Psycho Shifters

Ten-year-old Sadie picks the lock on her bedroom door with a stolen paperclip and frees her six-year-old sister Lucinda from their rooms in Dick's tavern.

Ten-year-old Sadie picks the lock on her bedroom door with a stolen paperclip and frees her six-year-old sister Lucinda from their rooms in Dick's tavern. They sprint into the snowy forest of the shifter realm—a freezing, harsh world where they're classified as null servants, property of their beta master. They climb pine trees, play explorer, and pretend to be alpha warriors. When a neighbor spots them, Dick drags Sadie to her empty room and beats her with his belt until she screams herself hoarse and slips in her own blood. Lucinda hides under her bed and trembles. Sadie promises herself she won't cry next time. In the library books, great adventurers never cry. She'll be strong like an alpha, even if she never becomes one.

A servant's blood reveals an impossible alpha

At twenty, Sadie is still Dick's servant—beaten daily, her voice permanently broken from years of screaming. She's developed a mental switch she calls the numb: an ability to shut off all emotion and become a cold, tactical fighting machine. When she finally tries to kill Dick by choking him with his own belt, an oligarchy agent interrupts, announcing all servants must now be tested at the sacred lake. The enchanted waters are supposed to turn one of three colors—black for alpha, purple for beta, yellow for omega. One drop of Sadie's blood hits the surface, and every molecule turns midnight black. Alpha. No woman has ever tested as alpha. Then, as she's carried away, she glimpses the lake through the pines. It's no longer black. It's blood red—a color that shouldn't exist.

The war fortress holds three alphas and zero welcome

Sadie wakes on the lawn of a military fortress near portal three—a gateway to the fae realm where alphas and betas fight monstrous creatures sent by the fae queen. Three alpha males loom above her. Jax, the leader, stands seven feet of dark muscle draped in gold jewelry and braids, his scent warm chestnuts. Cobra is pale porcelain inlaid with emeralds and diamonds, his green eyes soulless, his scent frosty snow. Ascher wears onyx horns atop golden hair and flame-and-rose tattoos across every surface, smelling of rich pine. All three dwarf Sadie by more than a foot and hundreds of pounds. A null servant named Zed delivers the oligarchy's confirmation that she's truly an alpha. Ascher calls it impossible, Cobra predicts they'll kill her, and Jax grudgingly agrees to test her in combat.