twice. I needed to get to my room before I started shaking in public.

The staircase was broad, the banister worn smooth by hands. A hallway off the landing was lined with framed photographs — group shots going back decades. Men and women in casual clothes, in formal wear. Children. Families. The people in every frame had the same build, the same watchful eyes as the men downstairs.

A man came around the corner at the top of the stairs. Tall, dark-haired, moving quickly enough that I stepped aside before I'd decided to. He looked at me — a glance that started at my face and dropped before coming back up. He nodded once and kept walking. He smelled like pine and sweat and the same warm thing I kept catching hints of, and he was past me before I'd finished registering what had just happened.

It didn't matter. Room 4\.

The room was small and clean, with a fluffy white duvet on a queen-sized bed that took up most of the floor space. Oak dresser. An overstuffed armchair by the window overlooking the lake through glass old enough to bend the light. A full-length mirror on a wooden stand that I avoided looking into. A potted plant on a little table between the armchair and the window. No closet, just a wardrobe with three cedar hangers. A bathroom, with a giant old cast-iron clawfoot tub as promised. I made a mental note to try it out tonight.

It was nice. A comfortable, impersonal room for someone who was not expected to stay long. I put my suitcase into the bottom of the wardrobe and kept looking around.

On the bed, there was a canvas tote bag with the SSP logo printed on the side — a running wolf followed by two smaller wolves, all enclosed in a circle. I was tempted to look inside, but Juniper had told me to leave it, and it didn't really matter right now.

I set the pack on the dresser, and then I stopped, because if I kept arranging I wouldn't have to sit down, and if I didn't sit down I wouldn't have to actually think about any of the things I had signed up to do this weekend.

I sat on the edge of the bed.

The window was going amber. Outside, past the glass, past the lake, the tree line was darkening. Tomorrow night I would be in those trees. Tomorrow night the full moon would rise over this lake and the men I had never spoken to would stop being men and come through those woods hunting me and the other women, looking for a mate.

I had signed a contract that said I consented to this. To being hunted, to sex, to the potential of kids, of pups, compensated so well I could barely imagine it. I had weighed it against $8,200 a month and $2,800 in checking and my seventy-year-old mother's second job and I had picked up the pen and I had signed it.

The wind shifted, and the windows creaked, and outside, there was a noise — a sound. Low, distant. Not quite a howl. Almost like a breath held too long and released, but you could only hear that from someone standing right next to you, and there was no one else in the room with me.

My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against the duvet and held them there until they stopped. That's something I know how to do: hold the shaking thing still and move on to the next number, the next task, the next calculated risk in a life that had been nothing but calculated risks since I was nineteen and my father forgot my name for the first time.

The first impulsive thing I'd ever done, and I'd followed it all the way to a guest room on an estate that looked like something out of a movie. Somewhere past the lake, in the trees that were being swallowed up by the shadows, something was waiting for me to do it again.