The Voice Only He Could Hear

Prologue

The Night Her Voice Died

The first thing Azalea remembered was her mother screaming.

The second was the crescent moon carved into a stranger's wrist.

She lay motionless on the cold wooden floor, trapped between the bodies of her parents. Blood soaked through her nightgown, and each shallow breath sent unbearable pain through her ruined throat.

The men who had invaded their home believed she was dying.

Perhaps she was.

Azalea stared through half-closed eyes as the stranger stepped over her father. He wiped his bloodied blade against his coat before pulling down his sleeve, hiding the strange mark on his wrist—a black crescent moon with a line cutting through its center.

Azalea pressed both hands against the wounds across her neck and forced herself to make a sound. She needed to call for help. She needed to tell her father to stand up. She needed her mother to open her eyes and promise that everything would be all right.

But her voice was gone.

Hot tears streamed down her cheeks as she curled against her mother's side.

A distant howl broke through the silence.

Then another answered.

The strangers had heard the approaching wolves and fled, but the sound no longer frightened Azalea. She did not care who found her. Nothing they did could hurt as much as what had already been taken from her.

The darkness began closing around her.

Just before her eyes shut, footsteps rushed into the destroyed house.

"Someone is alive!" a man shouted.

Hands lifted Azalea from the floor.

She fought against them, reaching desperately for her parents, but she was too weak to escape.

"Easy, little one," a woman whispered. "We're trying to help you."

Azalea stared over the woman's shoulder as she was carried outside. The only home she had ever known disappeared behind her.

She tried to scream for her parents one final time.

Silence answered.

For days, Azalea drifted between life and death.

Whenever she opened her eyes, she saw unfamiliar faces leaning over her. Healers wrapped bandages around her throat and poured bitter liquids between her lips. They spoke softly, believing she could not hear them.

"The damage is too severe."

"She is fortunate to be alive."

"She may never speak again."

Azalea did not feel fortunate.

She wanted her mother.

She wanted her father.

She wanted to close her eyes and awaken in her own bed, where the attack had been nothing more than a terrible dream.

But each morning, she awoke in the same strange room with bandages around her throat.

Her parents never came.

Weeks later, a healer placed a mirror in her hands.

A deep, uneven scar stretched across the front of her neck. Azalea touched it with trembling fingers.

"Your wounds have healed," the woman said gently. "But I am afraid your voice may not return."

Azalea opened her mouth.

She tried to say her name.

She tried to say anything.

Only a broken whisper of air emerged.

The healer reached for her, but Azalea pulled away.

She took the small slate beside her bed and drew the symbol she had seen on the vampire's wrist.

The crescent moon.

The woman's face lost all color.

"Where did you see that?"

Azalea pointed toward herself and then dragged one finger across her throat.

The healer stared at the mark for several seconds before quickly wiping it away.

"You must forget that symbol."

Azalea shook her head.

"If the people who carry it learn you survived, they will return for you."

The woman did not understand.

Azalea could never forget it.

She remembered the crescent mark.

She remembered the man's face.

And she remembered the name spoken before he left.

Lucien.

Azalea looked down at the empty slate.

She was nine years old. She had no family, no home, and no voice with which to demand justice.

But she was alive.

The killers had made one terrible mistake.

They had left her alive.

Azalea picked up the chalk and drew the crescent symbol again. Beneath it, she wrote the only promise that mattered.

I will find them.

The child Azalea had once been died beside her parents that night.

Years later, the world would know her by another name.

Zay.

A silent hybrid with a scar across her throat, revenge in her heart, and powers that neither vampires nor werewolves fully understood.

The men responsible for destroying her family believed they had silenced her forever.

They were wrong.

One day, Zay would discover a bond that allowed her voice to be heard again.

And when the vampire named Axel Blackwood finally heard her inside his mind, he would learn that her silence had never been weakness.

It had been the place where her strength was born.