Chapter 2

Avery POV:

Holding my breath, I clamped both hands over my mouth and pressed my back against the attic door as those chilling whispers crept closer down the narrow landing.

The brass doorknob rattled violently twice with a sharp clicking sound, but the heavy deadbolt I had thrown held the rotting wood in place.

"Strange, isn't that fat pig inside?"

My stepsister Dolly's shrill, nasty voice filtered clearly through the thin wooden planks, making my stomach twist.

Right behind her came the signature, sickeningly drawn-out sigh of my stepmother, Demetra Gross, the woman who had taken over the Holder house after my mother died.

"Oh, my dear Dolly, take your time, that useless freak can't run far."

I pressed my ear tight against the crack of the doorframe, my heart hammering against my ribs as my fingers twisted the hem of the Alpha's oversized white shirt.

"As long as she keeps drinking the mutated Wolfsbane soup I brew for her every day, her precious White Wolf bloodline will remain asleep forever."

Demetra's low, vicious chuckle seeped through the wood, followed immediately by Dolly's smug giggle.

"Who would have thought the noble eldest daughter of the Holder family could be turned into a spotty, bloated monster who can barely walk just from a few herbs?"

Those words hit me like a bolt of lightning, my knees buckling so hard I nearly bit through my tongue to stop a gasp.

For years, everyone in the Pack had mocked me as a genetic failure, yet my dormant wolf and deformed body weren't natural defects at all—they were the result of daily poison fed to me by this wicked mother-and-daughter pair.

I sank my teeth into the back of my own hand until I tasted copper, forcing the choking rage down my throat as a cold fire ignited behind my eyes.

Only when their footsteps faded down the stairs toward the other hallways did my legs give out completamente, sending me sprawling onto the icy floorboards.

Scrambling on hands and knees to the chipped cabinet in the corner, I yanked out the clay jar of herbal tonic Demetra forced me to drink every evening.

Without a second of hesitation, I threw open the small casement window and poured the thick black sludge straight into the gutter outside, striking the rim of the jar against the stone sill until it cracked.

Catching sight of my swollen, blotchy face in the cracked mirror, I breathed in the lingering cedar scent on my shirt, a ruthless plan taking shape in my chest.

I pried up a loose floorboard beneath my bed and pulled out my late mother's tattered herbal journal, flipping through the yellowed pages until I found the counter-agents for mutated Wolfsbane.

For the next several months, I played the part of the slow, gluttonous fool during the day, secretly dumping every bowl of Demetra's poisoned soup into the drains.

Wait until past midnight, I risked being torn apart by patrolling Warriors to slip across the Pack border, crawling through the damp undergrowth of Black Pine Forest to harvest blood-purging spirit herbs.

On the first full moon after I stopped taking the poison, the moon's peak power triggered a violent backlash from my suppressed wolf spirit, initiating my first Shift.

In our world, werewolves usually underwent their first Shift between sixteen and eighteen, enduring the agony of every bone snapping and reshaping to gain their giant Dire Wolf form.

Curled up on my narrow cot, I dug my nails into the thin mattress as my spineand ribs popped with sickening cracks, the pain ten times worse without a Fated Mate nearby to soothe the bond.

I rolled off the cot onto the floor, biting a rag to muffle my screams as foul, black, poisoned blood oozed from my pores, carrying away years of Wolfsbane toxins.

Just when my vision blurred and my heart threatened to stop in that forgotten attic, the memory of that dark suite and the Alpha's overwhelming cedar scent flashed through my mind.

Clinging to that phantom warmth, I locked my jaws and forced my shattering bones to fuse back together until the brutal reshaping finally passed.

As gray dawn broke through the window, the agony receded like a tide, leaving me drenched in sweat and gasping for fresh air on the stained floorboards.

Pushing myself up on trembling arms, I realized the oversized clothes that used to strain against my flesh now hung loosely off my shoulders.

Day after day, full moon after full moon, I endured a full year of hellish detoxification that carved away every ounce of bloated poison from my frame.

On the morning the last trace of toxin left my blood, I stood in front of the dusty full-length mirror and wiped the condensation from the glass with a steady hand.

The bloated monster was gone, replaced by a slender young woman with snow-white skin, a waist I could span with two hands, and frost-white hair cascading down my back.

Turning slightly, I looked over my shoulder at the right side of my tailbone, where the crescent-moon birthmark—the royal symbol of a purebred White Wolf—glowed with a faint silver sheen.

I had reclaimed my bloodline, my strength, and the rightful pride of the Holder family's true heir.

Suddenly, a sharp spike of pain lanced through my temples as someone forcefully projected a Mind-Link into my head-a telepathic Pack channel I could finally access now that my wolf was awake.

"Avery, get down to the front hall right now."

Demetra's cold, bossy mental voice echoed inside my skull, and I curled my lip, severing our mental alignment to slam the link shut like an iron door.

Grabbing a faded, oversized hooded cloak from the hook, I threw it over my frame and pulled the hood low to hide my frost-white hair and transformed figure.

Pulling open the wooden door that had caged me for over a decade, I walked out of the attic and headed down the stairs toward the lavish front hall.