Chapter 1
Lirael POV
The snow had been falling for three days and three nights.
The road outside the Luthor Family Estate was covered in thick ice. I knelt before the gate for a full ten hours. The cold drilled into my bones like tiny needles, making even the self-healing power werewolves were so proud of slow and ridiculous in this brutal freeze.
My knees had long gone numb. My flesh felt as if it had frozen to the ice. The slightest movement sent tearing pain from my leg bones all the way to the back of my head.
Deep in my mind, my gray-silver wolf, Umbra, whimpered in pain.
“Kai, that blind idiot! He only believes that vicious woman Sera. She reeks of lies, but he treats her like a treasure!”
I bit my purple lips, the taste of blood spreading over my tongue.
I no longer had the strength to agree with Umbra.
Finally, the sound of an engine came from inside the gate.
A black SUV stopped in front of me. The door opened, and a pair of long legs in black combat boots stepped into the snow. Kael Luthor stood before me, looking down at me from above.
He was Kael, the Alpha of the Luthor Wolf Clan, and the man only I had once dared to call Kai.
He wore a well-tailored black coat. His brow bones were deep, his features cold and sharp. The pressure of a top Alpha spread through the air, even making the sound of the wind seem lower.
I struggled to lift my head. My throat was so dry it felt as if I had swallowed crushed ice.
“Kai, please… save Aurora. She has Lycanthropic Decay. Only your source blood can save her.”
“Save that bastard daughter of yours?”
He lifted his foot and stepped mercilessly onto the back of my hand.
The sharp pain made my whole body tremble, but I clenched my teeth hard, refusing to let the tears fall.
Kael bent down, grabbed my hair, and dragged me into the estate like a bag of trash. The rough gravel path tore through my clothes and cut open my skin. Warm blood left a thin red trail across the frozen ground.
I was in so much pain I could not cry out. I could only gasp in broken breaths.
He pushed open a hidden door and dragged me down a steep staircase.
The underground punishment room.
There was not a trace of sunlight here. Torture devices hung on the walls, and in the center stood a rack glowing with a dark, cold light.
It was made of pure silver.
To werewolves, silver was poison. It could burn the soul directly.
Kael threw me hard onto the rack.
“Ah—!”
The moment my back touched the silver surface, the sizzling sound of burning flesh pierced my eardrums. I struggled and convulsed on instinct as my vision went black.
Expressionless, he picked up two heavy silver chains and, amid my screams, locked my limbs firmly in place.
Kael slowly removed his black leather gloves and tossed them onto the iron table.
“Does it hurt?” A cruel curve lifted the corner of his lips. “Lira, you infected Sera with Mad Wolf Disease and made her suffer day and night. The pain she’s enduring now is a hundred times worse than yours.”
“Kai… you can torture me however you want…” I gasped with difficulty. “But Aurora won’t live past three months. Please, take my blood. Take my life if you want. Give her a little source blood. Please…”
He gave a low laugh, cold as a knife scraping against bone.
“My daughter? Lira, do you really think I don’t know about the filthy things you did out there?”
He released me, took his phone from his coat pocket, opened a video, and shoved it almost against my face.
On the screen was a dim, chaotic underground party. Neon lights flashed. A woman who looked exactly like me was surrounded by several male werewolves, barely clothed, her posture degrading.
The footage shook, the sounds piercing, filled with deliberately amplified ambiguity and humiliation.
My pupils suddenly contracted.
“No… that isn’t me.” My throat trembled. “It’s fake! Kai, Sera forged it!”
“Shut up!”
He slapped me hard across the face.
My head snapped to the side. My ears rang, and my mouth was full of the taste of blood.
“Back then, I also smelled another male on you. How dare you deny it?” His chest heaved violently, and the violent aura of an Alpha almost tore the punishment room apart. “You shameless slut. You carried some bastard child and still dared to ask me to give my source blood to that bastard?”
I looked at him in despair.
This was my fated mate.
Once, we had formed a bond under the blessing of the Moon Goddess. We had once been the most loving mates in everyone’s eyes. But after Seraphina appeared, everything changed.
She made Kael doubt that I was the one who had saved him in Darkwood Forest back then. Then she used this video to make him doubt my loyalty.
Even our daughter, Aurora, became a bastard in his mouth.
For five years, Aurora and I had been driven out of the Luthor Wolf Clan and became rogue werewolves, enduring every kind of humiliation. And Sera, that woman covered in lies, became the most respected person in the Luthor Wolf Clan.
Kael took two steps back, his gaze dark and cold.
“Don’t you like being slutty? Don’t you like being served by a group of men? Today, I’ll grant your wish.”
He snapped his fingers.
The iron door on the side of the basement was pushed open, and four strong werewolves walked in.
“Alpha.”
They lowered their heads in greeting, but their gazes swept over my body uncontrollably. That sticky look disgusted me even more than the silver chains.
Kael pointed at me and sneered. “She’s yours. Just leave her breathing. Do whatever you want. She likes wolf form, so you’d better shift and satisfy her.”
In that instant, I saw his knuckles tighten slightly, as if some instinct was fighting against his order.
“Kai! Are you insane?” I struggled desperately, but the silver chains cut even deeper into my flesh. “I’m your fated mate! You can’t do this to me!”
Greed lit up in the eyes of the four werewolves.
The cracking sound of bones deforming filled the room. Two of them shifted directly into wolf form, foul-smelling saliva dripping onto the ground. Another half-beast reached out and tore open my ruined clothes. Cold air pressed against my skin, and my whole body shook.
“No! Get away! Don’t touch me!”
Umbra howled in despair inside my mind, but she was suppressed by the silver chains and powerless.
Just as one of the werewolves lunged at me, a terrifying wolf howl exploded through the basement.
Violent pressure turned into a shock wave and sent the four werewolves around the rack flying.
Kael kicked the leading gray wolf in the abdomen. The two-hundred-pound giant wolf flew out like a torn sack and slammed hard into the iron door with a dull crash.
The remaining three immediately crouched on the ground, whimpering and trembling, not daring to raise their heads.
Kael’s chest heaved violently. Unexplainable anger churned in his icy blue eyes.
“Get out!”
The werewolves scrambled out of the punishment room, and the iron door closed again.
Kael strode back to me.
He stared at me, my clothes torn and my body still trembling. The anger in his eyes grew stronger, as if he blamed all his loss of control on my “depravity.”
“What?” he asked coldly. “Disappointed that I didn’t let them touch you?”
Before I could speak, he grabbed my waist and kissed me with malice. His teeth bit through my skin. The taste of blood and his scent pressed down together, suffocating me.
The next second, he pulled open his belt.
My whole body went stiff, cold climbing from my spine to my heart.
“Kai, don’t…”
But my plea earned no mercy.
He clamped one hand around my hips, lifted me, and thrust inside.
