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When I was six years old, I became a wolf.

It happened when I found my mom on the concrete floor of our tiny slice of privacy in the Catacombs.

We’d discovered the crevice between the walls almost six months prior and had held our ground there ever since.

The Catacombs were full of twisting paths and secret inlets like ours, but they were also full of people. Desperate people.

And there was always someone waiting to take what was yours.

You see, beneath the bustling commercial streets of Savannah lay a secret.

A dirty one. A place where dreams came to die, dampened and smothered by labyrinthine limestone walls.

Walls that once bore witness to the hidden underdealings of the Savannah slave trade and now, some fifty years later, still hid a battered people.

Battered by falling dust motes from trundling overhead streetcars.

Battered by rumbling bellies and arthritic backs, hardened by nights curled on stone floors.

Battered and buried beneath a lifetime of futile choices.

Because what glittered aboveground could rot below.

Savannah was rotting.

That morning began like any other. My mother had been gone—off on one of her benders—for almost two days, and I was returning from scavenging for food in the alleys of the riverside bayou district.

It was time-consuming work, sneaking and creeping through pebbled offshoots and crevices in the Catacombs, doubling back to ensure I wasn’t followed.

This was the life of a gutter rat. A life where the most valuable things I owned were the breath in my lungs and the blood in my veins.

Unfortunately, blood was spilled daily beneath the streets of Savannah.

My mother’s voice echoed in my mind. Children shouldn’t be seen in the Catacombs, Kat. If they can’t see you, they’ll never catch you.

When I finally returned home…well, that was when I found my mom. She was face down on the concrete, her matted red hair fanned out around her.

“Mom.” I shook her bony shoulder, hoping she was alert enough to help me flip her over this time. “Mama,” I whined again, shaking harder. She was very stiff. I stepped back, biting my lip and reaching for her arm. It was ice cold beneath my fingers.

My eyes widened as I backed away, all the way until my spine hit limestone. I sank to my knees and wrapped my arms around my legs.

It was there that Paul found me—minutes, hours, possibly days later.

“Kat!” He grabbed my arm with his slender fingers, his boyish voice cracking with fear. “Kat, we gotta go. There’s a raid.” He tried to pull me to my feet, casting a sidelong glance at my mom on the floor.

I reared back. “Leave me alone, Paul.”

“Kat, you can’t stay here. We have to move!”

I could hear footsteps now, pounding in the tunnel just beyond our crevice. I looked at my mom, then back at Paul, afraid. “I’m not leaving my mom.”

Paul let out a string of expletives rather impressive for a nine-year-old before letting me go. I narrowed my eyes in annoyance; I always reminded him gentlemen don’t curse. He always told me it was a damn good thing he wasn’t a gentleman then.

Paul stepped over to my mom and turned her head to the side. His sharp eyes tracked the powder beneath her nose, the empty snuffboxes and tonic bottles on the ground. His fingers gently probed the side of her neck, searching.

“Kat…” His gaze was kind when it landed on me.

I put my fingers in my ears. I didn’t want to hear him say it, and I certainly didn’t want his kindness. Not right now.

“What’s this?” a voice called from the alleyway. “Stop! I found something.”

There was rustling at the entry crevice now. A smattering of loose pebbles and dust cascaded from the ceiling where the man was probing. Even in the dim light, I could see the tips of his fingers reaching into our space.

Into our home .

Paul crossed the floor on silent feet and grabbed my hand.

He pulled me up so fast and hard, my shoulder wrenched in its socket.

Pressing a finger to my lips, Paul shook his head.

He dragged me across the tiny space to another crack in the wall, a tiny, dead-end hollow.

Just narrow enough to conceal two cowering, malnourished kids.

Paul pushed me in first, then followed. I was smaller, so I crouched down silently, peering around Paul’s legs.

That’s when I noticed the pocketknife clutched in his hand.

I held my breath as two sets of feet strode into our lair.

“Aw hell, what’s this?” A foot kicked my mom, nudging her.

“She dead?”

“As a doornail,” the first man confirmed.

