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CHAPTER ONE

Acorn Inn, Oak Hollow

Paige

My pack is flying back home from the Tattoo Convention in Nashville this morning, which is lucky because I am fast falling into heat.

I wipe my hand over my sweating forehead, smearing paint over my creamy skin.

I grin and toss my brush onto the drop cloth.

I already look a hot mess.

What is one more smudge of paint?

My grandma told me as she lay dying, however, that despite what the world taught: A person's worth ain’t measured by the beauty others see. It’s measured by the heart they carry inside.

My Alpha and Beta, Beau and Evan, were friends with me first at Cedar Ridge High School.

To them, I was Paige Berry, the girl who sucked at gym, biked every day to school with Evan, my Beta next-door neighbor, and invented ghost stories about the abandoned inn on the edge of our small town of Oak Hollow, before I became Paige Monarch, their Omega.

I stare down at my blackberry-embroidered apron, which is splattered with violet paint.

I blow strands of long black hair out of my face.

I wrinkle my nose at the room’s chemically sweet scent. My brown eyes water.

I hurry across to the window to air out the room.

I need to at least haul my pack’s clothes in here, along with our bedding, to fill the space with their delicious scents of wildflower, black coffee, and tattoo ink.

I can make a makeshift nest on the floor.

Blanket fort nests are the comfiest anyway.

Sweat drips down the back of my neck.

I stumble.

How long do I have before my heat fully hits?

A day?

A couple of hours?

I gently release the crescent lock on the sash window with a click. With my palms on the underside of the rail, I push, and the glass slides upward.

I am hit by the warm, humid Texas breeze, and the chirping of cicadas from the lush garden below.

Warm sunlight floods across the room.

I purr when the velvet wings of a yellow butterfly kiss my cheek. “Hey, swallowtail. Fly back to your friends.”

I reach to trace the butterfly tattoo that Beau inked onto the back of my neck, not caring that I am marking it with paint.

Beau Monarch was the senior who protected Evan and me in Cedar Ridge back when the Beta and I were already in love.

Beau became our best friend and then our Alpha.