Chapter 1: Thorne-of-the-Ash The October wind cut through Alexia's jacket as she walked down Maple Street. Senior year meant more homework than any reasonable person should endure. Her backpack dug into her shoulders with the weight of two textbooks and a binder full of calculus problems that made her brain hurt just thinking about them. Most of her classmates had already caught rides home or piled into cars heading to the coffee shop downtown. Alexia preferred walking. The twenty-minute route gave her time to decompress from another day of navigating high school politics and pretending to care about things like homecoming themes and college application essays. Her phone buzzed with a text from her mom asking about dinner preferences. Alexia typed back a quick reply while dodging a crack in the sidewalk. The houses on this street always looked the same—neat lawns, identical mailboxes, the kind of suburban sameness that made her want to scream sometimes. She passed the Henderson place with its ridiculous lawn ornaments and turned onto the stretch of road that ran alongside the old Pritchard property. Someone had abandoned that house years ago. The fence sagged in places, and the yard had gone wild with overgrown shrubs and weeds that nobody bothered to trim anymore. A figure stood near the broken gate. Alexia's first thought was that some real estate agent was finally doing something with the property. The person looked young, maybe college-aged, dressed in clothes that seemed too formal for inspecting an abandoned house. Pale skin caught the afternoon light. The stranger turned as Alexia approached. Beautiful didn't quite cover it. The face had the kind of symmetry that belonged in magazines, with sharp cheekbones and eyes that were almost too bright to be natural. Something about the stillness of the pose triggered an instinct Alexia couldn't name. "Alexia Thorne," the stranger said. Alexia stopped walking. Nobody who looked like that should know her name. "Do I know you?" "Thorne-of-the-Ash." The stranger smiled. "Your family's ancient name. Surely they told you what it means?" The wind died down. The street suddenly seemed too quiet, like all the background noise of the neighborhood had been sucked away. Alexia's hand tightened on her backpack strap. "I think you've got the wrong person." She started walking again, faster now, keeping the stranger in her peripheral vision. The movement happened too quickly to track properly. One second the stranger stood by the gate, the next Alexia's back slammed against the rough brick of someone's garden wall. The impact knocked the air from her lungs. Hands gripped her shoulders with a strength that didn't match the slender fingers pressing into her jacket. Up close, the stranger's eyes reflected light like an animal's. The smile widened, revealing teeth that were wrong. The canines extended too long, too sharp, curving slightly inward like they were designed for tearing. "Your ancestors hunted my kind to near extinction." The voice stayed conversational despite the violence of the grip. "We remember every face, every name, every bloodline that tried to erase us." Alexia's brain struggled to process what she was seeing. The teeth were impossible. The speed had been impossible. Everything about this situation violated basic reality. She tried to push away, but the hands holding her might as well have been iron. "We've waited centuries for your line to resurface." The stranger leaned closer. "Your family hid so well, changed names, scattered across continents. But blood always tells the truth eventually." Fear spiked through Alexia's chest. She twisted hard, trying to break free. The grip didn't budge. Her backpack slipped off one shoulder, books spilling onto the sidewalk with heavy thuds that nobody seemed to hear. Where were the neighbors? Why wasn't anyone looking out their windows? The stranger's mouth opened wider. Those elongated canines gleamed. Then something shifted inside Alexia's body. Heat exploded through her muscles like she'd grabbed a live wire. Her vision sharpened until she could see individual pores in the stranger's skin. Time seemed to slow, or her thoughts sped up. She could track the movement of the head tilting toward her neck, could calculate the angle and trajectory. Her hand shot up without conscious decision, catching the stranger's wrist. She twisted with strength that shouldn't exist in her arms. The grip on her shoulders released as the stranger stumbled backward, eyes widening in surprise. Alexia didn't understand what was happening to her body. Her legs moved in patterns she'd never learned, shifting her weight and balance like some kind of combat training had downloaded directly into her nervous system. She ducked under a wild swing, her muscles responding with precision she'd never possessed before. The stranger recovered quickly, coming at her again with inhuman speed. But Alexia could see it now, could track the movement even as it blurred past normal human perception. She dodged left, her body knowing where to position itself. Her hands came up in a defensive stance that belonged in martial arts movies. "You've awakened." The stranger's voice carried something between anger and fascination. "The hunter blood runs true after all." They circled each other on the empty sidewalk. Alexia's heart hammered against her ribs. Her hands trembled even as they maintained that unfamiliar fighting stance. The enhanced strength still flooded through her muscles, but she had no idea how to control it or how long it would last. The stranger lunged. Alexia spun away, her sneakers scraping pavement as she pivoted with impossible agility. Her hand caught the edge of the Pritchard property fence, where weather and neglect had loosened several of the wooden posts. She yanked hard. The post came free with a crack of splintering wood. The stranger paused, eyes locked on the makeshift weapon now gripped in Alexia's hands. The jagged end where the wood had broken formed a rough point. Alexia had never held a weapon before. The closest she'd come to violence