My stomach lurched, a howl strangling in my throat. Paul grabbed a tuft of my hair, winding his fist in tight to keep me silent. With every breath, sulfuric damp and grit filled my nose. Like rotten eggs.

“Fucking waste of a woman. She’s young and look at that hair—we could’ve made a fortune off her.”

“Fellas don’t pay shit for dope-fiends. You know that. Check the snuffboxes, see if there’s any powder left. ”

“Empty. Figures.” One set of footsteps started walking away. “Look, there’s something in the corner.” He bent down and picked up Mr. Wiggles. I’d left the toy bear by the wall where I’d sunk down so many hours earlier. Paul’s grip tightened again.

“Think she had a brat?”

“I don’t see one.”

“If the kid has half a brain, they’ve scampered. Orphanage has too many mouths, and everyone knows it.”

“If she’s got that red hair, she’ll be better off at the orphanage than down here.”

“True.” The man dropped Mr. Wiggles, and I let out a quiet breath. They were leaving.

We waited in silence for almost ten minutes before Paul released his grip on me.

“I don’t want to go to the orphanage, Paul,” I whispered. “I don’t have to go, right? I don’t have Mama’s red hair. I’ll be safe here.”

“You don’t have to go anywhere, Kitty-Kat. You can come with me.”

“Can Mr. Wiggles come too?”

“Sure.” Paul walked over to pick up the bear. “But we need to go now, before another round of raids comes. Can you be quiet and brave? Can you be a wolf, Kitty-Kat?”

“Yes,” I said proudly. Playing wolves was one of our favorite games.

Paul’s hideout wasn’t far from the entrance to the Combs, but it was hard to reach. You had to crawl upward to a side alcove, then through a crack in the ceiling. Paul had been there for as long as I’d known him.

“Home sweet home,” he crowed, dragging me into his den.

I was surprised to see two boys, dirty and displaced, huddled together inside .

“Mierda! Who the hell is this, Paul?” one of them asked, jumping to his feet. He spoke with an accent, but it was hard to say where from. You could find all sorts in the Combs.

“Tony, this is Katarina,” Paul said. “She needs a place to stay.”

“Kat,” I corrected.

“She sure as hell ain’t staying here.” Tony crossed his golden-brown arms. “No girls allowed in the pack.”

“My pack, my rules,” Paul said. “You don’t like it, you can leave.”

“I ain’t leavin’. I was here first,” Tony argued. “Come on Paul, she’s a girl …and a gringa, to boot! She’ll be useless. Deadweight.”

“You’re so dumb, Tony.” High color rose in Paul’s pale cheeks as he stormed over to the boy and poked him in the chest. Hard. “In a couple of years, she’s gonna be worth fifty of you.”

“We’ll see about that.” Tony slumped back to the ground. With narrowed eyes, he nodded sharply and pointed at me. “You can share Paul’s corner. Don’t come anywhere near mine.”

“Four corners, four people,” I told him, proud of myself for counting. “I’ll take my own, thank you very much.”

And with as much dignity as I could muster, I clutched my bear to my chest, tipped my nose in the air, and pranced over to the empty spot.

Paul stifled a laugh. “She’s something, ain’t she?”

“Yeah. She’s…something,” Tony muttered.

“I think she’s a wolf.” The third boy finally spoke. He was lanky with black skin and big, hollow eyes. Deep shadows were etched in the somber lines of his face. “Look at her dark hair. She’s a wolf,” he continued. “Just like us.”

“Welcome to the Wolfpack, Kitty-Kat.” Paul tossed me a bruised apple.

“Whoa.” I snatched the fruit out of the air. “Where’d you get this?”

The boys all laughed .

“We get whatever we want, whenever we want,” Tony said. “We’re reyes —kings. Royals.”

“We’ll teach you how to get whatever you want too,” Paul promised.

I smiled at the three dark-haired boys, liking the sound of that very much. I took a big bite of the apple, licking the juice from my fingers, not wanting to waste a drop.

That’s the moment I became a wolf.

Wolves, you see, are always hungry, and even at just six years old, I was famished .