Dire Bound

Book 1: The Wolves of Ruin

by Sable Sorensen

Genres: Dark Fantasy

Synopsis

Fourth Wing meets The Hunger Games in this spicy, page-turning romantasy where humans and direwolves forge unbreakable bonds and fight for survival at all costs.
 
Only the worthy survive the Bonding Trials.  She’ll risk her life—and her heart—to be one of them.
 
Meryn Cooper has always hated the Bonded, elite warriors who form mental links with the massive, vicious direwolves they ride. While they live in luxury, Meryn struggles to keep her family out of poverty. When her little sister, Saela, is kidnapped—stolen across the border by the immortal monsters her country has spent centuries fighting—Meryn’s world falls apart.
 
Desperate to cross the front and save her sister, Meryn enlists in the army and is thrown into the deadly Bonding Trials, where any mistake will cost her life.  
 
Now Meryn must survive four months of training at the castle. She is bound to a feral direwolf who refuses to communicate. The other trainees would love to spill her common blood. And her cold and beautiful instructor, Stark Therion, is eager to punish any weakness.
 
Everything is a competition, and everyone is out to get her—everyone except the dangerously handsome crown prince, whose attention adds another target to her back. In the castle, every smile hides a knife…and the halls hide dark secrets. 
 
It’s bond or bleed. Duel or die. Failure is ruin.
 
Dire Bound contains mature content including depictions of graphic violence, and is therefore recommended for readers 17+. For a full list of tropes and TWs, please visit the author's website. 
 
Readers are already falling in love with Direbound:

“ONE OF THE BEST READS OF THE YEAR! This book was insanely good.” Goodreads reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
 
“Stop it right now... I’m actually quite feral for the next book…” Goodreads reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 
 
“The plot was THICK, the tension and banter? Flawless. And the world with the wolf bond, and trials??? NEED MORE NOW.” Goodreads reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“I just finished and still trying to mentally and emotionally recover to what just happened to me. You need to read it IMMEDIATELY.” Goodreads reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“If you’re into dark romantasy with high stakes, fierce characters, and just the right amount of emotional wreckage, Direbound is your next obsession.” Goodreads reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“What an incredible read!! … I am blown away. … The romance, the anguish, the BANTER! I love a book with good banter and this was FULL OF IT!” Goodreads reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“I. Am. OBSESSED. … Left me spiraling in the best way possible. The morally grey anti-hero? Perfection. The slow-burn tension? Electric. … I was completely immersed.” Goodreads reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Perfect for fans of:

• Slow burn romance
• Found family
• Morally grey characters
• One bed
• Touch her and die
• Who did this to you
• Enemies to lovers
• Forced proximity
• Vampires vs. wolves!

Release date: May 21, 2025

Publisher: Requited

Print pages: 608

Sample

Blood drips into my right eye. Once. Twice. It’s blinding and searing at the same time.

I wince, letting out a pained whimper. It fucking burns, blood in the eye. 

The pain is real.

The whimper is not.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my twenty-three years alive, it’s this: women in pain give men confidence. It stirs up something instinctive, deep inside of them, that makes them believe they have the upper hand, even if every logical piece of evidence screams at them they do not.

Confidence makes men sloppy.

And sloppy men are easy targets.

We’re in some old emberwine warehouse in the Southern Quarter tonight, the air reeking of rotting fruit. Torches burn around the edges of the ring, illuminating our fight and casting everything else in twisting, dancing shadows. The crowd is hushed in anticipation, but even so, the room seems full.

Good. A bigger crowd means a bigger pot of winnings.

There’s a loud thump, thump, thump as my opponent slowly approaches me, his steps heavy. He’s a big, meaty man with a good six inches on me, which he undoubtedly thinks makes him powerful. He’s not the kind of person who understands how lethal grace can be.

“I’ll make you regret ever being born, little girl. You’ll need a closed casket.” 

Goddess, this guy is a bore. But our audience is eating it up, if the frenzied roar is any indication.

More blood drips into my eye. He got me good with a right hook to the forehead, I’ll give him that.

