Alpha Damon was less than happy to receive the resignation letter from his secretary of two years. The female not only embarrassed him before his Beta but also had the guts to throw a resigning letter in his face when he hadn’t even punished her for her actions.
But when he recalled Beta Hamilton’s words, his anger vanished, and he felt dismissing the female was perhaps for the best.
She had nothing to offer. Instead, his image and reputation as Alpha of the Dark Moon Pack would be tarnished and shredded to pieces if neighboring packs found out his secretary was a wolf-less runt.
A pretty secretary, no matter how tempting, wasn’t worth such an embarrassment.
“Hmph! I didn’t plan to fire her after finding out about her inability to shift. But since she herself wants to quit, then who am I to stop her?” He coldly sneered.
Within half an hour, Alpha Damon not only accepted Yusria’s resignation letter, but also processed her vacation and sick pay so she wouldn’t have any reason to return to the company in the near future.
A few hours later, an announcement of her departure was posted on the employee page of the company website, raising an uproar in the entire branch company.
Unaware of the havoc she left in her wake, Yusria returned to the Setting Dawn Pack right before the sunset.
A chill traveled down her spine when she saw the lit-up Dimitri villa.
Outside, Yusria was fearless and uncompromising.
But once she returned to this pack, it was as if an invisible, cold shadow engulfed her being and sapped her courage, fighting spirit, and unbending will.
Before the Dimitri family, she felt as insignificant and weak as an ant.
“No…I…I cannot allow myself to feel weak. I promised. I made a promise to myself to change the course of my life.”
A fierce light flashed through her violet eyes, the silver sheen swirling in her bright pupils as she clenched her fists, took a deep breath, and resolutely moved forward.
“Mom, where is that trash? I need to get my hair done before the full moon arises!”
Selena’s irritated voice entered her ears before she crossed the threshold. Yusria raised her head to find her adopted sister anxiously pacing around in her red dress.
“She must be frolicking out there somewhere. Just wait. When she returns, I’ll teach her a lesson she’ll never forget!” Slumped on a couch with her arms and legs crossed, her adopted mother vehemently vowed with a nasty expression on her face.
“Mom, tonight is my coming-of-age ceremony. I don’t want you scolding and beating her like a dog. It’ll ruin my day.”
There it was.
Intentionally or unintentionally, Selena was shielding her.
Yusria’s heart throbbed in pain when she recalled the woman of her nightmares and compared her to the girl before her.
What in the blazing hell had gone wrong for this girl to disappear and for that hideous monster to take her place?
Until the day she breathed her last, Yusria was unable to find the answer to this question.
“About time you returned. Now that you’re grown and married to the Alpha’s son, you must believe yourself to be above us all, don’t you? Heh…Don’t forget the fact that you’re a wolf-less trash! Do you think whoring yourself to Maximillian Adonis will raise your status in this pack? Because the day he finds his true mate, he’ll abandon you like the worthless trash you are. Better yet, he might just keep you as a mistress. A whore to vent his frustrations on.”
Like her daughter, Beatrice Vario supported blonde hair and gray eyes that mirrored an overcast sky on a stormy day. As she spat the venomous words upon catching sight of her figure, those stormy gray eyes of hers exuded disgust and scorn.
But where Selena’s blonde shined like polished gold, hers was marred with dull strands of brown. Even then, her beauty, like any other werewolf, was hard to mask and belied her actual age of 50.
Next to her daughter, she looked more like an older sister than a mother.
But at this moment, Yusria wasn’t in the frame of mind to admire or envy the unmistakable genetic relationship between the two women. Her muscles had inadvertently tensed at the mention of her scumbag husband.
Maximillian Adonis. Yes, he was her husband.
The man she had given her heart to and blindly trusted in her previous life. The man who betrayed her with her adopted sister.
He had publicly proposed to her on his eighteenth birthday, and, pressured by the burning stares of the surrounding wolves, Yusria accepted his proposal.
