CHAPTER ONE

Maya Cruz was far from the daughter that Mario and Kristina had envisioned when they first dreamt of starting a family. She was not the perfect, obedient child they had hoped for, nor did she fit into the tidy, picture-perfect life they had meticulously constructed for themselves. Maya's existence was a constant reminder of their failure to create the ideal family image they had so carefully designed.

She never excelled in school, and her grades were far from the straight A's her parents had expected. On top of that, Maya's behaviour didn't match the refined manners they valued so highly. She was wild, rebellious, and unwilling to conform to the expectations they placed on her. For Mario and Kristina, their daughter's imperfections were an embarrassment, a flaw in their otherwise pristine lives. Maya was never the child they had hoped for, and as she grew older, it became increasingly clear that she would never meet the standards they had set.

Mario and Kristina's past was something they had carefully buried, a history they refused to acknowledge or discuss. They had both come from humble beginnings, from a background that didn't fit into the high-society, cultured life they had now adopted.

They were desperate to leave behind the people and culture of their past, especially the traditions of the Makah tribe, the community from which Maya's family had originally come.

This history was something they wanted nothing to do with, a reminder of lives they were eager to forget. For them, the city life represented everything they wanted to become—polished, successful, and disconnected from their roots. But Maya never fit into that world. She was uncomfortable in the city, surrounded by the fake, polished personas that her parents embraced.

She hated pretending to be someone she was not, and this internal struggle led her down a path of rebellion. To her parents, this rebellion was not just a phase—it was a label that stuck. They began to see Maya as the "deviant" child, the one who didn't fit into their perfect mould.

As the years went by, Mario and Kristina's patience with Maya wore thin. They couldn't tolerate the constant defiance and the rebellion any longer. In a desperate attempt to fix what they saw as their mistake, they decided to adopt a child, someone they could shape into the perfect son, the child who would fulfil their fantasies of the ideal family.

Nathaniel entered their lives like a fresh slate, someone who could be moulded into everything Maya was not. His arrival ignited something in Maya—something that made her rebel even harder if that was possible. She resented the idea that her parents, who had given up on her, could so easily create the perfect child to replace her.

It was this final act of defiance that pushed Mario and Kristina to their breaking point. They had no idea how to deal with Maya anymore. They were desperate to restore their family's reputation, to remove the source of their embarrassment, and so they made a decision. They would send Maya away.

They didn't even try to find a way to fix things—they just cut ties, deciding to ship her off to her aunt, Kristina's half-sister, Tiffany Call. Tiffany, who lived in La Push, was someone they had distanced themselves from for years. To the public, Tiffany was just an old acquaintance, a distant friend they rarely mentioned. In truth, Tiffany was the last link to the past that Mario and Kristina desperately wanted to forget, and they were willing to sever that connection completely if it meant they could escape the mess that Maya had become.

Maya, however, was less than upset by this decision. If anything, she was thrilled. The idea of leaving her parents behind, of escaping the oppressive city life, was like a breath of fresh air. At the airport, she didn't even look back at Mario and Kristina. She didn't feel the need to say goodbye. In her eyes, they weren't even her parents anymore. She hadn't considered them as such for years. She referred to them by their first names, always calling them Mario and Kristina. To anyone who asked about her parents, she would simply say they were dead. That wasn't entirely a lie. To her, they had ceased to be her parents the moment they stopped caring for her as a child and started moulding her into someone she couldn't be.

The only thing Maya worried about was the unknown world she was about to enter. She remembered La Push from her childhood, but her memories were vague and distant. She was only four when she had last visited, and her memories of the place were nothing more than fragmented images—of the people, the land, and most clearly, of her older cousin Embry.

Embry had always been there for her, a protector who stuck up for her when things got tough. To Maya, Embry had been more like the older sibling she never had, someone she looked up to with admiration and affection.

But it wasn't just Embry she was concerned about. Tiffany, her aunt, was a stranger to her. She wasn't a mother figure by any stretch of the imagination. To Maya, Tiffany was more like the relative you only saw during Christmas or family gatherings, someone who didn't truly know her. Still, Maya had no right to judge Tiffany. Despite their distance, Tiffany had agreed to take her in. She was making the effort to care for a niece she barely knew, a gesture that Maya couldn't help but appreciate, even if she didn't fully understand it.

So, Maya packed her bags and left behind the life her parents had so carefully curated. She didn't know what awaited her in La Push, but she was eager for the change. The reservation was foreign to her, yet in a strange way, it felt like home. She was going back to a place where she could finally be herself, away from the suffocating expectations of Mario and Kristina.