I turn my head to the side, feigning weakness, my cheek pressed into the packed dirt floor of the fighting ring. There’s a flash of movement in the leering crowd as someone pushes their way toward the edge of the ring.

Lee. He must’ve just gotten off work.

He folds his muscular arms against his broad chest, his spotless messenger’s tunic making him stick out in this seedy place. Then he raises an eyebrow at me in amusement. 

I can almost hear his deep voice saying: Stop toying with him, Meryn, and just end this so we can get on with our night.

He’s right, of course. I’d much rather be in his lap right now than face-down in this stinking pit.

Right, then. Time to finish the show.

My opponent grows closer and I moan again, waiting for him to reach the exact right spot. He doesn’t even see the trap I’ve set for him, even though it’s so obvious. Even though I play this move almost every fight. 

He doesn’t want to see it, because I’ve made him confident. Certain that he will be the man to bring down Meryn Cooper, the infamous Alleycat of the Eastern Quarter.

Idiot.

Finally, he reaches my side, preparing to grab me, or sit on me, or choke me out—something predictable. Another roar kicks up in the crowd, the room full of frothing, drunken gamblers all praying that he’ll get me good, that their bet against the woman will pay off.

He leans down toward me, his foul breath hitting my face, and that’s when I do it.

I loop my leg around his and drive my heel into the fleshy back of his knee with all the force I can muster. Then I roll to the side, out of his way, and spring up onto my feet. 

“Fuck!” He crashes to the ground, hitting it hard, making it shudder beneath me. The air rushes from his lungs in an audible whoosh. 

The man pushes up onto his palms, but before he can get any farther, I strike. I kick him in the nose, relishing the sweet crack it makes as it breaks. Ruby red blood gushes down his face, dripping onto the floor. It knocks him backwards onto his ass.

Before he can try to recover again, I jump on him, kneeing him in the groin to keep him down. Then I pin him, peppering his face with more strikes. I’m not going for a kill; I fight dirty, but not like that. But I’ll be sure he stays down.

My knuckles burst open under their scars and calluses and blood drips between my curled fingers. For a moment, I let myself relish the adrenaline rush of the pain and the clear-headed focus it gives me.

Then I press a forearm on the man’s windpipe until he chokes, “Yield!”

I slap him open-handed. Just for the fun of it, just for the drama of his head snapping to the side. “Louder. With meaning. Let them hear you all the way in the castle.”

“I YIELD!”

The crowd erupts into angry mutters as I let go of the man, standing to wipe my blood from my forehead. The host of tonight’s shows, a portly man with a thick mustache, steps into the ring, hoists my wrist into the air and declares: “Alleycat wins! Next fight starts in twenty.”

Coins change hands, with the bounty going to the few who were wise enough to put money on me. 

It always surprises me a little, the sheer number of people who bet for the other man. Even with the history to show them they shouldn’t.

A towel hits me in the face and I pull it off to see my trainer and neighbor Igor assessing me, his brown, weathered face unreadable. I duck under the sides of the ring and step over to him, my palm held out.

“Always straight to the coin with you, huh?” Igor grumbles. 

“Me?” I bat my eyelashes, my voice high and sweet. “A refined lady like me would never think of something so crude as money. All I care about is tea and dresses and gossip.”

“Careful, you’re going to make that forehead wound bleed again.” Igor presses my winnings into my hand. “Good one, kiddo. Went on a little long for my taste, though. You should join a theater guild, with those pained cries of yours.”

I shrug, counting the coins and doing quick math. Eight silvers today, which will cover Mother’s medicine from the apothecary for the next two weeks. “You know the crowd needs to have hope, Igor. It makes it more fun for all of us if they think they actually have a chance.”

“Whatever gets you the win, kid.” He hands me a water flask and I gulp it down. “Davey is setting up a fight in two weeks for Colbridge. Remember that slippery motherfucker from last year? Fancy another go?”

I crack my neck, scanning the packed room for Lee. Even at my unusual height, it’s hard to see over the heads milling about the crowded floor. 

