Chapter 7

• When I managed to calm myself after witnessing the state of my skin, I went to bed. I was so tired that I crashed till evening, only waking up when hunger threatened to cripple me. I joined my family for dinner and my father made sure to engage me in a drawn-out conversation while Ethan glared at me.
• After dinner, I went back to bed to sleep some more and when I woke up the next morning, it was at the crack of dawn. My lower back hurt as if I had engaged in rigorous physical activities. Yet again, I remembered that I fell into bed with the male lead and the bastard desecrated my skin.
• “I was right to stay away from such a bad guy.” What sort of crazy person marks someone so thoroughly?
• It was only about four a.m. but after sleeping the previous day away, I couldn’t find any sleep and I did not want to stay still. Confined to a hospital bed for years, I wanted to explore the world now. I got out of bed and brushed my teeth and while I brushed, my wolf announced her presence with a loud yawn.
• ‘Is there anything I can do so early in the day?’ I asked her. ‘I’m a bit restless after sleeping for so long.’
• ‘A run,’ there was no concealing the longing in her voice. ‘Let’s go for a run. You can shift and I – a run would be good.’
• It was an exciting idea so I agreed. Shifting into a wolf? It was not something I ever thought I would experience. Reading about it was always exhilarating but getting to experience it was another thing.
• “Okay.” I stretched my legs when I got out of the house. “How do I do it? How do I shift?”
• ‘It’s better to go to the woods first so you can have some privacy to take off your clothes. Except you don’t mind the clothes ripping, of course,” the wolf said.
• “Yeah, yeah, I get it.” I was an avid werewolf romance reader so I knew that part. “But where are the woods in this pack?”
• ‘Take the left road, I’ll guide you.”
• Following my wolf’s guidance, I arrived at a thick forest where the air smelt like fallen leaves. I raised my head to the skies and took in a deep breath, anticipation making my heart pound. I was about to experience the second most out-of-the-world thing after reincarnating here and my heart beat as if on the verge of exploding.
• I rushed out of my clothes without a thought of self-consciousness and then I rubbed my palms together, rocking on the balls of my feet.
• “What now? How do I shift?” I closed my eyes, waiting for the instructions. It was supposed to be something like imagining it right? Imagine yourself as a wolf and then you shift.
• ‘Yes, that’s it,’ my wolf confirmed and then an image of a snow-white wolf with icy blue eyes that could captivate the strongest of hearts, similar to the ones I had now, flashed in my head. I held on to that image and imagined myself turning into that wolf.
• A weird sound caught between a squeal of excitement and shock escaped my lips when I felt a warm heat strike down my back and a sudden change happening with my body. There was a brief moment of a sharp, headache-inducing pain but it lasted for less than a second and after that, I saw the world as I had never seen it before.
• “Did my eyes get an upgrade?” I asked but what came out of my mouth was nothing short of barks. “W – what?”
• “Freedom,” Grace muttered and then she started to stretch.
• The sound of cracking bones filled the air. It was loud and concerning, like the creaking of an old door that had not been opened in a long time. It took five minutes for her to stretch, after which she let out a loud sigh.
• A sudden wave of excitement flooded into me and it was clear I was experiencing an emotion that wasn’t entirely mine. It was a thing that was both exhilarating and overwhelming, confusing but familiar still.
• ‘Selene used to be too busy to shift,’ Grace said as she broke into a light run. ‘She was always cooking up something, causing trouble here or there so I felt trapped,’ she confessed.
• ‘I want to familiarize myself with this world as much as I can,’ I said. ‘In my past life, I could not even dream of doing all this. I lived with all manners of illnesses and the only world I knew was the world inside of the hospital. Now that I have a second chance at life, I want to explore everything. I want to shift often, train with wolves and experience the life I only got to read about.’
• ‘You must have lived an awful life. It’s nothing I can imagine, I’m sorry,’ she said.
• ‘It’s not a life I would wish on even my worst enemy,’ I muttered, thinking back to the numerous spots on my skin from where different injections had pricked my skin. ‘The pain and hope, the suffering and optimism that things may be better, the agony and the tears, I would be cruel to wish that on anyone. It was a life not worth living but it was the only life I had so I held on with everything in me.’
• I decided to throw myself into the life I had now and enjoy it to the fullest. Knowing what I suffered and missed out on in my past life, I could not take this life for granted. Every time I took in a breath without pain in my chest was a miracle. Being able to stand was a miracle and when I looked in the mirror, I saw the biggest miracle of all.
• In my past life, I started to avoid a mirror at one point. The person I saw was not the person I wanted to see. In my head, I could still picture myself as a child who was sickly but was not on the verge of death but when I looked into the mirror and saw my ribs, my long neck and gaunt face, that image was always shattered. When I looked into the mirror, I was confronted by my reality; a reality I wished to escape but found myself trapped in.
• ‘Let’s live a better life together this time around,’ Grace said, ‘and even in the lifetimes to come.’
• It was the sweetest thing I ever heard, something that made me tear up. I’d never had any friends so Grace would be my first friend and I was more than grateful for her. My heart swelled with warmth and I felt love.
• It made me think of the original Selene who had everything; from a loving family to the kindest wolf. Per her status, she was not cut out to be the female lead of a werewolf web novel but she had a great life; a life I envied. How could she take it all for granted?
• ‘Ah,’ Grace sighed when we caught sight of a wolf running a short distance away from us. ‘We should not have come here,’ she added.
• ‘Why? What is it?’
• ‘It’s –‘ She stopped and the wolf ahead, sensing our presence, stopped too and then it turned its head and I took a proper look at it.
• The first wolf I had seen had been my father, a huge black wolf that could not have been real but this one seemed even more unreal. Midnight black fur that glistened even in the grayish day, sharp golden eyes and almost twice the size of my father, such a wolf was staring at me.
• Then it started to walk my way and I fought the urge to run off. Its presence pressed down on me and Grace hissed.
• ‘What the hell is he doing filling this place with his scent?’
• ‘Like – like marking his territory?’ Whatever scent filled the air made me nervous, as if I was trespassing and on the verge of becoming human food for a beast.
• ‘I am an Alpha too, darn it!’ Grace growled and then let out a sound that shook the trees around us.
• The black wolf stopped, cocked its head to the side with a look in its eyes as if staring at something cute. Grace growled again, this time, the sound more menacing and the wolf growled right back.
• And then I knew. I realized why it stared at me with laughter in its eyes. I was wrong to think Grace’s growling sounded menacing. To this wolf, it must have sounded like a whining pup because when the beast in front of me opened its mouth, a sound that shook the ground filled the air. I found myself ducking even as Grace flinched, taking a step back and lowering her head despite every fibre of my being screaming against showing deference. My teeth gnashed and I fought the force making me lower my head. And as I raised my head, a sigh fell from my lips.
• The enormous black wolf was shifting and even before it completed its shift, I knew. I knew who I was staring at and having a growl-off with.
• ‘This damn guy!’ Grace growled in my head.
• Why did I keep running into this guy?