Bitten

The story opens with a prologue set in Castle Severi, seat of the Wolf Queen's Court of North America, one of seven werewolf courts that secretly govern the world's continents. Queen Sybil Severi discovers her sister, Cora, in bed with a human man she has illegally bitten. Sybil strips Cora of her title and banishes her as a Lone Wolf, a punishment that slowly destroys a werewolf's soul through isolation. Cora, pregnant, strikes a magical blood bargain: She will kill her human lover and deliver the child to the castle if Sybil raises the boy as her own. In exchange, the child's life is bound to Sybil's heir, so that if the heir dies, Cora's child dies as well. Cora kills her lover, gives birth, leaves the infant at the castle gate, and disappears.

Seventeen-year-old Vanessa Hart lives in St. Augustine, Florida, with her father, Rufus, the local sheriff. On the night of a full moon, her best friend, Celeste Ward, convinces her to attend an illegal beach party on Anastasia Island. At the party, Celeste confronts a group of unnaturally beautiful strangers after one shoves Vanessa. A girl with red-brown eyes, later identified as Princess Evelyn "Evie" Lee of the Asian Court, slashes Celeste with what seem to be claws. Afterward, Celeste becomes feverish, a purple rash spreading across her neck.

As the two flee, they witness a human transform into a massive wolf. A second wolf appears. Celeste trips and cannot run. The first wolf kills her. Vanessa stabs it with her Swiss Army knife, but the second wolf bites Vanessa around the waist, shattering her ribs, then drops her beside Celeste's body. Vanessa's father arrives alongside a golden-eyed boy named Calix Severi and a group of werewolves. Calix insists Vanessa must come with them or die. Lord Allard, a pale adviser to the queen, sedates Vanessa with wolfsbane and explains that her transformation into a werewolf has begun.

Vanessa wakes in a barred room inside Castle Severi, which exists within a magical pocket called the Realm of Superiority, accessed through a portal in the real-world Castillo de San Marcos fort. Over several days, her bones break and reform as the transformation ravages her body. Consumed by grief and rage, she completes her first shift into a brown wolf with glowing purple eyes, a color unprecedented in werewolf history, and smashes through her steel door.

Vanessa crashes into the throne room, where Queen Sybil sits alongside Lord Allard, her son Prince Sinclair "Sin" Severi, and Evie. Vanessa attacks Evie but is seized by the queen, who demonstrates her power of compulsion, the ability to force obedience on wolves below her in rank. Testing Vanessa's position in the hierarchy, the queen discovers Vanessa can be compelled by regents and Alphas, the highest-ranking wolves below regents, but not by Betas, the mid-tier rank below Alphas. This places Vanessa in an unprecedented position. Sybil offers Vanessa a choice: Train alongside noble werewolves preparing for the Ascension Rite, a ceremony in which the next generation's packs are formed, or die. Vanessa swears a blood pact of allegiance.

Sin explains the court's rules, including that leaving means becoming a Lone Wolf, which leads to madness and death. During the First Rite, called "the Drowning," Vanessa is pushed into an enchanted moon pool beneath the castle and must shift into wolf form to survive. The Oracle, a young woman named Lyra, reads Vanessa's destiny and declares her a Truthseer: She can sense lies through a flare of wrongness in her chest, while truths produce warmth, though careful word manipulation can deceive the gift.

Vanessa begins classes in history, alchemy, astronomy, and combat. Her classmates include Evie and her brother Prince Eric Lee, the cruel Katerina Aston, Evie's gentle best friend Antionette "Nettie," the plant-gifted Portia Montgomery, and the scholarly Myles Win. Evie's circle bullies Vanessa relentlessly. Katerina bites off the tip of her nose during a combat match, and Vanessa struggles in every subject.

Sin privately befriends Vanessa, revealing his moral conflicts about the court's brutality and his arranged engagement to Evie, a blood bargain between queens that cannot be broken without sparking war. Vanessa uses her Truthseer gift to confirm Sin did not kill Celeste, and their bond deepens. She also develops a complicated dynamic with Calix, who is hostile but repeatedly saves her life, cleaning a wolfsbane wound from her hand and declining to report her transgressions.

Vanessa investigates Celeste's death, initially suspecting Evie. She sneaks into Evie's room and finds alchemical poisons and a bottle of vanishing blood matching a threatening message that appeared and disappeared on her chest. Calix urges her to stop fixating on who killed Celeste and instead ask why. After befriending Nettie, Vanessa learns that Evie illegally bit Nettie as a child, leaving webbed scarring identical to the rash Celeste displayed the night she died. Vanessa realizes Celeste had been bitten before the attack, and her murder was likely a cover-up.

Meanwhile, Instructor Alvarez is found murdered on the beach. Queen Sybil obtains Vanessa's journal, which someone has filled with treasonous declarations, and punishes Vanessa by ordering silver arrows shot into the leg of Oona Gallagher, the Irish maid who has become Vanessa's ally. Vanessa follows screams to the dungeon and discovers humans imprisoned in silver cages, all illegally bitten and dying. Sin agrees the queen is behind a conspiracy of mass illegal biting, and they plan to expose her at the Ascension Rite. Overwhelmed, Vanessa and Sin sleep together. Sin reveals that Sybil was never the rightful queen and orchestrated Cora's downfall out of jealousy.

When wolves attack on the beach, Vanessa watches what she believes is the queen crush Evie's neck. She accuses Sybil before the court, but the queen states, "I did not kill Princess Evelyn Lee" (307), and Vanessa's Truthseer ability registers the statement as honest. Vanessa is humiliated. The next morning, Evie appears alive, denying anything happened.

At Orion's Ball, the night before the Ascension, Vanessa notices Calix's eyes flash red, the color of an Alpha. After the ball, Calix drags her to the dungeon to disprove her claims about imprisoned humans. The dungeon is empty and physically different from what she remembers. Calix then shows her a scar on his ribs from the Swiss Army knife she stabbed into the wolf that killed Celeste. He confesses he killed Celeste on Queen Sybil's orders, part of a mission to eliminate an illegally bitten human. Sin arrives and restrains Vanessa. She deduces the remaining truth: Sin was the second wolf, the one that bit her to save her life rather than let Calix kill her.

At the Ascension Rite, Sin is confirmed as a Dreamweaver, a werewolf who can plant visions in others' minds. He names Vanessa as his mate instead of Evie, shocking the assembled courts. Before the implications unfold, a pack of 40 deformed wolves storms the castle, massacring guards, nobility, and many of Vanessa's classmates and allies. Sin holds Vanessa under compulsion, preventing her from fighting.

Cora Severi emerges alive, wearing a stolen crown. She survived banishment by creating her own pack of bitten humans, sacrificing pieces of her soul with each bite. Cora reveals the truth about the Severi bloodline: Sybil switched the babies at birth. Sin is actually Cora's biological son, and Calix is Sybil's, the true Crown Prince. Sybil made the switch because Sin was born with powerful Alpha-red eyes while Calix had Beta-yellow eyes, and she refused to accept a weak heir. Cora's wolves kill Queen Sybil. Sin confesses to Vanessa that the dungeon prisoners, the threatening blood messages, and the beach attack on Evie were all dreams he planted in her mind to manipulate her into hating the court and supporting his plan to install his mother as queen.

Vanessa, devastated by the massacre and Sin's betrayals, locks eyes with Calix, and they silently resolve to reclaim the castle and destroy both Cora and Sin. Vanessa approaches Sin and swears allegiance to Cora's court. When he tells her he loves her, she replies, "I love you too, Sin" (367), and for the first time, she deliberately lies to him.