“Sure, as long as you make certain the odds are against me. The apothecary has hiked up their prices. Apparently, some ingredients they need grow close to the front and have gotten hard to acquire. I’d like to see double this amount next time.”

Igor’s perpetual frown deepens. He’s an unhappy-looking person; always has been, for as long as I’ve known him, which has been my entire life. 

He’s probably going to offer me help with mother’s medicine costs, something I’ve declined for years. I’m not above accepting help when I need it, but most everyone in the royal city of Sturmfrost, where we live—everyone in this entire goddess-forsaken country, actually—is struggling. 

Our money, and our lives, goes to fighting the endless war with the Siphons.

I’m not about to take food off Igor’s plate. We’ll get by; we always do.

Just then, a warm arm slings around my shoulders and I’m hit by the clean smell of pine soap, a familiar scent that instantly puts me at ease. I lean against Lee’s hard body and look up into his face—the sharp lines of his jaw covered in a light scruff, his dazzling sea-blue eyes. 

Lee shoots me a wicked grin that makes my thighs tighten and raises up a small clinking bag. 

“Nice fight, kitten. Buy your sister something nice from me for her nameday.” He slides the bag into my pocket as I lean up, wrapping my arms around his neck and pulling his face down toward mine, desperate for his touch.

Before I can kiss him, a throat clears and I glance up, my lustful brain gone hazy. Igor shifts awkwardly on his feet. Lee and I have been together for over a year now, but Igor still hasn’t gotten used to this. 

“I’m going to go see Davey about the next fight,” Igor says, glancing away from us. “Leave you two at it. Find me before you head out, Meryn.”

He turns and walks away quickly, and I can’t help the laughter that spills out of me. “Poor Igor. I think we’ve scandalized him.”

Lee grins lazily down at me, his hands gripping my hips and tightening in a way that holds dark promise. He puts his mouth to my ear. “Glad he can’t read my thoughts,” he whispers, the heat of it sending my pulse into overdrive. “He’d never be able to look at me again.”

I move closer, but suddenly, a commotion kicks up. A disheveled man is pushing his way through the crowd.

His yellowed, unfocused eyes glare toward me.

“You cunt!” The man’s words slur as he staggers forward. “You fixed the bets, you stupid little bitch. I know you did!”

I laugh. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

Lee watches the scene coolly, amusement briefly turning up the edges of his mouth.

The man pulls a knife from his pocket, its dull blade glinting in the dim light. There’s always one guy who can’t handle me winning, who lets it push him over the edge.

“You lost me my last silvers! You’re gonna pay for that.”

He brandishes his knife toward me, but before he takes another step, I’m in motion. A sharp kick to his wrist and the knife slips from his grip. I catch it before he can blink, pressing the edge just under his Adam’s apple in one swift motion. 

“What was the plan here, then? You were going to, what… confront the person who just won a brutal, well-attended fight with this pathetic little dinner knife? Shake me down with it, because I would obviously fear your extremely dangerous weapon that you’re so skilled at wielding?” 

I press the knife harder into his throat and a thin red line of blood seeps out from under the blade. The man winces. The stench of urine hits me, and I realize he’s soiled himself. Pathetic.

“That’s what you get for betting against a woman. Get the fuck out of here. If I see your face at one of my fights again, I’ll finish the job.”

The man shoots me one last wild-eyed look and then turns and scurries back through the crowd. No one bothers giving him a second look. They’re too busy getting ready for the next fight in here.

“Fucking idiot,” Lee mutters under his breath. Then he grabs my hand in his large one and turns into the crowd, pulling me behind him toward a cluster of tables and chairs at the far end of the warehouse. We settle in and he quickly opens the rucksack he’s brought with him, pulling out an antiseptic cream and some bandages. 

He pulls me toward him on my chair and then wraps his long fingers firmly around my chin while he dabs the cream onto my forehead, the heat from his touch warring with the sting of the ointment. 

“Hold still, kitten,” he says, his stern voice brooking no argument. “This one’s kind of nasty.” 

