The Black Wolf They Cast Aside

Episode 1

Maeve's seventeenth birthday should have been a celebration. Instead, her first shift reveals a black wolf — impossible, her parents insist, for two White wolves. In front of the pack, they declare her a fake and a moocher, then hand down the sentence: she's now the help, working off seventeen years of debt at 500 a month, no meals included. She doesn't cry. She just nods, hollow.

What they don't know: she overheard Bianca ask to be the only daughter for a year, and their parents agreed. They also don't know about the pack bank account her late grandmother left her — untouchable until she turns eighteen. Three hundred sixty-four days. She can survive anything that long.

Episode 2

Bianca lunges for Maeve's backpack, and the broken zipper snaps. Suppressants spill across the marble floor — the only thing standing between Maeve and her first heat. Bianca sneers that omegas like her don't deserve them, and their mother caves instantly: "Whatever you want, sweetie." Bianca grinds her heel into the bottle until the pale liquid soaks the carpet.

Within a week, every wolf in the pack will scent an unprotected omega. Greta, the nanny, leads Maeve to a storage room and promises her parents will cool off. Maeve knows better. Sitting on a plank bed behind rusted bars, she counts down. One year, and she's gone forever.

Episode 3

Midnight brings the first wave of heat with no suppressants to blunt it. Biting down on her sleeve, Maeve creeps toward cold water — and overhears her parents on the stairs. Her mother worries Maeve will hate them. Her father dismisses it: the black fur was just a potion's effect, Bianca was bullied, and the older twin needs to learn her place. In a year, they'll tell Maeve the fur color was an accident, restore her as alpha heiress, and she'll be too overjoyed to hold a grudge.

They plan to torture her for a year and expect gratitude at the end. Maeve decides otherwise. She'll give them thirty days — then the Sterling family will learn what begging on your knees means.

Episode 4

Maeve drags herself into town for more suppressants, but her card is declined. The account held two hundred dollars — every cent she'd saved over two months to stay alive. Back home, Bianca presents their parents with gifts bought using that stolen money, and they gush over their thoughtful daughter while calling Maeve an ungrateful stray.

Something in Maeve snaps. When Bianca plays the victim after a scuffle, their father takes her side instantly. Bianca demands Maeve carry her twelve miles to the city clinic — on her back. Their father threatens to throw Maeve out tonight if she refuses. She believes him. But she can't leave yet.

Episode 5

The twelve-mile march is a gauntlet of insults. Maeve carries Bianca while her parents snap orders and remind her that nobody loves her, that even her own wolf came out wrong. The words have been said so many times they've lost their edge.

Just as the clinic comes into view, Bianca slips off her back. "Walk yourself in if you're really hurt." Maeve has no money, no working card, no standing in the pack, and no strength left. So she turns around and drags herself twelve miles back to the mansion, one stumbling step at a time.

Episode 6

The mansion is already buzzing when Maeve arrives. In the living room stand a filthy, nervous couple who smell like rogues — her real parents, come from the neutral zone to claim her. Her mother says blood is blood; seventeen years of raising her has to count for something, but not enough. Her father tells her to leave with them now.

Bianca smirks: "Congrats, Maeve. You're officially not a fake anymore. Go run with the rogues where you belong." The couple shuffle and apologize for the bother. Maeve thought she was done crying. The tears come anyway.

Episode 7

Bianca twists the knife in front of everyone: Maeve should kneel and beg her real parents to take her back — unless she thinks she's too good for low-born rogues. Something inside Maeve breaks clean in half. She announces that whatever bond they had ends tonight. She is no alpha heiress of the High Tide Pack and has nothing to do with the Sterling family.

Then she counts the truth: the Sterlings claim they spent a fortune on her, but Bianca got thirty thousand a month while Maeve got three hundred — and Bianca still shook her down for it. One word from Bianca decided whether Maeve ate, whether she mattered. Neither did.

Episode 8

Maeve moves into her real parents' place deep in the neutral zone — no streetlights, no clean roads, just rotting wood houses and the stink of unwashed wolves. There's no spare room and no extra blankets. By morning her first heat crashes over her in full force, fever spiking to 104.

The Sterlings are called for help, but the answer is cold: Maeve is faking it to guilt-trip them, she cut ties herself, let the little stray learn the hard way. The Sterlings are leaving for a coastal pack retreat — don't call again. Abandoned and burning alive, Maeve crawls into the hallway, begs a stranger to call a healer, and passes out face down on the floor.

Episode 9

Maeve wakes to a healer's voice: her fever hit 107, and ten more minutes would have killed her. A kind passerby dragged her in. With no money and no parents, she offers to sell clippings of her rare black wolf fur to pay the bill.

Senior year begins with her running errands for classmates — a dollar a run, over twenty dollars a day. When Bianca's friends smash her lunch and force her to eat off the ground, her homeroom teacher Adler intervenes. Adler, knowing Maeve is broke, quietly lands her a weekend tutoring job with a wealthy beta family. Maeve thanks her over and over — never guessing that kindness will cost Adler her job.

Episode 10

Adler is reported and fired, accused of taking bribes from a student's parents. Maeve's name and photo go up on the school bulletin board — a picture of her student's father picking her up after a session brands her the secret omega plaything of an older beta.

Her real mother storms in and slaps her twice, accusing her of shaming the family. The Sterlings watch like she's trash; Bianca smirks behind them. That night, a man yanks Maeve into a room and says her old pack already sold her to him — no enforcement will come for a rogue's daughter. She draws a wolf's-bane-coated blade and warns him off. He promises he'll get what he wants eventually.