Haven gripped the edges of the wooden desk. The rough grain pressed into her palms, solid and real. Her chest heaved. A phantom cramp twisted violently in her abdomen, right where the blade had entered, sending a wave of cold sweat down her spine.

She blinked against the harsh fluorescent lights. This wasn't a dream. The air was too thick, the smell of teenage sweat and anxiety too sharp.

Chairs scraped loudly against the linoleum floor as students around her erupted from their seats, cheering that the final exam was over.

A heavy backpack slammed into Haven's shoulder.

"Move it, Watkins," a boy muttered, not even glancing back as he shoved past her toward the door.

In her past life, Haven would have shrunk back, mumbling an apology to the floor.

Now, she slowly turned her head. She locked eyes with him. Her gaze was dead, hollowed out by the memory of her own murder just minutes ago in her timeline.

The boy froze. The color drained from his face. He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing.

"Uh, sorry," he mumbled, his voice cracking before he practically sprinted out of the classroom.

Haven looked down at her hands. No blood. Just the faint calluses from working in the dirt. She grabbed the clear plastic pencil case off the desk. She didn't look back as she walked out of the room, her boots hitting the hallway tiles with a steady, heavy rhythm.

She pushed through the heavy double doors of the school. The June heat hit her like a physical wall.

Her eyes scanned the chaotic sea of parents and cars crowding the street.

There.

Standing near the rusted iron gates was Brenda. She wore her faded blue work shirt, standing on her tiptoes, her weathered face strained with anxiety as she searched the crowd.

A hard lump formed in Haven's throat. Her vision blurred.

She broke into a run. She slammed into Brenda, the woman who had raised her for eighteen years, the only real mother she had ever known in her heart, wrapping her arms tightly around the older woman's waist, burying her face into the familiar scent of laundry soap and cheap vanilla.

Brenda let out a startled gasp, stumbling back a step before her arms came up to wrap around Haven's shoulders.

"Hey, hey, it's okay," Brenda murmured, her rough hand stroking Haven's hair. "The test is over, sweetie. You did your best."

The screech of heavy tires against asphalt ripped through the tender moment.

A massive, jet-black Lincoln Navigator jerked to a halt right at the curb, inches from where they stood. The exhaust blew hot air against Haven's shins.

The heavy passenger door swung open.

Gloria stepped out. She wore a pristine white Chanel tweed jacket that cost more than Brenda made in a year. Three girls trailed behind her like obedient shadows.

Gloria stopped right in front of them. Her eyes slowly dragged up and down Brenda's faded clothes, her lips twisting into a smirk of pure, unfiltered disgust.

"How did the exam go, Haven?" Gloria asked. Her voice was loud, designed to carry over the noise of the crowd. "Not that it matters. We all know the state college doesn't care about scores as much as they care about pity quotas."

The girls behind Gloria erupted into sharp, mocking laughter.

Brenda's shoulders stiffened. She instinctively stepped sideways, trying to put her body between Haven and the cruel stares of the wealthy teenagers.

Haven reached out. She gently placed her hand over Brenda's, giving it a firm, reassuring squeeze.

Then, Haven stepped out from behind her mother.

She didn't look at the ground. She tilted her chin up, meeting Gloria's eyes. A slow, chilling smile spread across Haven's face.

Gloria's smirk faltered. Her hand twitched, moving up to touch the teardrop diamond necklace resting against her collarbone-Haven's stolen necklace. The sight of the diamond, the very one her adoptive mother had saved a decade for, sent a fresh spike of venom through Haven's veins. But she didn't let the fury show on her face. She would get that necklace back, and everything else they took, in due time.

"K University only takes the best," Gloria sneered, trying to recover her dominance. "They don't hand out full rides to charity cases."

Haven took a slow step forward. She invaded Gloria's personal space, forcing the other girl to tilt her head back slightly.

Haven leaned in. Her lips hovered inches from Gloria's ear.

"Don't come crying," Haven whispered, her voice a low, raspy scrape, "when your parents ship you off to Europe to hide your embarrassing test scores."

Gloria's entire body went rigid. The blood vanished from her face, leaving her spray tan looking sickly and orange.

It was the exact fear Gloria had been hiding for months. The secret threat her father had made behind closed doors.

Gloria's eyes widened in sheer panic. Her chest he heave. Rage, hot and blinding, overtook her fear. She raised her hand, her palm aiming straight for Haven's face.

Haven didn't flinch.

Her hand shot up. Her fingers clamped down around Gloria's wrist like a steel vice.

Gloria gasped, a sharp sound of actual pain. Her perfectly manicured fingers curled inward as Haven's grip ground her bones together.

Haven held her there for one long, agonizing second. Then, she shoved Gloria's arm back at her.

Gloria stumbled backward, her high heels twisting on the uneven pavement. She flailed, her back hitting the side of the Lincoln with a loud thud.

Her followers gasped, freezing in place, too shocked to move.

Haven didn't say another word. She turned her back on them, linked her arm through Brenda's, and walked away toward the bus stop.