But what she never expected was for the guy to rush their marriage within the week. If it hadn’t been for Xavier Adonis, the Alpha of the Setting Dawn Pack and Maximillian’s father, who stepped forward to stop the farce, then she would’ve become the first female in the history of werewolves who got marked before her coming of age ceremony.
Yes…it was this night.
The night her husband of two years would return from his exchange training with the neighboring pack. The night he would mark her under the moonlight.
Bang!
This time, it was a vase. The ceramic container smashed on Yusria’s head with such force that her ears rang and her surroundings spun.
“You bitch! What the fuck are you spacing out for? Hurry up and help Selena get ready! You can scheme all you want about how to wrap the Alpha heir around your thumb when you’re done. Now get going!”
“Yes, mother.” Gritting her teeth, Yusria swallowed the silent whimper on her tongue and wiped off the trickling blood sliding in her eye.
A few more hours.
Just a few more hours, and she would be free from this hellhole.
With her head lowered and her eyes red, she followed her adopted sister into her room and began fixing her hair.
“You know…you deserve the way she treats you. If you had developed a backbone early on, then mother wouldn’t be throwing things at you like a dog.” Selena remarked snidely.
Her lush blonde hair and golden skin reflected in the antique mirror, displaying her haughty arrogance in full magnificence.
“A dog. You like using that term to refer to me, don’t you?” Yusria asked with an ironic smile.
“If you portray yourself as one, I wouldn’t have any choice but to address you as such.”
“And does that make you happy, adopted sister?”
“It would have. If only it had succeeded in lighting a flame in your heart. Tell me, adopted sister. How do you feel, being called a dog and all? Do you feel ashamed, livid, resentful, or enraged? Anything at all? To allow others to walk over you as they wish, you must not have any sense of dignity at all.” The other female smirked with a hint of disappointment in her tone.
An exhausted sigh passed through her lips.
The malicious woman of her dreams who laughed delightfully in her face as she carved her cheeks and forehead with a fruit knife?
Or the prideful sister who talked down to her while reprimanding her for failing to live up to her expectations?
Not for the first time, Yusria wondered who the female in front of her was.
“Even if I feel something, Selena, I wouldn’t be able to forget the gratitude from that year.”
“Heh! You’re telling me that you’re living like trash just for that single moment of assistance? If you haven’t heard it already, they did it not to save you, but to save themselves.”
“But adopted sister…you forget. For whatever reason, if it wasn’t for that single moment back then, I wouldn’t be here today.” Inserting a silver hairpin in the golden curls of the girl, Yusria patted Selena’s shoulder and walked out of her room.
17 years ago, Beta Dimitri and his wife Beatrice Vario had saved her for their own selfish reason.
But for Yusria who had lost her family in a single night of slaughter and became stranded in the midst of a dark forest, bleeding, starving, and frostbitten on the brink of death, their selfish motive was a debt of gratitude that could never be repaid.
Because that night, the Dimitri couple had saved her life, she hadn’t lost her mind for revenge after her rebirth.
In exchange for saving her that night, Yusria decided to forgive Selena for the torment she made her go through in her previous life.
A life taken for a life saved; from now on, she owed the Dimitris’ nothing.
The full moon shone brightly in the clear sky. A light autumn breeze swept through the open region, fluttering the dresses and skirts of the females spectating from the front of their houses. In the center of the pack residence, Selena Dimitri stood under the full moon while the male members of the pack showered her with compliments.
“Selena, you are truly worthy of being our Beta’s daughter. There is no match for your radiant beauty!”
“Selena, tonight you look as beautiful as the moon goddess!”
“Congratulations on turning eighteen! May the Moon Goddess bless you with a powerful and worthy mate!”
The fervent cries resounded in the clearing as they enthusiastically called out her name.
With her golden curls glowing like molten gold under the moonlight, and the blazing torches roaring on the sides adding a mesmerizing glow to her face, Selena attracted the attention of all the unmated males in the pack.
At this moment, as they watched the glowing female receive the flower crown of maturity on her head, every unmated male present ardently prayed to the Moon Goddess to make them the true mate of the beautiful female.
After all, in both appearance and status, no she-wolf in the Setting Dawn Pack could compete with Selena Dimitri.