was a shoving match in middle school that a teacher had broken up in seconds. But her hands positioned themselves on the post like they'd done this a thousand times. Her weight shifted into an offensive stance. "Interesting." The stranger's smile had vanished. "Perhaps you'll prove more challenging than expected." They moved simultaneously. The stranger came in low and fast. Alexia swung the post in an arc, aiming for center mass. Wood connected with flesh in a solid impact that sent vibrations up her arms. She followed through with a thrust, driving the pointed end toward the stranger's chest. The stranger twisted away, but not fast enough. The jagged wood caught fabric and skin, tearing through both. A sound escaped that wasn't quite human, more like a hiss mixed with something feral. Dark blood welled from the wound. The stranger staggered back, one hand pressed against the injury. The too-bright eyes blazed with fury and something else. Pain, maybe, or shock that Alexia had managed to land a hit. "This isn't finished, Thorne-of-the-Ash." The stranger backed toward the abandoned property, movements still unnaturally fluid despite the wound. "Your family's debt will be paid in full." Then the stranger was gone, disappearing into the overgrown yard with speed that left only rustling bushes as evidence of passage. Alexia stood alone on the sidewalk, gripping the bloody fence post, trying to remember how to breathe normally. The enhanced strength drained away as suddenly as it had appeared. Her legs went weak. She dropped the post and leaned against the wall, her whole body shaking now that the adrenaline was crashing. What the hell had just happened? Her scattered textbooks lay across the sidewalk. Her phone had fallen near the curb. Everything looked so normal, so mundane, completely at odds with the fact that she'd just fought something with fangs and impossible speed. Alexia picked up her phone with trembling hands. The screen showed three missed texts from her mom, increasingly concerned about why she wasn't home yet. She stared at the messages, trying to formulate a response that wouldn't sound insane. Her house was only two blocks away. Alexia gathered her books, shoving them back into her backpack with clumsy movements. She left the fence post lying where it had fallen. Someone would find it eventually and wonder about the dark stains. She couldn't bring herself to care right now. The walk home passed in a blur. Her mind kept replaying the encounter, trying to make sense of impossible details. The stranger had called her by a name she'd never heard before. Thorne-of-the-Ash. It sounded like something from a fantasy novel, not real life. Her ancestors had been hunters? Hunters of what, exactly? Her brain supplied the obvious answer even though accepting it meant throwing out everything she thought she understood about reality. The enhanced strength had felt real enough. Her muscles still ached from movements they shouldn't have been able to perform. She'd dodged attacks she shouldn't have been able to see coming. Something had awakened inside her, just like the stranger had said. Her house came into view at the end of the cul-de-sac. The familiar two-story colonial with blue shutters looked exactly as it had this morning when she'd left for school. The maple tree in the front yard still needed raking. Her mom's car sat in the driveway. Alexia stopped at the edge of the property. Her hand gripped the backpack strap hard enough to hurt. The front door had something carved into it. She moved closer, her heartbeat picking up again. The wood bore fresh gouges arranged in a deliberate pattern. Not random damage, but a symbol. Three lines intersecting at odd angles, with smaller marks branching off each point. The cuts looked deep, carved with force and precision. Alexia reached out, her fingers hovering just above the marks without touching. This definitely hadn't been here this morning. She would have noticed. Her mom would have noticed and called the police immediately. The symbol meant something. It had to. The stranger had found her, addressed her by an ancient family name, and now this marked their door. A message, maybe. Or a threat. Her hand dropped back to her side. The shaking had mostly stopped, replaced by a different kind of tension. Questions piled up in her mind faster than she could process them. Who were her ancestors? What had they done that warranted centuries-old revenge? How many more of those things existed, and how many of them wanted her dead? The door opened before she could decide whether to go inside or run somewhere else entirely. Her mom stood in the doorway, wearing the cardigan she always put on when she got home from work. "There you are. I was getting worried." Her mom's expression shifted from mild concern to alarm. "Honey, are you okay? You look pale." Alexia glanced back at the carved symbol. Her mom followed her gaze, eyes landing on the damaged wood. The silence stretched between them. "Mom." Alexia's voice came out steadier than she expected. "What does Thorne-of-the-Ash mean?" Her mom's face went completely white. One hand came up to grip the doorframe like she needed support to stay upright. The reaction told Alexia everything she needed to know. Her mom knew. Had always known. And had never said a word about any of it until right now, when pretending was no longer an option. The wind picked up again, carrying the smell of autumn leaves and something else underneath it. Something that made Alexia's newly awakened instincts go on alert. She turned slowly, scanning the street behind her. Nothing moved in the fading afternoon light. No pale strangers lurked near the neighboring houses. But the feeling persisted, a certainty that she was being watched by eyes that didn't need to be visible to see everything. Her mom stepped aside, gesturing for Alexia to come in. They had a lot to discuss. The carved symbol on the door seemed to pulse with meaning in Alexia's peripheral vision as she crossed the threshold into a house that no longer felt quite as safe as it had this morning.