PROlOGUE
Elena's POV:
Someone is following me.
This is not the first time.
It was completely dark and the entire city of Ubi was lit up with neon light after neon light. It was cold, and I exhaled slowly, with a little white frost.
I wore very little, but I didn't feel that cold, because I had a different physique from ordinary humans, and although I was still weak in werewolves, it was enough for resisting the cold.
Someone was following me, and I tried to shake him off. After passing through the glazed tree street, and turning into the butterfly alley, and bypassing the green flower bank, the journey had already taken a long time longer than my usual way home, about 40 minutes to an hour.
That sticky feeling of being followed always haunted me and kept me from letting my guard down.
And around the alley for a long time, the feeling of stickiness slowly subsided. I wandered around for a while longer and returned to my apartment at almost 12:00 pm.
This apartment is very dilapidated, the best I could find, a floor of at least twelve households, the age has been very old, walking too fast, it will "creak and creak", often accompanied by neighbors yelling.
I live in the top floor of the attic, too humid, every time it rains, the attic is more prone to water than other places, the whole rainy season is damp and musty. I actually rarely live here. Mr. Christian bought a house in the very sunny Goldfish neighborhood, and I lived there at first, but a year ago I decided it wasn't a good idea to start a business in Butterfly Alley.
In the most chaotic Butterfly Alley I opened a pawn store, which was supposed to be a business loved by the Orientals, and it cost me a lot of money to take that store from an Oriental who was leaving Ubi City.
Two months ago, the pawn shop was smashed, and I hurried back from the Goldfish neighborhood to find the glass doors smashed to smithereens, not like a robbery, but like a vent of anger.
I got someone to come and repack the store, and after only one night it was smashed to smithereens again, and the monitors at the door were in pieces, and their bodies were lying on the floor.
I can no longer live in the goldfish neighborhood, I have to guard the place day and night.
A month ago, I finally found the culprit, that is, Robin, who fixed the locomotive in Butterfly Alley, he is a total landlord, he should not be human either, so in this case, we all can not call the police.
For Ubi City, the non-human thing, naturally, has its own solution. Therefore, our police reports are often not accepted.
He has harassed me more than once, and the first time I showed up in Butterfly Alley, he gave me a frivolous whistle, but his look was so horrible that the action didn't look good, instead it looked very ugly and intimidating.
Whenever I see such a tough guy, I can't help but cower a little, but I will immediately react in the next second that this is no longer Mr. Leonardo's estate.
I turned my face away and made myself look expressionless. Over the years, I had gradually learned to get rid of my old habits.
I went to the bathroom to wash up, thinking about the peculiarities of this apartment, I still decided to use the stool against the door. I took a hasty shower, only to realize that it was probably too cold outside, and at that moment my face was pale, as if I was in shock.
I looked at myself in the mirror, and my old long hair had been cut short when Randall was born, and my skin was in much better shape after not having to do a lot of things myself. The most important thing is my eyes, I am not the same as before.
I exhaled slowly, and through the bathroom door, I suddenly heard some movement coming from outside the door, like someone shaking the door panel.
Thinking about the fragility of that door panel, I straightened up alertly. I quickly turned off the lights in the room and walked to the living room keeping my footsteps as light as possible.
The door was indeed shaking, as if it had been deliberately shaken. I did not make a sound and stared at the light coming from beneath the door panel.
The light was interrupted by two feet, but who was outside the door? I should have been nervous, but I wasn't. My heart was beating wildly, but I remained calm and mentally ruled out those I suspected.
The sound suddenly stopped, but the person outside the door certainly did not leave, and I heard someone whispering. I couldn't resist taking two steps forward to hear what the people outside were saying.
I don't know if I was in too much of a hurry, but the person outside the door seemed to have heard the voice inside, followed by a short laugh and a lewd and dirty voice: "Elena!
It was Robin!
My eyes widened and Robin was outside my door! I didn't make a sound, my chest kept rising and falling, what should I do now ......
I did not make a sound, but Robin was sure that I was at home, raised his voice a little and opened his mouth with dirty words: "You sleep with a rich man, what's wrong with sleeping with me? Do you still want to open your store in Butterfly Alley?"
I'm used to being humiliated like this, I didn't even change my face, just thinking in my mind how I'm going to get him out.
He got even bolder and crackled the door with a noise that seemed like it could knock the panels through.
"Elena, don't think I don't know that! There are people looking for you all over the city of Ubi! Have you offended someone big?" He suddenly said, followed by a whisper as if the person was closer to the door panel, with a little wet and hot stickiness and disgust, "Whose bitch are you? Are you afraid when people come for you? If you stay with me for one night, I'll consider hiding you in the butterfly alley."
