Chapter 2

• Louisa's POV
• Flashback***
• I was born to be the daughter of Alpha Jacob of Crimson Creek Pack.
• My mother's life was tragically cut short in the process of bringing me into the world.
• The official reason was labor exhaustion, but I had my suspicions about my stepmother Rosalie's involvement.
• She used to be my mother's maid and the source of my predicament.
• As soon as my mother passed away, my father married her consecutively, which was very suspicious.
• However, Rosalie had her own twisted version of my mother's untimely death.
• She was busy weaving tales about me, warning the pack to keep their distance as if I was some kind of a curse.
• She would say, "Anyone who interacts with that girl will be doomed, just like her mother."
• Since my birth, I've been an outcast, shunned by our pack.
• Even the Omegas in the pack wouldn't talk to me.
• I had to work very hard to get my ration of food, which was always not enough.
• And I had to look for food in the trash.
• But sometimes there just wasn't any scrap of food in the trash.
• That was why I had been malnourished.
• At the age of 19, I still couldn't shift into a wolf.
• And everyone laughed at me in our pack, calling me "retard".
• As days went by, I found myself grappling with self-denial.
• I started to think that I was really cursed... That I was abandoned by the Moon Goddess.
• All of this ended at the Masquerade Ball on Full Moon Day.
• The day when I turned 20 years old.
• The day I discovered that my father had made a deal with the devil, planning to hand me over to Alpha Lucas, the most feared and bloodthirsty beast in the Kingdom.
• He had a reputation for killing all of his breeders as soon as he consummated with them.
• I overheard my father's conversation with Rosalie outside his tent.
• As soon as I heard this news, I decided to run.
• At the masquerade, I put on a mask and tried to sneak away, but my plan of escape failed because of my half-brother, Zion.
• As the only offspring of my father and Rosalie, he constantly labeled himself as "the virtuous successor of the pack".
• But in fact, I was supposed to be the leader of our pack, because I was the firstborn child of my father.
• I didn't want to inherit anything and I knew there was no way for me, an 80-pound she-wolf, to be the leader of a wolf pack.
• But I couldn't change the fact that I was my father's first-born daughter.
• And that was why Zion had been picking on me all the time.
• At first, it was mere mockery with his gang of boys.
• But as we aged, it escalated to physical torment.
• He either pushed me into a frozen lake or forced me to hold charcoal.
• And at the Masquerade Ball on Full Moon Day, Zion caught me while I was trying to sneak away.
• "Where do you think you're going, you stinky rat?!" He ripped off my mask and gloated.
• "Let go of me!" I struggled to break away from him.
• "Who do you think you are?! You're not the Alpha of the pack! I don't need to take orders from you!" He said and pulled me up in the air, shaking me like a dead rabbit.
• I screamed in pain.
• "Yeah, scream as loudly as you can! Everybody is at the Ball. No one is going to come and save you!" he grinned.
• I thrashed about, desperate to break free.
• "Yeah, keep doing that." His eyes, filled with malevolent delight, bore into me."The more you struggle, the more excited I will become!"
• Tears were pouring down my cheeks as I struggled in vain.
• "Beg me to put you down, you skinny rat!"
• "No!" I used all my effort and shouted.
• "Beg me right now or I swear I'll rip off your arms!" Zion shook me more violently.
• "No!!!" Tears streaming down my face. "You're nothing but a bully! And I'll never beg a bully like you!"
• Just as I felt that my arms were about to be ripped off by Zion, I fell to the ground.
• At almost the same time, I heard the scream coming from Zion -
• "No! My arm! You... You cut off my arm!"
• I saw an arm rolling on the ground.
• It took me a while to realize that it had belonged to Zion.
• As I was wondering how I managed to cut off Zion's arm, I looked up and saw a tall man with a monstrous black mask covering his face and a long blade knife in his hand.
• There was blood dripping off the blade.
• Feeling panicked, I was completely petrified.
• The man lowered his head and stared at me.
• I could see his sapphire blue eyes behind the mask.
• At that moment, I felt the whole world stopped spinning.
• The sight of his mask and the blood-soaked blade was horrifying.
• Fear clutched at my throat, stealing my voice.
• I knew I was supposed to run away from him, as I was supposed to run away from death.
• But I just couldn't move.
• The moon came out of the clouds.
• White moonlight poured down on me.
• My body started shivering violently.
• A sharp pain radiated from my back and I saw white fur growing out of my arms.
• Am I... Shifting?!
• I couldn't believe what happened to me, but at the age of 20, my wolf finally surfaced...
• And it was all because of this strange masked man who had cut off my stepbrother's arm and saved my life.
• My wolf stood in front of the man and shook her fur.
• Then, she took a few steps forward, trying to get closer to the man.
• The man just stood there, tilting his head while looking at my wolf with curiosity.
• "Don't get any closer!" I warned my wolf. "He has a knife and he will cut off your head!"
• "No, he wouldn't. He smelt so delicious." My wolf licked her lips, taking one little step forward.
• I tried to stop her, but it was too late.
• The man gripped my wolf by its forelegs and held her up.
• "You get caught!" I roared in panic. "Now he's going to kill you!"
• "Stop barking in my head," my wolf said to me. "Watch and learn."
• Then, she licked off the blood stains on the man's hand.
• The clouds gathered and the moon was gone.
• All of sudden, my wolf shifted back into human form.
• I, completely naked, was lying in the man's arms.
• I wasn't able to feel ashamed, because I had passed out because of exhaustion.
• End of Flashback***