This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 Eva Harper
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN: 9781651492635
Enforcing Boundaries
Eva Harper
Book 1 of the Boundaries Series
Dedicated to my loving and supportive family. I owe everything I am to you.
Part 1
When I Was 4
“Margo.”
My eyes snapped open in the dim room, and my mother came into view. She looked worried, but a small smile graced her pink lips as she spoke to me. In my sleepy haze, I didn’t realize what she was whispering as she grabbed my hand and pulled me out of my bedroom. My father was waiting in the hallway, dressed in his black coat and work boots. His skin nearly blended with the coat, something I used to tease him about, but he would remind me that my own skin nearly blended with my tan coat, and I would giggle at the thought.
His face was stern as he bent down in front of me and grabbed onto my shoulders.
“Margo, I need you to be a big girl, honey,” he whispered, stroking the side of my face. “Listen to me and Momma and be very quiet.”
“Daddy,” I whimpered, looking between him and my mother.
“Shh,” my mother hushed, pulling my arms into my coat, and handed my father my old black shoes. He lifted me into them and buckled the latch around my foot. They each took one of my hands in theirs and pulled me down the hallway of our tiny apartment building. As we exited the building, they looked out at the guards that stood watch over our small human compound.
There were only a few of us left in the building after that winter. My mother told me the other family had moved to a different pack, and the older lady that lived next to us had gone to visit her son. Now there were only twelve of us, including our small family.
The werewolves lived around us in big homes. Some of them lived in the packhouse on the edge of the territory; they were important, and I was told never to speak to them.
“Which way?” my mother whispered to my father.
“East,” my father told her, pulling us along the perimeter of the building. I stumbled between them, but they held me up by my arms and pulled me along. They exchanged a few whispers, but I continued to stare at their feet, wondering why we were leaving our home in the middle of the night.
We made it halfway across the territory before one of the guards saw us between the trees. He called out for us to stop and began running towards us. My mother picked me up in her arms and started running, my father right next to us. My head faced over her shoulder, and I watched as the wolves slowly closed in on us. My father had placed his hand on my mother’s shoulder and told her to run as fast as she could before he stopped and faced the wolves.
My mother faltered and turned around to look at my father as the guards tackled him to the ground and forced his arms behind his back. She whimpered and placed a hand on my head, running faster.
The shifters caught us seconds later.
I was ripped from my mother’s arms as they pulled her hands behind her and tied her wrists with rope. One of the guards held his hand out for me, and I naively took it and began walking beside him, behind the guards who were guiding my parents. They walked us back to the packhouse, where the Alpha had been alerted of our escape and was waiting with his guards.
He glared down at us as the guards forced my mother and father to their knees and placed me beside them. The Alpha declared that we would be punished in the early morning when more of the pack could see us. They carted my mother and father off to the cells in the basement of the packhouse. We were rarely allowed inside the packhouse, and as we walked, I looked around in wonder. It was a grand place, filled with beautiful things, none of which I could touch.
The guard who held my hand pulled me a little quicker and allowed me to share a cell with my mother. I fell asleep in her lap, playing with her long blonde hair, tired from the running, and being woken up; I don’t think she ever slept.
In the morning, one of the guards came and removed us from the cells. The same guard who held my hand came back and walked me behind my parents, again, to the front of the packhouse. There, a large pole was placed in the front yard with a rope sectioning off the area. Most of the pack stood around it, watching us arrive from the basement. I had never seen so much of the pack before. Each time
