The Beta's Unwanted Daughter

Sadie Brannock has spent her whole life being the daughter nobody wanted to see.

Her father, Saul, is Beta of the Ashgrove Pack, and he has made one thing very clear: there is only one child in his house worth talking about. Her older brother Declan is strong, popular and weeks away from taking his place as the next Beta. Sadie is the girl who eats in the kitchen, keeps her head down, and never, ever fights.

Her father forbids it, and he has his reasons.

Sadie's mother, Bronwyn, was once one of the Alpha King's Elite Warriors, the best of the best. Then she was branded a deserter and came home in disgrace, and she died before Sadie was old enough to remember her face. In Saul Brannock's house, her name is never spoken.

So Sadie trains in secret.

Every night, in the old quarry behind the pack lands, she runs her mother's drills from a battered notebook she found hidden in the attic. She is faster than anyone in her year and stronger than she looks. She is also the top student in her class, and nobody knows it, because being noticed in Ashgrove is dangerous.

The Alpha's son, Corvin Mabry, and his friends rule the training yard. They pick on the weak, the omegas and the wolves with no family to protect them, and they leave no witnesses. Last winter an omega boy named Tobyn disappeared. The pack says he ran away. Sadie saw his face the night before, and she does not believe it.

Then Juno Lowell arrives.

Juno is loud, fearless and not impressed by anyone. On her first day she catches Sadie alone in the quarry and watches her take down a training dummy in four moves. Sadie begs her to forget it.

Juno does the opposite.

She sits with Sadie at lunch, challenges Corvin in front of the whole yard, and asks the questions nobody in Ashgrove is allowed to ask. Where did Tobyn go? Why do so many omegas "run away" from this pack? And why does everyone go quiet when Bronwyn Brannock's name comes up?

For the first time in her life, Sadie has a friend.

But Juno has a secret too. She is not a transfer student. She was sent by the Alpha King's Elite to find out what is happening to the wolves who vanish from Ashgrove.

When the truth comes out, Sadie has to decide whether her only friend ever cared about her at all, or was only using her to get inside the pack.

And there is no time to decide slowly.

The Alpha King's Elite are coming to Ashgrove to choose new recruits. Only one wolf from the pack will be taken. It is the chance Sadie has dreamed of since she first opened her mother's notebook: a way out, a place where she would finally matter.

To win, she has to show everyone what she has hidden for years.

To survive, she has to beat Corvin Mabry in front of the whole pack.

And to learn the truth about her mother, she has to face the man who signed Bronwyn's deserter papers.

Her own father.

Sadie survived by being invisible. Now she will be seen, whether Ashgrove likes it or not.