This has been our after-fight ritual, ever since he started coming to these a year ago. I get hurt; he fixes me. I like it more than I’d ever admit, having someone to take care of me. 

We met in the market in the Northern Quarter. I’d been coming to pick Saela up from school when a spooked horse broke loose from its merchant. It was heading right for my little sister, and I was too far away to do anything about it. At that moment, I’d been sure that I was going to watch her die in front of my eyes, helpless.

And then Lee jumped in front of it, his hands held up in a calming motion, and the horse just… stopped. He calmed the animal down and saved my sister’s life in the process.

I went to thank him, and the moment our eyes met, I knew I would be his. It takes a special man to tame a wild thing.

“Did that worry you? The guy who just attacked me?” I ask. He’s been unusually quiet.

Lee’s gaze connects with mine, deep and unreadable. “I knew the Alleycat would hold her own. But I wish you’d end your fights faster. Injuries like this aren’t necessary. Someday, Meryn… someday, you might come up against someone who has outmaneuvered you. You might not even see it coming.” 

He strokes a finger down my cheek, and I crawl into his lap, pulling him closer and closer. “Thank you,” I whisper against his lips. “For fixing me. For caring if I get hurt.”

Lee winds one of his hands into my dark hair, holding me in place as he crashes his lips down on mine. His other hand wraps around my back and he pulls me deeper into his lap, where I sense him hardening underneath me. I groan into his mouth at the feeling, and he pulls back, laying me bare with his look.

“Come back to my place tonight,” he says—a demand, not a question. 

Lee has a small apartment to himself in the Northern Quarter, though as a castle messenger, he only lives there part time, often grabbing a few hours of sleep in the castle barracks between his duties. I’m there as frequently as I can be, but my mother’s condition and Saela’s care mean I don’t see him nearly as often as either of us would like.

I’m about to assent when a grave voice calls, “Meryn.”

I turn around, spotting Igor cutting quickly through the crowd toward us. He approaches, his expression tight, “Word’s spreading. Another child’s gone missing from Eastern.”

My stomach bottoms out as I quickly extract myself from Lee and stand to face Igor. “Description?”

“A girl. Ten or so. They said… they said she has dark hair and hazel eyes.”

No.

I shoot Lee a quick look, already thinking about the fastest route home. 

“Go,” Lee says quickly, standing as well. “You have to.” I nod in agreement.

“Meryn,” Igor says, “it could be a hundred girls.”

But I don’t acknowledge him. I’m already shoving my way through the rowdy crowd, my heart pounding a frantic staccato beat. Wood bites into my palms as I shove open the exit to the warehouse, and then the always-frigid night air hits me like a punch. I left so quickly that I forgot to gather my things or put on my threadbare coat, but Igor will grab it, I’m sure.

Who needs a coat, anyway, when panic is setting your blood on fire?

The streets of Southern, the farthest neighborhood from the castle, are eerily dark and as foggy as always. The residents around here don’t bother spending their few coins to keep the street torches lit. They can’t drive out the darkness of this neighborhood, anyway; this quarter has darkness set deep into its bones.

Southern is the part of the royal city where you go when you want to do something illegal, illicit, or otherwise morally bankrupt. A couple of torches wouldn’t stop it. 

I do a rapid calculation. A normal route from Southern to Eastern takes at least forty-five minutes if you follow the main path back through the Central Quarter. But I’m fast, a benefit of my long, muscular legs. And I know my way around neighborhoods that no well-bred person should ever know.

I can make it in twenty, maybe fifteen, if I take alleys.

So I take a deep, fortifying breath, and then sprint, heading past the many decrepit warehouses. My legs carry me through the dirty market square in Southern, and then I push into the tenement alleys, the neighborhood that borders both the Central Quarter and Eastern. 

The air smells like poverty here, and I try to breathe in through my mouth to avoid the scent of unwashed bodies. Though Southern is the poorest quarter, it’s not much better in Eastern; nowhere in Sturmfrost is truly well off. 