Gloria stood pinned against the SUV, her breathing ragged. Her wrist throbbed with a dull, hot ache. She stared at Haven's retreating back, her teeth grinding together so hard her jaw ached.

Her shaking hands dug into her designer purse. She pulled out her iPhone and hit the speed dial for her mother in Manhattan.

The phone rang twice before the line clicked open.

"Mom!" Gloria shrieked, the tears coming instantly, hot and furious. "You have to do something! She attacked me!"

In a penthouse office overlooking the Manhattan skyline, Dione Blackburn pulled the phone away from her ear. The shrill sound of her daughter's voice sent a sharp spike of pain directly into her left temple.

Dione closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Breathe, Gloria," Dione said, her voice a smooth, practiced monotone that commanded boardrooms. "Who attacked you?"

"Haven Watkins!" Gloria sobbed, her voice echoing off the street noise. "She humiliated me in front of everyone! And she knows about Europe, Mom. She told me I was going to be shipped off. I am not going to Europe! I'll starve myself before I get on that plane!"

Dione's eyes snapped open. The headache flared into a pounding drumbeat.

"Gloria, the trust fund stipulations require international exposure," Dione started, slipping into her negotiation voice.

"No!" Gloria screamed, the sound distorting the phone's speaker. "I'm staying here! I'm taking a gap year and retesting! If you make me go, I swear I'll make you regret it!"

Dione let out a long, heavy exhale. The muscles in her neck were tight as steel cables.

"Fine," Dione snapped. "We will discuss a gap year when you get home. Just get in the car."

She ended the call and tossed the phone onto her massive glass desk. It slid and hit a stack of quarterly reports with a loud smack.

The heavy oak door to her office pushed open. Warren strolled in, adjusting the cuffs of his custom Italian suit. He took one look at his wife's rigid posture and sighed.

"What did she break this time?" Warren asked, walking over to the wet bar.

"She's refusing Europe," Dione said, her voice vibrating with suppressed anger. "Because of that trash from the rust belt. That Watkins girl."

Warren poured two fingers of scotch. He didn't look up. "She's a teenager from a trailer park, Dione. She's irrelevant. Gloria is just throwing a tantrum."

"She put her hands on our daughter," Dione hissed, her fingernails digging into the leather of her desk chair.

Two hundred miles away, the rusted shocks of the county bus groaned as it hit another pothole.

Haven sat by the scratched window, watching the decaying husks of abandoned steel mills roll past. The oppressive heat inside the bus smelled of diesel fumes and old sweat.

Brenda reached into her canvas bag. She pulled out a plastic bottle of generic water and pressed it into Haven's hands.

"You shouldn't have provoked her, Haven," Brenda whispered, her eyes darting nervously around the half-empty bus. "Those people... they can ruin us."

Haven gripped the warm plastic bottle. She turned to look at Brenda. Her eyes were completely devoid of fear.

"They can't ruin us if we don't need them," Haven said quietly.

The bus hissed to a stop at the dirt crossroad of South Ridge.

They walked in silence up the steep, unpaved driveway to the farmhouse. The roof sagged in the middle, missing shingles like broken teeth.

Haven pushed open the front door. The hinges screamed.

Brenda walked straight to the cramped kitchen, pulling a bag of bruised potatoes from the pantry.

Haven went into her bedroom. The air was stifling. She dropped to her knees and pulled a heavy, dust-covered Dell laptop from under her bed.

She set it on her desk and pressed the power button. The internal fan roared to life, sounding like a jet engine preparing for takeoff.

Haven connected to the weak, unprotected Wi-Fi from the neighbor's house down the road. She opened the browser. Her fingers flew across the sticky keyboard, pulling up the current market prices for organic produce at Whole Foods and high-end New York restaurants.

Wild Appalachian morels. Sixty dollars a pound. Chanterelles. Forty dollars a pound.

She grabbed a spiral notebook and a dull pencil. She began sketching the wireframe for a Shopify storefront. Clean lines. Minimalist text. High-end aesthetic.

"Dinner!" Brenda called from the kitchen.

Haven closed the laptop. She walked into the kitchen and sat at the wobbly wooden table. A bowl of watery potato stew sat in front of her.

She picked up her spoon, staring at the pale chunks of potato.

"I'm going into the deep woods tomorrow," Haven lied, her eyes locking onto her mother's. In her past life, she remembered seeing a local news segment about an old, reclusive hunter who had stumbled upon a massive patch of wild fungi in a specific, hidden ravine of the South Ridge woods. Back then, it was just background noise to her miserable existence. Now, that memory was their lifeline. "I need to do this, Mom. We need the money."

Brenda dropped her fork. It clattered loudly against her bowl. "No. Absolutely not. The bears are active, and the terrain is too steep. It's too dangerous."

Haven reached across the table. She grabbed Brenda's rough, calloused hand and squeezed it hard.

"I know a safe path," Haven said, her voice flat, leaving no room for argument.