I laughed, if I had been the same person before, I might have panicked and shivered, but I was not the same Elena from the manor now, I took a step forward and said calmly, "Robin, if you don't leave, I'll call the police!"
Robin wasn't scared at all, instead he said, "Haha, see if the police dare to take care of Butterfly Alley! You're a werewolf, right? Guess what happens to werewolves who sneak into Ubi City, guess what those werewolf pureblood families will do to catch you back and stab six holes in your body!"
I clenched my fist, I didn't care what he scolded me for, but he actually threatened me with the high and mighty pure-blood family of werewolves! Why in this world, just because of the noble blood can be above everything, even the lives of others can be threatened and taken away at will?
Robin shook the door harder, his mouth very unclean insulting something, followed by the next second, a dagger with a reflective blade thrust in! This dagger does not know what it is made of, cutting the door lock, as if in cutting mud, incomparably smooth, just a few seconds, the entire door lock was cut in half!
I took a step back and squeezed the table tightly.
He was armed, and I couldn't be threatened by him anymore. I let my anger calm down and quickly stood behind the door.
I had seen Mr. Leonardo kill, he held his knife backhanded, whether it was a dagger or a long knife he used it well, and he was best at killing with a single blow with a backhanded grip than with a slash that had to involve his entire body's strength.
He once nudged me twice, and I held the knife with my heart beating wildly! When the door lock was finally cut, I closed my eyes and used all my strength to let my right arm go out heavily across, a circular arc of general retrieval of force!
I realized that the tip of the knife against the bones in his body, but I could not think more, pulled out the whole short knife with force, and did not hesitate to again aimed at his chest! Only to hear the cold short knife into the body, is a very soft and muffled sound, and the TV show that sound is completely different.
Robin's voice disappeared, my heart was beating so violently that I couldn't hear anything but a buzzing in my ears. I closed the door with trembling hands and lowered my head to find that Robin's eyes were still strangely open, but he had already died.
The floor was covered with splattered blood and the air smelled like sticky rust. I breathed deeply, and the rusty smell seemed to stick to my nose, making me unable to move.
The tense strength slowly faded, the hand came off, and the short knife fell to the ground with an ear-splitting sound. I woke up like a dream and looked at the mess.
I killed him, I killed Robin, it was nothing like the night I escaped from the manor, I really wanted this man dead!
He was dead, still looking at me, with the image of my tragic white face and determined eyes still in his eyes from before he died.
I dropped to the floor and took a deep breath, sitting for a long time before slowly getting up. Yes, I couldn't let Robin disappear into my room, I had to get rid of his body.
But what was I supposed to do? He was a non-human, and according to my guess he should also be a werewolf, I didn't know which family he belonged to, would someone come looking for him, in fact I couldn't care less about that anymore.
Should I cut up his body and throw it away? What should I do? I woodenly picked up my short knife and tried to cut off his hand. I know it's already like I'm crazy, but after the anger that washed over the top of my brain receded, my whole body had no strength and the smell of rust made me want to vomit.
What do I do? Do I drag him out and throw him away now? Where to? The river outside the city? No, I can't. The body will swell up, and in just a few days, someone will find it!
I was biting my nails nervously when there was another sound outside the door, and before I could react, the door was pushed open.
Outside the door stood me someone I didn't expect, we hadn't seen each other for three years, and I only vaguely remembered his face from my dreams.
He was very tall, blocking out the dim light coming from the hallway. He turned around and seemed to scan whoever was there, and immediately afterwards he was the only one who walked in.
He rolled up his sleeves in front of me and crouched down beside me, and in my confused thoughts I noticed that his white shirt was stained with a small patch of bright red blood.
"What do you want to do with it?" He asked me, his voice unchanged, so that I had forgotten in a trance that his presence was more horrible than the fact that I had killed someone.
"I want to throw it away or burn it." I said woodenly, in fact I didn't know how to deal with it at all, all those ways I dealt with it seemed too easy to have broken.
"How dare you kill someone if you don't know how to dispose of it?" He asked me in a low voice, and I realized that he seemed to have changed a lot from three years ago.
"I hate being threatened." My brain was still scrambled, and I knew I shouldn't talk to him about this, but I couldn't seem to help myself.
"I have a better way, you call the werewolf association in Ubi City right now and say you're my wife and they'll take care of everything for you." He spoke in a lower voice and looked at me with such concentration that if I were sober now I could hear a little coaxing in his tone.
Unfortunately, I'm not the Elena I used to be, I'm much more sensitive to these words, and I came to my senses almost instantly, I saw myself in his eyes.