We do hear rumors about how lavishly the Bonded—the king’s elite warriors—live. At the very least, I’m sure they don’t have to worry about their children getting kidnapped from their beds in the middle of the night.

Saela.

The thought fuels me, and I pick up my speed, my lungs and legs burning in tandem. As I near the border of Central and Eastern, King Cyril’s castle looms over everything, the solid gray stone lurching over the city, and its well-lit walls make the streets brighter. 

I duck under clotheslines and hop over broken cobblestones, faster and faster and faster, racing through the edges of Eastern and finally into our quarter’s market square. It’s cleaner than the one in the Southern Quarter, actually put to use by the people in our neighborhood. 

The sound of a mother’s wailing carries through the night air. Please, goddess, no. 

A crowd huddles together in the fog. I push forward, shoving through the other citizens gathered around until I reach the center.

Not my mother, not my mother, please.

The woman on the ground looks up at me, her eyes wet. It’s Mrs. Sawyer, a seamstress who lives several streets away from us. Her husband and older sons surround her. She wails again.

“Leesa,” she moans. “Leesa!”

The knot in my chest loosens but doesn’t go away. 

Leesa Sawyer is one of Saela’s good friends from primary school. She always begs me to show her how to throw a punch, but I know her straight-laced parents wouldn’t like that. Leesa’s bright-eyed and funny and clever. Or she was.

Now, Leesa is just the latest in an ever-growing list of kids that have disappeared.

And the Nabbers never return what they take. 

Backing away from the crowd, I try to calm my breathing, still erratic from my run. Then I make my way toward my home. All the dwellings around here are half-timbered and stone, and our home is no exception, although it sits shorter than its neighbors. My father always said he was going to add a second story on it once the baby was born.

Of course, he never returned from the war to build it.

I head down our darkened street, my steps echoing off the stone buildings. The shingles on our roof look worn, I notice—it’s time to replace a few of them. Another task for another day. 

The interior is dark, except for a single candle burning on our bare wooden mantelpiece in the living area.

Mother paces back and forth, her dark hair unbrushed and wild. She’s muttering to herself, yanking at her moth-bitten nightgown, which is inside-out. When she spots me, her eyes alight with an awful, vacant recognition and I wonder which stranger I’m about to get.

She doesn’t know me when she’s like this. She doesn’t know anyone, lost to a world of her mind’s own creation. Sometimes, she’s sweet in her madness, cooing and loving. And sometimes, she’s violent, breaking the few possessions we have and raising her hand to us. 

When she gets like this and I’m not here, Saela knows to lock herself in our room from the inside. Only I have the key.

“Lumina!” Mother exclaims now, her voice pained. She races up to me, clutching my arm tightly, almost painfully. “Oh, Lumina. They’ve been terrors today, the twins. They’re trying to find you, but they never listen to me, never, never, never⁠—”

“Mother, hush.” I run a hand down her hair, gently, calming. Lumina and the twins, whoever they may be, are some of her common delusions. “Come to your bed. I’ll make the twins go away for you.”

I lead her to her room and help her onto the lumpy mattress, then reach for the medicine bottle at her bedside, the one we get from the apothecary. Both he and the medic say it helps with her delusions, and some days it does, but often it’s like nothing will bring her back at all. I feed her a thick, pungent spoonful of the sludgy medicine and pull her scratchy, too-thin blanket over her.

Mother takes the dose without protest, her eyes drifting shut almost as soon as her head hits the pillow. I watch over her until her breathing evens out, and then go check on Saela.

As I’d assumed, Saela’s locked the door to our room, so I pull out the key and let myself in. 

My sister is cozied into her small bed, sleeping soundly, her dark hair spread across her thin pillow. Ten, almost eleven—the same age as Leesa Sawyer. 

In her sleep, Saela looks so much like our father, the father she’s never known. She has the same stubborn chin, the same aquiline nose. My own memories of him grow fogged as the years pass, but she brings him alive for me.

I sit down next to her on her bed, running the back of my finger down one of her soft cheeks. “I won’t let anything happen to you,” I whisper, a fierce, protective instinct burning in my chest. “I promise.”

