Chapter 2

Morgana glanced at the bloodstained contract and let out a cold laugh.

"Quite the backbone. But remember this: aside from the minimum provisions required by law, you won't be taking a single Moonstone from here."

Delphine looped her arm through hers, her face filled with disgust.

"Let's go, Mother. The smell of dead mud on him is making me sick."

When we reached the entrance of the great hall, Delphine stopped.

She spotted the coarse cloak that was my only protection against the cold, lying on the steps.

A vicious smile curled across her lips.

She walked over, and half a foot of claws instantly sprang from her fingertips as she partially shifted.

"Riiip—"

The cloak was torn to shreds.

Delphine viciously stomped on it, grinding the scraps into the filthy slush.

"Oops. I lost control of my shift."

She curled her lips without the slightest hint of remorse.

"Thessaly, if you can't afford another cloak, don't cry when you're caught in a blizzard. Stray dogs like you only deserve rags."

Morgana never looked back. She climbed straight into the black wooden carriage bearing the Golden Moon crest and disappeared into the howling wind.

Silence immediately settled over the area.

Only the icy wind and snowstorm howled outside the hall.

Halvard braced himself on his iron crutch and made his way down the steps.

He tremblingly retrieved the ruined cloak from the muddy water and tried to brush the ice from it.

Cloudy tears struck the filthy scraps.

"Thessaly… It's because I'm useless."

The once-mightiest warrior of the North choked on his words.

"I couldn't protect you. I even have to drag you through this humiliation."

I stepped down the stairs and pulled the ruined cloak from his rough hands, tossing it aside.

"Father, you're not the one who should be ashamed."

I faced the snowstorm and looked straight into his eyes, my voice cold and fierce.

"As long as your forging skills aren't gone, as long as we refuse to accept our fate, one day I'll put them beneath our feet."

After leaving the Moon Palace far behind, Halvard and I reached a wandering settlement on the edge of the wasteland.

Our new home was an abandoned smithy.

The front yard was piled with scrap metal. There was a broken wooden shack with gaps in every wall, and an old forge that had frozen solid.

Halvard awkwardly spread hay over the wooden bed and covered it with the only clean wolf pelt we had.

Cold wind swept straight through the shack.

He rubbed his frozen hands, then dug several badly worn copper coins from a torn leather pouch and held them out to me.

"Thessaly, your full-moon awakening is in a week. Go buy yourself a thick cloak."

His voice was hoarse.

"Don't let those nobles look down on you… Even if you can't shift into a wolf when the time comes, your father will never let you go hungry."

Looking at the few rust-stained copper coins in his palm, my throat tightened.

In my previous life, Morgana had turned me into a living blood trough just to maintain her extravagant lifestyle.

Every day, she forced bitter, freezing purification poison down my throat. If I failed to meet her standards, she would hang me in an ice cellar and beat me.

Later, when the vampires came to collect their debt, she locked me inside an underground iron cage and inserted blood-draining tubes into me like she was bleeding livestock.

The despair of being slowly drained of every last drop of blood—

Delphine would soon experience it for herself.

I pushed the coins back into my father's hand and pulled a worn scroll from my pocket.

"Save the money for iron."

I lowered my voice.

"Do you remember the incomplete half of that ruined rune you kept working on before you were exiled?"

Halvard gave a bitter smile and shook his head.

"It was nothing but useless scrap. I was only fooling myself…"

"No. You were right."

I slammed the parchment onto the table and pointed at the densely packed ancient runes.

"Border soldiers are dying every day. They need light armor that can withstand vampire fangs, but the pureblood nobles charge far too much."

I stared at him.

"This is the Silver-Forging Rune I completed. And this rune core—"

"It can purge the residual poison from your blood."

"Fire up the forge again, Father. We're taking back everything we lost."

Halvard followed my finger.

His eyes widened and his breathing instantly grew heavier.

He had once been the North's fiercest Alpha. Morgana had crippled him with years of poison, but the wolf within his bones had never truly died.

"Thessaly… Where did you get something that disappeared centuries ago?"

"I found it while cleaning out a pile of discarded papers in the temple cellar."

I lied.

In truth, these were the life-saving runes I had carved into my mind in my previous life while waiting to die in the vampire dungeon, forcing myself to memorize them just to remain conscious.

In our previous life, Father had exhausted himself in the wasteland trying to reconstruct these formulas.

By then, his body had already been ruined.

This time, I would force the ancient Wolf King blood within him to awaken ahead of time.

Halvard gripped the parchment so tightly that his hands trembled uncontrollably.

The dead grayness in his eyes was suddenly ignited by a wild blaze.

"Good! As long as I have one breath left in me, I won't let my daughter wait for death in the wasteland!"

He swung his useless iron crutch aside.

Dragging his wooden legs like dead branches, he threw himself before the stone forge and used every ounce of strength to pull down the frozen bellows.

"Boom!"

Ghostly blue flames pierced through the ashes and shot toward the sky, casting a violent, scorching red glow against the northern blizzard.