If you’ve ever been hooked on The Vampire Diaries, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or wished Bella from Twilight was a fierce, kick-butt heroine, this series is for you!

Dive into a thrilling supernatural world filled with found family, first love, and self-discovery. Picture growing powers, young romance, and a town where the supernatural lurks just beneath the surface… and the hottest guy is irresistibly drawn to you.

Alyssa’s life has never been ordinary.

Growing up as an orphan with a string of house mothers and nannies, she’s always felt different. While her peers struggled, Alyssa had everything she could ever need—except answers to the mysterious powers slowly awakening within her. Strength, speed, extraordinary eyesight, and razor-sharp hearing are only the beginning of her strange new reality.

When the gorgeous triplets move to town, Alyssa’s world shifts in ways she never imagined. They’re irresistible, enigmatic… and one of them is about to turn her world upside down.

But in her town is a serial killer. A serial killer who now murdered a friend.

Turns out those brothers might not be what they seem.

Turns out neither is she.

Want to know more? Then here’s the first Chapter!!!

I shivered that night as I stepped into the moonlight the moment I’d sensed something wrong would come.

Not the shifting of seasons.

Not early fall turning the larch trees gold.

It was a knowing.

And yet, I didn’t know.

I wonder if I’d known , would I have ignored the dark for the light?

Sampled the sweet without first savoring the sour?

Or noticed the living without seeing the dead?

Chapter 1 Alyssa

I hip-bump the Grill’s back door open and slip outside. In the forest not fifty feet away, thick mist coils like the breath of a million souls.

The refreshing bite of the air doesn’t make me shiver. But the eyes do. For once more, the night has eyes. And as usual, they’re watching me.

I’ve felt it too often in the last few months. Day after day, week after week. The awareness of those eyes, a cheap wool shirt, itching at me until I want to claw off my skin.

I can see no one around the parking lot, and hope Amy—one of my besties who’s still cleaning up after her shift—won’t be long.

Being stalked isn’t ever great.

But with a murderer using my hometown as their personal slaughterhouse, everyone is wearing their nerves like a parker in a blizzard: always on and where everyone can see.

Even if there wasn’t a murderer to worry about, I’d grown nervy of late. Not scared nervy—it’s an excited or expecting-something energy. The way I felt as an eight-year-old when Amy’s family invited me, Alyssa Darcy Presage, the girl with no family, to go with them to Disneyland.

Other than turning eighteen and gaining some control of my trust fund, I don’t know what my nerves are for. I stare at the back door and will it to open. “Come on, Amy.”

I want to get home where I feel safest and there’s quiet, so that whatever lurks inside me will calm. My hearing and eyesight and other senses have improved to a strange degree over the last few months. But the worst I’ve found to deal with is how much louder the world is now.

A shift like tonight leaves my ears ringing. It was even noisier than a normal two-meals-for-the price-of-one night. Everyone I serviced tables for was discussing locks, security cameras, ammunition, and guns.

Before three weeks ago, no household around Fielding, except mine, locked their doors. No house except mine had a security camera.

And every household I know of owns at least one gun—except mine.

A stick snaps in the forest. My skin stills and I become hyperaware of where I stand and the door to safety behind me.

A man dressed in bad-boy black from hoodie to boots steps out of the mist and trees, turns back, and gestures as if telling someone to come here. A young woman staggers from the trees. Face pale in the darkness, she glances around but appears lost and bewildered.

Ugh, Sarah.

I move farther behind the dumpster to keep out of the snake’s sight. Sarah Ashburn, narcissistic bully and beauty queen—at least in her own mind. The girl my friends and I secretly call ‘the snake,’ as she likes to strike when you aren’t watching. I’ve worn many a Sarah-caused tourniquet over the last twelve years and don’t fancy wearing another one any time again this century.

But why is she here at this time of night? With the wolves hanging close to town lately and the recent murders, being in the forest at night seems like the most stupid insanity.

The man grabs Sarah’s hand and tugs her across the small clearing, ignoring her stumbles to keep up with his long-legged strides. They step through the moose-sized hole in the chain-wire fence meant to protect the Grill’s staff and patrons from wildlife. And it does—if it’s bigger than a moose.

In the parking lot, the man points to Sarah’s old, yellow Corolla and pushes her toward it. He shoves his hands into his jean pockets, spins, and walks away. The top and side of his face in the shadow of his hood, he glances down the alley between the building and dumpsters—right at me—then stops.

Mouth smeared with red, he gives me a joker-esque smile.