This nauseous, terrified churning in my stomach—I’m absolutely fucking sick of it. Of living a life where I just accept that I have no control, that our children can just disappear and no one will do a single thing about it. 

Tonight was too close of a call. 

And if no one’s going to stop this… well, then I will.

“Do it again,” Igor calls during training the next afternoon, unmoved by my heavy breathing, or the patch of sweat soaking through my tunic. 

I meet his eyes and groan. He raises his graying eyebrows at me, mouth quirking.

“Again,” he repeats. “Without telegraphing your next move this time—remember what I showed you.”

I straighten up, willing my breath to still. My thighs are screaming already, worn out from the morning’s work of endlessly lifting huge buckets of water at the laundry where I work, a job that I inherited from my mom when she stopped showing up eleven years ago. 

Someone needed to go in her stead, to make sure that we could keep food on our table and the roof over our heads. I dropped out of school and never looked back.

It doesn’t matter that I’m tired. Everyone’s tired, and Igor doesn’t accept any excuses. Not in the fighting ring, and certainly not here in his yard as he trains me. 

He’s right. I can’t afford to show any weakness.

Not if I want to keep winning. And we need those extra coins.

My foot slams into the practice dummy, and Igor grunts his approval, the closest to a compliment I get during these sessions. I repeat the movement again, two, three more times for good measure, before dancing back on the balls of my feet, grabbing a rag to wipe the sweat off my face. 

Igor’s side yard is a mess of lopsided practice dummies, rough-hewn weights to build muscle, and a jumble of half-broken furniture that I know his wife Prina wishes he’d spend time fixing rather than sinking more time into training me. 

“You okay, Alleycat?” he asks, taking the rag back from me. “Seem a little off today.”

I raise an eyebrow at him. Igor is irritatingly perceptive; but then again, he’s more of a parent to me than my actual living one.

“I can’t stop thinking about Leesa Sawyer,” I tell him, the spark of last night’s fury still burning inside of me, waiting to catch fire. I’ve been mulling over it all day, coming closer and closer to a way to take action.

Igor nods as he motions to the practice dummy, instructing me to keep going as we talk. “That’s a tough one, the Sawyer girl. Good family. Nice people. Heard her parents were up all night searching for her,” he says as I unleash a fast combination of kicks and punches. “But I’ve yet to hear of a missing kid who’s been found.”

“Does it seem like it’s happening more? The Nabbers, I mean,” I say between punches.

They have a silly, childish name, given to them by the very kids who fear them. It’s almost hard to take them seriously when you hear it, which is part of the appeal. If you can laugh at it, it doesn’t seem true—like the Nabbers are nothing more than a childhood legend. 

Unfortunately, their menace is all too real.

Kids have been getting kidnapped for as long as I’ve been alive; maybe as long as this entire war has been going on. And we all know who the Nabbers actually are.

Siphons, our ancient, monstrous enemy from the neighboring country of Astreona. They steal our kids out of their beds and take them back across the border, turning them into living blood bags, feeding off of them, sucking out their powerful child life force, and eventually draining and killing them. 

It makes me sick, thinking how those depraved immortal vampires are going to win this war by slaughtering our innocents.

Igor hums. “Maybe so. Get higher with that kick.”

I follow his instructions, my legs continuing to ache. “Isn’t it bad enough that our sons and daughters and fathers are being killed by the Siphons at the front? We should be safe in our own homes, shouldn’t we? What’s the king doing about all this?”

“Don’t think the king gives two shits about it, to be honest. Too focused on the war hundreds of leagues away to pay any attention to what’s happening in his own city right underneath his nose.”

Catching my breath, I glare over at Igor. “I can’t stand for that. And I’m going to do something about it.”

Igor doesn’t question this grand statement, or tell me I’m foolish to think that I can make a change. He knows as well as I do that if you want something done here in Sturmfrost, you have to do it yourself.

Instead, he calmly walks over to one of his debris-strewn tables and opens up a cloth roll. Inside lay a dozen sharply honed, glittering weapons. “You seem angry. Knives?”

