The city did not care who she was.
It did not care that she had escaped a brutal pack, that she had defied an Alpha, that she carried the blood of a Gamma and the calling of the Messenger. The streets swallowed her whole, indifferent and relentless, and by the third night, Iva was starting to understand something painfully simple.
Freedom was expensive.
She rented another cheap hostel room, this one even worse than the last. The walls were thin, stained with the ghosts of strangers who had passed through before her. The mattress dipped in the middle, and the air smelled faintly of mold and detergent that tried—and failed—to hide it. But it had a lock. And for now, that was enough.
She sat on the edge of the bed, counting the bills in her hand again. And again. And again.
Her money was
