Chapter 3

Alexandra POV:

Cristina's smug smile faltered under my stare. She grabbed the edge of Cheyenne's mantle, her voice pitching up into a shrill register. "Why are you looking at me like that? Back away, you freak!"

Cheyenne seemed to realize he had stepped back. Embarrassment turned into hot anger. He lunged forward, reaching out with an open palm to shove me back. "Keep your hands to yourself!"

I dropped my left shoulder by two inches. His fingers brushed empty air above my collar, his forward momentum throwing him off balance.

He stumbled forward a step, his jaw tight as he spun around. "Alexandra, do not force me to strike a woman."

"Strike a wolfless woman in public?" I asked, my voice carrying cleanly across the stones. "Is that the grand legacy of the Mckinney pack? First you hide behind poison needles, and now you threaten violence when you miss a simple grab?"

A muffled snicker broke out near the baker's cart. Cheyenne's ears turned dark crimson. In high werewolf society, an Alpha who struggled to manage an unshifted female was an embarrassment; one who used physical force to cover his clumsy footing was pathetic.

He lowered his voice to a harsh hiss. "Accept the rejection right now, or I swear to the Moon Goddess, your grandfather will not see tomorrow morning."

The air left my chest in a quiet, dangerous exhale.

They still thought I was the same broken, timid girl they had kicked around for eighteen years—a girl stumbling through a fog, too fragile to fight back.

For eighteen long years, my soul had been locked behind a suffocating, impenetrable haze. I had lived like a muted prisoner in my own flesh, watching helplessly as low-born servants spat into my meals, as noble court brutes shoved me into freezing mud, and as Cheyenne treated my devotion like dirt beneath his boots. Worse still, I had watched my grandfather hack up black blood in a freezing, neglected manor, utterly powerless to shield the only man who loved me. I had been weak, confused, and defenseless.

Until today.

Why had that unbreakable seal—a shackle that kept me half-witted for nearly two decades—suddenly shattered the instant that carriage wheel jammed and my bodice was torn? Was it sheer survival instinct, or had someone orchestrating my ruin unknowingly tripped an ancient mechanism buried deep in Atkins blood? I didn't know the answer yet.

All I knew was that the haze was completely gone. I wasn't replaced; I was restored.I also regained memories of my past life.

In my past life, before my soul was reborn into this kingdom, I was an elite trauma surgeon with years of national-level Sanda combat drilled into my marrow. Every nerve cluster, every brittle joint, and every lethal leverage point of flesh and bone—human or wolf—was second nature to my hands. I had wrestled armed attackers in emergency wards and pieced shattered lives back together beneath the operating lamps.

The helpless coward was dead. I was whole, I was armed, and nothing disgusted me more than a coward who used my dying grandfather as a human shield.

I looked past Cheyenne's shoulder directly at Cristina. "This is your mighty Alpha? A man whose greatest weapon is withholding medicine from a bedridden elder?"

Cristina's face went white, but she spat back, "He protects me! You wouldn't know anything about honor, you broken tool!"

"Honor?" I tilted my head, my eyes coldly mapping the intricate tailoring of her bodice. "You think honor is tearing dresses and crying behind armor?"

I took another step.

Cristina backed up, but the hem of her skirts caught against a protruding cobblestone. She wobbled, her arms flailing.

Cheyenne reached out to steady her, his eyes wild with fury. "Get out of my sight before I have the city watch drag you to the dungeons!"

I didn't answer him.

My gaze mapped the structural stress lines on Cristina's rust-colored gown with clinical detachment. Tight whalebone stays, stiff seams pulled taut over her waist, held together by double-stitched silk cord at the shoulders to keep them bare in the court fashion. Pure vanity. High tension, zero real structural integrity.

I flexed the fingers of my right hand. The knuckles popped softly.

Cristina saw the gesture. The color drained from her cheeks completely, and she shrank back against Cheyenne's arm. "Cheyenne, make her leave. Don't let her near me."

Cheyenne waved his hand dismissively, treating me like an insect. "Run home, dog."

"I am home," I said quietly.

Before the last word left my lips, I moved.

There was no hesitation, no grand wind-up. I dropped low, pushing off the balls of my feet with explosive agility. I slipped right under Cheyenne's reaching arm before his Alpha reflexes could register the shift in air pressure.

He turned his head with a startled grunt, but I was already past him.

Cristina's mouth opened to scream, but the sound never made it past her teeth. My hands caught the embroidered collar of her gown on both sides, my fingers sinking deep into the seam line right at the base of the neck.

She slapped at my arms, her nails raking against my skin, but my grip was locked.

I leaned in until my eyes were inches from hers. "You said you wanted my dress torn off, didn't you?"

"Stop—"

I planted my back foot, twisted my hips, and ripped outward with every ounce of leverage my body could produce.