Not paying heed to the burning stares on her figure, the young female received her flower crown, raised her head towards the moon, and howled.
“Awhooo!”
Selena Dimitri went on all fours and slammed onto the ground. Her expression filled with pain as she visibly convulsed and twisted on the stone floor, blood following in the trail of her scraping nails.
Slowly, her clothes ripped and shredded apart, claws replaced nails; and before long, the female changed into a brown wolf. The wolf lay limp on the ground for a brief moment; its shallow, uneven gasps resounded in the silent atmosphere before it lifted its head and swept its gaze over the eager males.
“Awhooo!”
With a proud howl, it pushed to its feet, jumped into the crowd, and dashed into the woods.
“Our pack’s female will find her mate tonight! Everyone, chase! May the Moon Goddess bless such a beautiful mate to a worthy male!”
“May the Moon Goddess bless such a beautiful mate to a worthy male!”
“Grrrrr!”
“Awhoo!”
Excited growls and eager howls filled the night. Under the full moon of the autumn sky, the males of the Setting Dawn Pack shifted and charged into the woods with feverish, lustful eyes in search of the brown wolf.
Under the same full moon and cover of the dark night, a lean shadow stealthily dashed between the wooden houses of the pack and entered the dark forest.
The wind whistled in her ears, the chilly breeze stinging her eyes as she blindly dashed through the dark forest. Even in the shrouding darkness, the boiling excitement of the aroused males was palpable in the air, their unrestrained howls and snarls carrying anticipation and eagerness. Dry branches and twigs snapped under her feet, the sound barely concealed under the loud, frantic charge of the wolves audibly sniffing the air ahead of her. With over 13 unmated male wolves roaming the woods, their thick wolf scents swirling in the surroundings, it was both a night of great danger and a great opportunity for Yusria. “The Gammas must be taking part in the Mate Hunting Event as well.” It would explain the lack of action on their part even after the great ruckus the males raised in the woods. Their sharp hearing and impeccable sense of smell made them difficult to evade and perfect for their duty of patrolling the pack borders. Snap! Upon stepping on another twig, Yusria flinched
Selena was Maximillian Adonis’s soulmate?How was that possible?In her previous life, her bastard husband marked her on this night, officially and irrevocably accepting her as his wife and future Luna before the members of the Setting Dawn Pack.He neither mentioned nor brought up anything about his fated mate.But soulmates were one and only, the other half of a wolf’s soul. Considering the fact that their marking ceremony took place only after Selena’s coming-of-age ceremony concluded…Could she have snatched her adopted sister’s one and only true mate?Yusria’s knees turned weak from the realization. She stumbled back a step, crumbling to the ground with tears streaming down her face as she sobbed with her hand covering her mouth.“No wonder…no wonder…Selena had changed so much after this night…ha…haha…”It all made sense now. Yusria had stolen Selena’s one and only true mate. The fear, hatred, and betrayal with which she regarded her sister in both her past and present lives felt
As if he had forcefully slapped her across the face, Selena stumbled back and looked at him in disbelief.“Love? How…how can you love her? I’m your mate!”She wanted to scream that only she had a right to his love, only she had a right to his affection and devotion, but the cold, emotionless look on his face choked the words in her throat.As unwilling and unresigned as she was, Selena could sense Maximillian Adonis, her true mate and love of 13 years, didn’t give a damn about her feelings, about her being his mate.For him, there was only Yusria.“So what is it? Rejection or silence?”Max’s sharp vision caught the various emotions flickering through Selena’s gray eyes. He knew he was forcing her to choose between accepting rejection from him or keeping the truth about their mate bond hidden so he could mark Yusria.He knew he was being a dick for leaving such a decision to the young she-wolf, but he didn’t care.Yusria Dimitri was his wife, his dream of many years. Ever since he saw