Everything dims as if the shadows consume the light. My heart jolts, my breath seizes, and my head spins like a merry-go-round with a broken brake. I want to scurry deep into the darkness and disappear into the shadows.

And then he’s gone. No movement. No sound.

Nothing.

Blood thundering in my ears, I stagger against the dumpster and the area suddenly gets brighter as if someone lifts a veil. Where did he go?

Sarah is still standing beside her car, staring at the side wall of the Grill. Something has to be wrong with her. Why else would the normally cocky Sarah seem stunned?

I guess, I’ll have to help. Make sure she’s okay.

With my pulse still sprinting, I hurry toward her. “Sarah?”

She doesn’t move.

“Sarah, you all right? Sarah?” I touch her arm and find her skin too human and warm for her personality.

She jerks and blinks. “Wha . . . yeah.”

She’s pale, but her hair and clothes are mussed—how dumb am I? Nothing’s wrong. They’ve been making out, and the guy is either a terrible lover or a super-hot one to elicit such spectacular aftereffects. I’m almost jealous that I’ve no experience to make a comparison.

She licks her lips. She’s not wearing gloss. But the man had it all over his lips? I’ve never seen lipstick or gloss that completely transfers before.

“Who was that guy?”

“What guy?” Sarah squints and looks around. “I don’t see anyone. Hey, how did I get here?”

“The guy you were with in the forest?” I step closer. Her pupils are nothing more than pinpricks—way too small for nighttime. Has she taken something? Been slipped a roofie?

Been assaulted?

“Do you want me to call someone? Your parents—the sheriff?” I grab my phone.

Sarah shakes her head, and her expression goes mean-girl hard. But I’m not sure if it is to clear it or to say no to my question, or her wondering why she’s talking to me. “I’m fine. God, Lyssa, mind your own stupid business.”

And there she is. Serpent Sarah I’ve known most of my life. I raise my hands in surrender and step back. It’s always best to keep a safe distance from Sarah, though in my experience, ten miles isn’t enough.

We were friends once. I can’t imagine why, since she’s always been meaner than a viper’s strike. After all the years since the six-year-old me shoved her face into her oversized birthday cake, I can still feel the satisfaction and malignant euphoria of seeing her shock under the thick, pink buttercream.

Shock that I’d acted out at one of her many, venomous taunts about how she was sooo lucky she had sooo many people to love her—when I had none.

Even though I’ve been in therapy for anger management since, remembering her shock always makes me smile.

Sarah screws up her nose, bulldog-style, the spoiled six-year-old still showing. “You’ve always been such a freak.”

Oops. Guess I’m smiling.

The Grill’s back door squeaks open. Amy walks out her face showing she’s as relieved for her shift’s end as I was.

Sarah flicks her hair—it’s her classic you are less than me dismissal—gets into and starts her car.

Rather than wasting any more time on Sarah, I wave to Amy, pleased for the presence of someone nice, normal, and not a sociopath.

“Lys, Mom will be a few.” Amy watches Sarah drive out of the parking lot. “You were talking to the snake? Why?” She doesn’t try to hide her surprise.

“Not really. I saw . . . Oh, here’s your mom now.” I wave at Amy’s mother.

Frodo, my car, broke down a month ago, and since it had something the mechanic called a cracked head, it wasn’t worth fixing. I could have asked what I call the Trust for a new car, but I bought Frodo, an aged, green jeep with oversized wheels, from money I saved working at the Grill. Buying Frodo that way made me feel like the other teens around town. But with a killer on the loose, I need my own wheels again.

Tomorrow, after I receive some trust account funds, I’ll buy another secondhand car. Though hopefully one less modest than Frodo.

Fielding’s mayor always boasts our town is the safest town in Montana. And it has been.

Until three weeks ago, when they found two campers murdered, ten miles out.

Then, two weeks ago, when they found five campers murdered, five miles out.

Two days ago, a couple who’d gone on a hike—just three miles from town.

Everyone with their throats ripped open.

I open the back door of Amy’s family car and slide in. “Hey, Rebecca.”

Rebecca gives me a crinkling-the-skin-around-her-eyes smile. A warmth I return with interest.

Amy’s parents tried to adopt me three times over the years, but each time my lawyers shut it down. The Trust didn’t consult me. Why would they? I’ve only cried myself to sleep most of my life for the want of a family.

Rebecca swings the car around so I face the hole in the fence Sarah and joker guy stepped through. Only minutes have passed, yet now the forest is nothing more than a shadow behind a wall of fog thick enough to conceal a killer.