Nine years later, Finley wakes from a nightmare of the night in the woods detailed in the Prologue. Despite her success making the elixir to slow the curse, her grandmother and mother have died, and now her father is sick with the illness. Years ago, the king of the land made a deal with the demon king, which resulted in the curse. In addition to the illness, the curse also destroyed modern technology (including electricity and plumbing). The people of the village are shifters: Before the curse, they shifted back and forth between their human and animal forms at will, but the curse keeps them trapped in their human forms.

Backdropped by the sound of her father’s coughs, Finley mixes a dose of the everlass elixir from plants she’s grown in her garden and stolen from the Forbidden Wood. Aside from the everlass plant, the second critical ingredient is a single red rose petal, though Finley has no idea why. With the full moon approaching, Finley prepares to sneak into the Forbidden Wood to harvest more everlass, as the plant is most potent under the full moon. Her older brother, Hannon, tries to talk her out of it, sighting all the dangers and how much their father and the village need her. Finley argues that this need is precisely why she must go, silently vowing not to let her father down.

Before the curse, the Forbidden Wood was lush and green, but now it is slowly dying and always cloaked in shadow. Tonight, the forest seems particularly on edge, shivering. Finley ignores it to focus on harvesting the everlass, lovingly tending it and carefully packing it away because treating the plant well increases its potency. As soon as she finishes, the wailing cry of some unknown creature erupts through the forest. Lust, sharp and sudden, fills Finley’s body, and she identifies her pursuer as an incubus. Slow and clumsy from the intense feelings, Finley stumbles along until yet another cry makes her blood freeze with terror. She looks up in time to see a creature lunging out of the trees at her.

Before Finley can react, the beast charges from the forest and takes down the creature. Finley doesn’t know or care why the beast didn’t attack her. She runs home and locks herself in her house, where she ponders why the Forbidden Wood was so strange tonight. The next morning, Hannon insists Finley go to the market in his place. A village girl has been pursuing him romantically, and he doesn’t want to run into her. Unlike Finley, who is bitter about romance since her last boyfriend dumped her and then quickly mated—the term shifters use for romantic pairings—with someone else who he thought would make a “better” wife, Hannon believes in true shifter mates—analogous to the “one true love” trope common to the romance genre—and doesn’t want to get involved with just anyone.

At the market, Finley runs into Jedrek, an arrogant, rich man who’s been after her for years. He corners Finley in public and proposes that the two of them mate because they are clearly the most beautiful and desirable people in the village. In front of a growing crowd, Finley turns him down and storms away, but even so, she “didn’t for a second think it was over” (52).

After escaping Jedrek and finishing at the market, Finley goes to the library—her refuge from the world. She borrows three books—one about plants, one about shifter history, and a “smutty” romance—before dropping off the market supplies at home and then heading to her favorite reading spot by a tree overlooking the Forbidden Wood. Though she’s read all the books before, she takes particular interest in the shifter history, specifically the tales of the dragon-shifter prince who allegedly deserted the kingdom and left the people to the mercy of the king who made a deal with the demons. Rumors say the prince went to a faerie kingdom to be with his love, and if that’s true, Finley doesn’t blame him. 

Finley drifts off reading the shifter book. When she wakes, it’s nearly sunset, and though she doesn’t see anything, she’s sure something is watching her from the forest. Clutching her books, she hurries home to tend to the everlass and then go to sleep. Later, she wakes from the nightmare about the beast, only to realize a hulking presence waits just outside her bedroom window. The beast watches her, assessing, with one enormous golden eye that feels “as if he’d ripped out my soul and placed it on a scale” (70). At once, Finley realizes the beast is offering her a choice—to go with it or risk her family. Telling Hannon to keep the family safe, Finley goes out to meet the beast, vowing she’ll come back but doubting it’s true.