A laugh escapes me. “Yes, and yes. Thought you’d never ask.” 

We don’t use knives during the hand-to-hand combat we do in the pits, but Igor’s been training me to throw them, anyway. He said you never know when you might need to make someone shit their pants by tossing a dagger at their head. 

“What’d you have in mind?” he asks as I head over to the table and select a small and particularly pointy-looking one. 

“You taught me to defend myself,” I say, turning toward the target he’s set up on the far side of the yard. “No Nabbers would’ve gotten me, not without a fight, once you got me started. Maybe we can teach the kids, too. I could train them to protect themselves.” 

I throw the knife and it sails through the air, hitting the outer edge of the target. Not good enough.

Igor scoffs, sitting down in his creaky chair and staring up at the cloud cover that threatens snow. “You had the fight in you already. Not too many kids are gonna throw themselves at danger the way you did.”

“The way I still do, you mean,” I joke, bravado covering up the painful rush of memory. 

When my dad was killed, I was left alone at twelve years old with a pregnant, mentally ill mother. Overnight, everything changed. Saela was born, and she was so perfect and tiny and good. And I was the child put in charge of her.

I was furious at the world, spoiling for a fight. 

I used to go out into the alleys and goad older boys twice my size into an altercation just so I could have someone to hit. Just so I could feel something other than the unending, cavernous pain inside of my chest. 

Eventually, Igor got tired of watching the little neighbor girl get her ass handed to her. He stomped out into the alley behind our houses, grabbed me by the collar of my shirt, and dragged me hissing and spitting into his kitchen. 

He threw me down into a rickety chair and said, “Are you trying to get yourself killed, girl?”

When I didn’t deny it, he let out a long-suffering sigh. “Well, if you’re going to prowl around acting like an alleycat, then you need to learn to fight like one. Come with me.”

Igor led me to this yard and started to train me—that day, and every one that followed. He helped me hone my anger from something feral into something vicious, polished. 

Dangerous.

And when the boys in the neighborhood began to look at me in fear, Igor helped me find a healthy new outlet for my rage. I’m still goading men twice my size into fighting me. But now I get paid.

Grabbing my knife from the target, I turn back toward him. “You’re right. I’m different. But not everyone needs to be a professional. If these kids just knew a few simple tricks, enough to give them time to make some noise, get some help…” 

“Don’t think this will get you out of your own training time,” Igor warns, and I know he’s sold on the idea. 

“No, I’d never deny you the pleasure of ordering me around,” I tease, and he tosses a knife at me that I dodge easily, laughing. 

* * *

After I leave Igor’s in the late afternoon, I head west to the Central Quarter to pick up Saela from school, weaving through the crowded streets. The sinking sun breaks through the clouds now and again, sending reddish reflections glimmering in the windows as I pass homes and shops—more of the windows in Central are smooth and shiny, unlike our neighborhood where a broken pane gets boarded up more often than not.

Saela used to attend primary school in our neighborhood in Eastern, but she was always top of her class, and last year her teacher recommended her for a more advanced secondary school in Central, which is a wealthier neighborhood.

It’s not convenient, and it costs money—not much, but anything is too much for us these days. The sacrifice is worth it for my sister, though. She will not end up like me, dropping out and working herself to the bone just to stay alive. 

In a world full of dead ends, I’m going to make sure she has options. 

Saela’s different from me. Bookish, hard working. An optimist. An innocent. She’s got a smart mouth on her, which I take credit for, but the rest of it? Must’ve been from Father, because she just came out that way.

She’s standing alone outside the school building when I arrive, dark hair plaited down her back and eyes narrowed in annoyance.

“Late again,” Saela says, looking pointedly at me.

“Sorry, kiddo,” I say, swinging my arm around her shoulders. “Guess you’re just going to have to accept that your big sister is bad with time. How was school today?”

“It was fine,” she says in a clipped tone, clearly mulling over something.

“Fine?” I tease. “Well, if we’re paying all this money for fine, we can probably switch you back to school in Eastern and⁠—”

?