The wolves raised her. The forest sheltered her. The city created her.
Seventeen-year-old Ruby Winters moves between worlds with practiced ease—communicating with evolved wolves in their own language, hunting with animal precision, yet able to pass as human when necessary. But when her guardian Nana Jane falls ill with a mysterious black-vein sickness, Ruby must risk everything by crossing into Woodsman City, the walled enclave of humanity she's been taught to fear. Behind the city's fortified barriers, Mayor Solomon Huntington maintains rigid control over what remains of civilization after the environmental Collapse. His Huntsmen patrol the borderlands, capturing those showing signs of mutation and "feral contamination." What they don't tell the citizens: these aren't signs of disease but of evolution—the next step in adaptation to a world forever changed. Armed with nothing but a red cloak designed to evade surveillance, Ruby discovers a horrifying truth: she was created in Huntington's laboratories as "Subject R"—a prototype hybrid engineered to integrate wolf DNA with human consciousness. Stolen as an infant by the geneticist who became her Nana Jane, Ruby represents what Huntington has spent fifteen years trying to recreate—a perfect bridge between species that maintains human agency. As the mysterious Thorn Garden's influence spreads northward—transforming plants, animals, and humans into something both more and less than they were—Ruby finds herself uniquely positioned between opposing visions of survival. Huntington's controlled evolution versus the Garden's communion. Resistance versus acceptance. Isolation versus integration. With the help of Ash, a young apothecary with his own transformation beginning, Ruby must forge a third path—one that preserves identity while embracing necessary change—before the choice is made for everyone. In a world where evolution accelerates and adaptation means survival, the girl in the red cloak might need to embrace her teeth after all.