Chapter 1

The corridors of the healing caverns were filled with the mixed scents of medicinal herbs and death.

I knelt beside my mother's sickbed, watching her face twisted by silver poison erosion, my heart feeling as if it were being torn by claws. Her skin had taken on a terrifying blue-gray color, with blood vessels outlining sinister black patterns beneath the surface. Every breath was accompanied by agonized moans. Silver poison—the most deadly curse for werewolves. Once it struck, only Moonlight Holy Water could save a life.

And now, at most one hour remained before the toxin completely spread to her heart.

I closed my eyes and opened the mental channel, projecting my consciousness toward my partner and territorial leader.

Selene, I need your help.

After a moment, a response came, mixed with faint laughter—not directed at me, but at someone else she was talking to. She soothed the other person before responding coldly:

What is it? I'm handling important territorial affairs.

Important territorial affairs? I could almost hear her new male lover's artificially elegant voice.

Mother has silver poisoning and is dying. I need to immediately use my 100,000 gold coin war spoils to purchase Moonlight Holy Water.

An extremely impatient sigh came through the mental channel. She complained in a low voice "how disappointing," then transmitted clearly and irritably:

Arthur, you know how tight the territory's financial situation is right now. Those funds need to be used to appease the new warriors and stabilize morale. I can't shake the entire territory's greater good for one person's private matter. As a leader, I must prioritize collective interests.

Appease new warriors?

My fists clenched tight, nails piercing my palms.

Yesterday the entire territory was gossiping about how Selene had purchased the "Eternal Night Blazing Fire Necklace" worth 80,000 gold coins for her male lover Liam—a legendary luxury accessory where every gem could buy a complete set of warrior equipment. Eighty thousand gold coins, enough to purchase four bottles of the highest purity Moonlight Holy Water.

Yet she was sanctimoniously talking to me about collective interests.

Those are my war spoils, earned when I slew enemies in the Blood Moon Campaign. According to territorial law, I have the right to dispose of them freely—

Do you have rights?

Selene's voice suddenly turned cold, contempt almost overflowing from the channel.

You are my partner. Everything you have belongs to this territory, belongs to me. As leader, I must be responsible for all clan members, not waste such precious resources on an ordinary silver poison patient. Have you thought about how many meaningful things 100,000 gold coins could accomplish?

An ordinary silver poison patient? That's our mother!

Selene, I'm begging you. She really can't hold on much longer. The silver poison has already spread to—

Enough! Her fury pierced through the mental link like a sword. I'm very busy right now. Don't bother me with some ordinary fever! Silver poison? If the Moon Goddess truly wants to take her, then it's divine will! Liam is still waiting for me to confirm tomorrow's banquet arrangements. I don't have time to accompany you in this hypochondriac whining.

The connection cut off.

I opened my eyes, a trace of dark golden light surging in my pupils. Mother moaned in pain on the sickbed as silver poison devoured her life inch by inch. Meanwhile my partner—my former partner—was currently in the territorial hall selecting banquet decorations for her male lover.

Time crawled by torturously.

An hour later, patrol captain Loren appeared at the entrance to the healing caverns. He had received Selene's latest order: go check if I was still "making unreasonable trouble," and if I was still pestering over those few coins, bring me back under charges of "disrupting territorial order."

However, as soon as he stepped into the healing area, he saw two healing apprentices pushing a stretcher out from the adjacent emergency stone chamber. Under the white shroud was a form that had clearly died. From the black bloodstains seeping through the fabric and that distinctive corrosive smell, Loren immediately recognized the typical symptoms of death from silver poisoning.

"Who is this?" Loren asked.

"A silver poison patient whose heart stopped three minutes ago," the apprentice's voice was low, glancing toward me. "This person's mother."

Loren looked at the stretcher, then at me standing at another stone chamber doorway, surprise showing on his face. He hadn't expected that I hadn't been exaggerating to Selene after all.

He immediately opened a mental channel to report to Selene: "Leader, regarding Arthur's earlier request... it seems it's no longer needed. His mother couldn't survive the silver poison attack and just passed away."