Brenda stared at her daughter. There was a hard, unbreakable steel in Haven's eyes that hadn't been there this morning. Brenda's shoulders slumped. She let out a defeated sigh.

"Fine. But I'm coming with you."

Later that night, Haven stood at the kitchen sink, scrubbing the stew bowls under cold water. She looked out the window at the pitch-black tree line of the Appalachian forest. Her jaw tightened. Tomorrow, the real work began.

The air in the forest was thick, wet, and unseasonably cool for June. Haven adjusted the straps of the woven bamboo basket on her back. The rough material dug into her shoulders through her thin windbreaker. She stepped carefully over a rotting log, her cheap rubber boots sinking an inch into the damp, black soil.

Brenda followed close behind, hugging her jacket tighter as she shivered in the morning chill. She clutched a thick walking stick, her eyes darting nervously at every rustle in the underbrush.

"Watch your step," Haven whispered, pointing to a patch of disturbed earth near a cluster of ferns. "Old snare trap. I read that the hunter from the news segment warned about these still being active." In truth, after her rebirth, she had devoured every survival guide and foraging manual the local library had, terrified of ever being helpless again.

Brenda shuddered, giving the spot a wide berth.

They hiked for another hour, moving deeper into a shadowed ravine where the sunlight barely penetrated the dense canopy. The air here smelled heavily of decaying wood and rich earth.

Haven stopped. Her eyes scanned the base of a massive, dead oak tree.

A vibrant flash of yellow caught her eye.

She dropped to her knees. Nestled in the damp moss was a cluster of golden chanterelles, their ruffled edges perfectly intact.

"Here," Haven said, her voice tight with adrenaline.

She pulled a small, sharp paring knife from her pocket. She didn't rip them from the soil. Months of studying sustainable harvesting methods flashed through her mind, and she carefully sliced the stems right above the dirt line, preserving the mycelium network beneath.

Brenda knelt beside her, her eyes widening as she spotted a patch of honeycomb-patterned morels a few feet away.

For twenty minutes, the only sounds were the soft slicing of the knife and their quiet breathing. The bottom of Haven's basket was quickly filling with hundreds of dollars worth of wild fungi.

Snap.

The sharp sound of a heavy branch breaking under a boot echoed through the ravine.

Brenda gasped, dropping a morel. She scrambled backward, raising her wooden stick like a club.

Haven didn't gasp. Her body went completely still. She slowly stood up, her grip locking around the paring knife. She kept the blade low and hidden against the back of her wrist, her pulse hammering in her ears. All those months steeling herself after her rebirth, all the silent promises never to be a victim again, surged into her coiled muscles.

The thick bushes ten yards away parted.

A man stepped through.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a dark, unmarked waterproof jacket. But Haven's eyes immediately dropped to his feet. Custom-fitted, Italian leather hiking boots. The kind that cost a month of Brenda's wages.

Delano Lindsey stopped when he saw them. A flicker of genuine surprise crossed his sharp, aristocratic features.

He immediately raised both hands, palms open, showing he was empty-handed.

"Didn't mean to startle you," Delano said. His voice was a deep, resonant baritone that carried easily through the damp air. "I'm just passing through."

Haven didn't relax her posture. Her thumb remained rigid along the handle of the hidden knife.

"You're miles off the main trail," Haven said, her tone ice-cold. "People don't just 'pass through' this deep."

Delano lowered his hands slowly. He hooked his thumbs into the straps of his high-end tactical backpack. A small, canvas foraging pouch hung from his belt.

"I'm looking for the same thing you are," Delano said, his eyes dropping to the basket on Haven's back. "Those are beautiful Morchella esculenta. You found a spot with the perfect seventy-percent humidity."

Haven's eyes narrowed. He knew the Latin name. He knew the exact environmental conditions.

Brenda lowered her stick slightly, her shoulders relaxing at the sight of his calm demeanor. "Good morning," she offered, her voice still shaky.

Delano unzipped a side pocket of his bag. He pulled out a sleek, insulated water bottle and held it out toward Brenda. "You look out of breath, ma'am. Water?"

Before Brenda could reach for it, Haven stepped sideways, physically blocking her mother.

"We have our own supplies," Haven said flatly. "Keep your water."

Delano didn't look offended. He calmly screwed the cap back on and slid the bottle away. His gaze shifted back to Haven, a spark of calculation lighting up his dark eyes. He registered her defensive stance, the way she kept her right arm angled slightly away from her body.

"Fair enough," Delano said. He pointed toward the steep incline to his left. "I'll take the western ridge. You keep the valley. We won't cross paths again."

"See that you stick to it," Haven replied, her voice devoid of any polite inflection.

Delano offered a brief, respectful nod. He turned and walked away, his expensive boots making almost no sound on the wet leaves. Within seconds, the morning mist swallowed him whole.

"He seemed nice," Brenda whispered, lowering her stick completely.

Haven slowly exhaled, letting the tension drain from her fingers around the knife handle.

"People who wear two-thousand-dollar boots in the mud aren't nice, Mom," Haven said, turning back to the oak tree. "They're just bored."