Without expression, I looked him in the eye and said firmly, "I am not your wife, Mr. Leonardo, I am not your wife, your slave, your toy."
His face turned hard and he gave a very cold smile, he seemed to be sighing and laughing: "Elena, how come you never learn to listen?"
I indeed never learn to listen, I am Elena, living in the city of Ubi a free person, I am not the maid of the manor.
I looked into his eyes and suddenly thought, the day I first met him.
Chapter 1
Elena's POV
It was still early in the day when I was called to help in the kitchen.
My task for the day entailed washing dishes, baking the croissants needed for breakfast, and preparing some of Mr. Leonardo's favorite jams.
I hated this job, but I was not an adult yet, and when I am in another week, I'd be able to get out of here and go move out of the Graham family's grasp for a while.
I had been living here for eleven years in fear and trepidation, and the closer I got to Mr. Leonardo's coming-of-age ceremony, the closer I got to my freedom.
For as long as I could remember, everyone around me had told me that my mother was a traitor to this pack, and that she was said to have tried to overthrow the Graham family's then ruler when I was five years old by privately contacting werewolves from other packs, but ended in failure.
After she was executed, I was left alive because of my young age, and although I lived a hard life all these years, I was able to rely on working in the kitchen and garden and not starve to death.
After Mr. Leonardo's coming-of-age ceremony, he would be guided by the Moon Goddess to choose his lifelong mate, and at the same time we, the Omegas, would be pardoned for this great joy, and could temporarily leave the community to live elsewhere.
I saw him once from afar, when he was fourteen years old, standing at the top of the mountain looking down at everything. I remembered he had long blond hair, which was gathered together by his mother with a beautiful red hair band, however, I did not see his face clearly.
He was too noble and proud. As our Alpha Graham's only son, he had anything to do with me in any way. In any case, I couldn't be the Omega who was guided to him by the Moon Goddess.
So I just had to prepare the clothes I would need to wear when I moved out and some meager savings as soon as possible so that I could settle down outside. I had been waiting for the day when I will be free, perhaps I would live more miserable than now, but I would no longer be beaten and reprimanded, and there would be no any kind of disdainful eyes, I would straighten up and be a normal person, even if I might be living in a human city, not living with the same kind, which does not matter.
To this end, I recently helped in the kitchen before dawn, whether it was washing dishes or baking bread, I was happy to accept, at least some of the days to look forward to.
Although my time in the kitchen had not been so good, because I was the daughter of a traitor, I had been subjected to the blank stares and taunts of the other wolves, and last winter I had been pushed into the river and almost died, and if it had not been for an unlit campfire by the river that night, I might have died.
I couldn't fight it; for the pack, my mother had indeed made a great and unforgivable mistake, and the heir's mate at the time, now our Luna, insisted that I was too young and that it had nothing to do with me, and adopted me in the pack.
I'm grateful to her, so I'd been trying to live my life, trying to shrink my presence and not cause her any trouble.
But I knew that she could say that, perhaps just to highlight her kindness.
Although I stayed in the pack, I was still spared the blank stares and ridicule of the crowd because of my status as the daughter of a traitor.
Luna once looked at me deeply with a mixture of pity and disgust, but only once, she was a noble status, and not something I could see at any time.
Luckily, in another week or so, I could move out of here and go live in a human city, and I applied to a good human school.
When I thought about it, I felt that the water for washing dishes was not so cold anymore.
Walking in the kitchen was Amanda, the cook, who was not very good-tempered at all, and when I saw her coming, I collected my face and tried to act as meek as possible. She gazed at me for a long time, slowly sweeping her eyes from my hair to my hands, and this gaze was so long that I began to feel weak afterwards. I didn't know what was going on, and my mind went blank. But when I reacted, the bowl was already in a smash.
No one in the kitchen dared to speak as she shifted that icy gaze to my face and inquired, "Did you break your hand?"
I kept shaking my head, knowing that my defense would only make her lose her temper, and I knelt down to pick up those pieces on the floor. God! Those porcelain tiles were too sharp. But I didn't dare stop at all, I was afraid she would take the opportunity to get me in trouble again and decide that I had done it on purpose and might slap me as hard as before. She hit me like that once when I was very young, and half my face swelled up and I still had a white scratch at the end of my eye that was not easily visible.
I cut my hand on the debris, but I didn't dare speak, nor did I want to, let alone leave a single piece of that fine debris in the carpet.
She slowly approached, and a sense of foreboding rose in me, which made me speed up my hands, but she really did not let me go. She just put her shoe on my hand and slowly increased the force.
My bones seemed to be breaking, and the skin on my hands was forced to twist together, which was not the same as the pain at first, but only deepened my pain and fear layer by layer.