I could clearly sense Selene's emotional fluctuation when she received the message—not sadness, not guilt, not even basic surprise, but a kind of relief close to liberation, mixed with a trace of "I told you so" smugness.

See? I told you so. Her voice came through Loren's channel, her tone carrying natural coldness and subtle lecturing. Arthur was just accusing me of not being caring enough. Now he should understand that even if I had really given him those 100,000 gold coins, the result wouldn't have changed at all. This is the best proof of wasted resources.

Loren looked at me uncomfortably, clearly not wanting to relay the next words.

Since the person is already dead, Selene continued, her tone becoming even more hard, silver poison corpses will contaminate the territorial environment. For the safety of all clan members, we must immediately handle this according to epidemic prevention regulations. I heard there are still open spots at the mass grave. Have the guard squad drag the body over there and bury it—deep burial, at least three meters, so no wild beasts can dig it up. Tell Arthur he should finally understand that a leader's decisions are always correct. Dead people don't need Moonlight Holy Water, but living people need a safe environment.

Loren cleared his throat: "Arthur, the leader's order is—silver poison corpses must be handled immediately, sent to the mass grave for deep burial to prevent epidemic spread. Also..." He paused. "The leader says this proves her decision was right."

"I heard." My voice was terrifyingly calm, so calm that Loren felt a chill.

The apprentices pushed the stretcher toward the passage outside the caverns, with two guard squad soldiers following to execute Selene's "epidemic prevention directive."

As the stretcher passed by me, a gust of wind from deep in the caverns suddenly lifted a corner of the white shroud. In that instant, I glimpsed the deceased's hand hanging over the stretcher's edge.

It was an aged, withered hand wearing a ring I had seen countless times—the reclusive former female leader's tail ring of Selene's family. Ancient wolf head totem carving, inlaid with a dark moon stone symbolizing power inheritance, and that distinctive crack on the inner side of the ring—damage Selene had accidentally caused when secretly wearing the ring as a child. Her mother had never repaired it, saying it was a "mark of growth."

Time seemed to completely freeze in this moment.

I slowly turned my head to look at the stone chamber where my own mother lay. Through the half-open stone door, I could clearly see her still lying on the sickbed, her chest rising and falling weakly but definitely. She was still alive, still breathing, still fighting her final battle against the silver poison.

And the corpse that had just been wheeled away...

I looked again toward where the stretcher had disappeared, the image of that tail ring so clear in my mind. Selene's mother—the old female leader who had announced her retirement three years ago and passed the leadership position to her daughter, the lonely old woman who had been living alone in a cottage on the territory's edge.

She had also contracted silver poison. She had also been struggling for life in this healing cavern. She too had failed to wait for the life-saving Moonlight Holy Water.

But Selene—my dear partner, the supreme female leader of our territory—without even coming to look, had matter-of-factly assumed it was my mother who had died.

Even more absurd and ironic, she was now using the high-sounding reasons of "leadership righteousness" and "epidemic safety" to personally order her own biological mother sent to the mass grave, to be buried deep beneath three meters of rotting earth.

I watched the stretcher disappear at the end of the passage, the corners of my mouth slowly curving into a cold, almost cruel arc.

So that's how it is.

It turns out I had always overestimated her. I had overestimated not only her intelligence, but also her humanity, and even more so her basic emotions as a daughter. She would rather spend 80,000 gold coins buying luxury necklaces for her male lover than save a dying old woman she thought was my mother. And now, she had unknowingly personally destroyed her own biological mother, feeling completely justified about it.

This was the woman I had once deeply loved. This was the partner I thought would walk through life with me hand in hand.

I laughed softly, the sound echoing in the stone caverns with a coldness that made even Loren's heart skip.

Since you are so "wise and mighty," so "righteous and stern," my dear Selene... then let us wait patiently.

Wait for the moment when the truth comes to light.

Wait for the moment when you discover exactly what you have done.

I really want to know—when that time comes, how long will you be able to maintain that noble, cold leader's facade?