Yusria stumbled through the trees and plunged into the river. The cold water made her gasp in shock. She hated the cold. But upon hearing the sound of curses and snapping twigs above, she could only steel her heart and plunge deeper.Getting out was not an option.Her lungs constricted, screaming for oxygen as she relentlessly beat at the black whirlpool.It’s been three days since she left the Setting Dawn Pack, and contrary to her expectations, the pack sent a group of warriors to hunt her down. Three days on the run had her drained and exhausted to the point where she was close to giving up and surrendering herself.Her body ached all over and her muscles felt too sore to move. Her rations ran out a day ago and, aside from the cold and damp caves she occasionally came across, she had nowhere to take shelter from the dangers of the woods.Once, she accidentally entered a snake den and escaped with three bites. If it wasn’t for the knowledge of wild herbs she gained in her previous l
Situated on the eastern mountains of the Australian continent, the Blood Moon territory was separated from the Setting Dawn Pack and Dark Moon Pack by a huge chasm of water-fall and rocky landscape.In comparison to the established packs under the rule and order of the Eastern Lykan Emperor, the Blood Moon Pack was more improvised and lawless, making their name the most dreaded and feared among the packs bordered on the fringes of the Eastern Empire."Jake, you've done well. Alpha Raguor will heavily reward you for bringing back so many females to the pact this time." Beta Shaun stepped forward with a bright smile and clapped Gamma Jake on the shoulder.As the lead Beta of Alpha Raguor, leader of all Dark Rogue Packs in the Eastern United Pack, he never had to worry about going to bed without a female.But even he, the second-ranked member of the Blood Moon Pack, never experienced the joy of having his pick from a group of she-wolves. Heavily protected and kept within pack borders, be
The earth-shattering explosion shook the entire Blood Moon Pack and covered the sky with thick black smoke and debris. Cries of panic and fear pierced through the twilight night as the Omegas and Deltas pushed and shoved, fleeing in a chaotic mess to save their lives.In the large mansion, Alpha Raguor shifted into his wolf."Da** it! They used you to locate our pack's location!" He viciously kicked Gamma Jake in the chest and turned to leap out of the window.The four males exchanged panic-stricken expressions, their faces pale as corpses. They had no idea what was going on, but from the deafening explosion, fearful shrieks, and sparks of flames flaring through the sky, it was obvious that they were under attack."I...I...led them here?" Gamma Jake stuttered and dazedly crawled back to his feet. However, only the ear-splitting sound of more explosions rung out in response."We need to go! Alpha Raguor is out there!" Beta Shaun yelled as he ran across the quaking building and lunged
"Has the entire pack been cleared?""Yes, E Aahil. The Black Troop destroyed the pack and are leading the females to the training ground in the Eastern Mountain.""Hmm...make sure they receive the highest tier training of our Violet Troop. Within 2 years, I want to see a worthy candidate both in character and mental fortitude. As for strength, just provide the necessary training. The rest will be tested in the Open Convention.""I'll relay your orders, E Aahil.""Go. Don't contact me unless it's necessary." With a dismissive wave, Zeonen turned his back on the Black Commander and proceeded into his temporary office.As the emperor of the Eastern Empire, his territory stretched from the Australian continent, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Indonesia, all the way to Russia. Every island, sea, and country or continent within, near, or east of those regions, such as India, China, Japan among others belonged to him.Reigning over such a vast and rich empire was no easy feat. Rogues, Pirates, Hu
In the eastern mountain ranges of the Australian continent, a troop of black-clothed men escorted a group of travel-worn females to a gated facility. Surrounded on all sides by mountains, the large grey steel facility had a solemn military air that made the she-wolves restless."Where are we? Is this some sort of a slave camp?""Slave camp? Surely not...aren't they the Eastern Emperor's men?""What difference does it make if they are? We are she-wolves captured by the Rogue Alpha. As far as any werewolf is concerned, we are spoils of war!"Agitated murmurs and resentful hisses resounded as the she-wolves nervously took in their surroundings with fearful eyes. By now, their recently rekindled hope of regaining their freedom back had been completely shattered by the gloomy aura exuded off by the men docked in black.More than lifesavers, they viewed the males as grim reapers that appeared to torture them until they outlived their value.The troop garbed in black heard and ignored the fe