I bit my lips to death and kept admonishing myself not to cry or beg for mercy.
Probably because I hadn't made any sound, I kept hanging my head low and looked deeply into the ground.
The kitchen was carpeted with a gorgeous bright pattern, where I had been beaten so hard by Amanda that the blood from my forehead had spilled into the cracks of the carpet.
But I didn't cry.
"I didn't cry before, and I'm not crying now."
Maybe I kept quiet and made her feel bored. When my hand was so painful that I almost lost consciousness, she lifted her foot and my painful and numb hand got relief, but the whole back of my hand had swollen up. I shrunk my hand and exhaled softly, not looking at her.
She was satisfied, "Hurry up and wash the dishes, if you can't clean them, get the hell out of here."
Frozen for a second, without hesitation, I put my hand into the cold water to continue washing dishes. The back of the hand was numb with pain, so I put it into the cold water to get slightly better.
"Endure, I must endure."
"The day Mr. Leonardo gets married, the wrongdoers in the community will be pardoned and I will get a chance to live in a human city."
If I was thrown out because I made a mistake, then no community would accept it anymore, and I would be treated as prey, and I might soon die under the claws of someone.
So I dared not make a mistake, I had been careful to do every job thrown at me over the years, just to get this opportunity to be free.
She left, and the kitchen gradually became louder.
"Why don't you just throw her out?"
"It always feels weird inside to take in a traitor's daughter."
"Luna is so kind."
"How does she have the face to continue to stay here?"
The whispered chatter kept drilling into my ears, and I could only pretend not to hear it, pack up the porcelain tiles and throw them in the trash, then wash the dishes.
This kind of talk was too familiar as I had heard too much since young. There was also anger and resentment, but more emotions were as if ashes after burning, even if there was residual warmth, there would be no more wind. What else could I do?
I finished washing the dishes in such gossip. The sky was a little brighter, then I straightened up in a hurry and looked out the window and found that it should be a sunny day.
The skyline was tinged with a glorious golden yellow, a dazzling layer of light that made people want to avoid his sharpness when they saw it.
I suddenly thought of Mr. Leonardo's blond hair.
But I didn't think about it for long, just for a moment, as the wind drifted across the pond and created a ripple, and then I left it behind in an instant.
Since the kitchen was finished and the maids were busy getting Mr. Leonardo ready for bed, I was able to take the opportunity to take a shower in the lounge, which I was not usually allowed to do when there were a lot of people, and I was scrambling every day to be able to clean myself up for school, for fear of wasting a second.
I went back to the loft where I live, grabbed a towel and a hairpin to fix my hair, and quickly rushed to the lounge while no one was around.
The lounge there was Omega dedicated, the facilities were very simple, but I had cherished, and then before I did not find this point in time, I had to fight in the river in the winter to wipe my body, which was too cold and made me cold to death after each wipe.
The lounge was said special for Omega, in fact, the high-ranking Alpha, the leaders of the community, had a better lounge. I heard that Mr. Leonardo's lounge had occupied a full floor, only for his use.
But these had nothing to do with me, these things would eventually become distant, I just needed to live quietly until after Mr. Leonardo is guided by the Moon Goddess, then I could go to the human city.
It was a rare day when the water was hotter, and after taking off my clothes I quietly breathed a sigh of relief and let the warm water wash over me for a while.
It felt warm to be wrapped in water, as if I was being held by someone. In my memory, the images of all things were in cold tones, and the dreams I had when I fell asleep were cold and gray, and there were few moments of such warmth.
I wanted to wash my hair, but the water was already rushing into my eyes, so I had to close my eyes and fumble for a hairpin, trying to pin up the hair on my forehead so that my eyes could be open.
With my eyes closed, I couldn't see around, so I had to slowly feel my way along a shelf.
My fingertips seemed to touch something cold, and further up was a shaggy touch.
I remembered my hairpin was not like this...
But it touched not cold; I seemed to be touching something hard, but then further up, it's warm and soft...
This touch seemed to be...
It seemed to be the claws of some kind of beast!
My eyes snapped open!
A huge wolf cub emerged from the lounge from nowhere, and although he was not yet an adult, his sharp canine teeth could already be seen, and that I had just touched...
My brain went blank and almost reflexively I looked down to see. Sure enough, my hand was resting on his paws!
I slowly opened my mouth, and oh my God, the eyes of this wolf cub, actually seemed as dark as emeralds, and his fur looked so beautiful and smooth, clearly, it had been nursed very well. Its fur was soft, while the limbs covered underneath the soft fur were all thick and strong and it indeed looked muscular.
The cub just gazed at me silently, and as I tried to scream out, it suddenly lunged and bit on my neck!
