Chapter2

The carriage traveled through freezing rain for seven days.

My consciousness drifted in and out of high fever. I felt like a piece of rotting meat, carelessly discarded in muddy water.

Until that rough hand yanked the collar around my neck.

The chain dug into festering flesh. Suffocation made me instinctively arch my back, a sound like broken bellows escaping my throat.

"Get up! Stop playing dead!" The escort officer's boot kicked my ribs, pain making me curl into a ball. "You dare make a scene before Lord Kyle?"

Kyle? The name pierced through my foggy mind like a thin needle. That madman from the Ashland Tribe? The tyrant who'd supposedly killed his own father and nailed the former elders to the city walls?

The previously noisy voices around me instantly dropped to a deathly silence.

The escort officer's fawning laughter became tremulous as a sieve:

"L-Lord Kyle, this is this year's tribute from the Silver Moon Tribe... This Omega's a bit weak, legs don't work well, been given muting drugs, but should be good enough for the soldiers' entertainment..."

No response. Only the sound of heavy military boots stepping through puddles, one step, one step, approaching.

It was a tangible sense of oppression, as if the air had solidified into lead.

I struggled to lift my heavy eyelids, vision blurred like a veil of blood. Could only see a pair of mud-stained black military boots stop before me.

Trembling, I tried to raise my head. What entered my vision was a tall, blurry shadow.

He didn't carry Ryan's cold, noble scent. Only a strong smell of gunpowder and rust, mixed with some heart-pounding wild aura.

The smell wasn't pleasant, yet it made the dying wolf inside me catch a thread of hope in despair.

"Get lost." He said only one word. Voice low and hoarse, like sandpaper scraping eardrums.

The escort officer scrambled away in terror, not daring to breathe too loudly.

Then a pair of ice-cold hands reached over.

Expecting another beating, I instinctively shrank back, a dying whimper spilling from my throat.

But he didn't hit me.

He bent down, one hand sliding under my knees, the other supporting my mud-covered back, lifting me from the cold muddy water.

I could feel his body stiffen sharply when he touched me—

Probably from touching the silver nail fragments embedded in my collarbone.

"So filthy..." I murmured unconsciously, lips trembling as I tried to push him away. "Don't touch... I'm ominous..." I wanted to tell him I was a curse, that people who got close to me would have bad luck.

But my throat, corroded by silver water, produced sounds broken as ghost cries.

He understood.

His arms holding me suddenly tightened, force nearly enough to suffocate me, yet the next second he awkwardly lightened his grip.

"Shut up." He scolded in a low voice, tone fierce, yet using his broad palm to shield the cold wind from my wounds.

Just then, I heard gasps from around us.

"My god... Lord Kyle actually touched that abandoned slave?"

"That's a filthy thing! It'll bring misfortune!"

"Shh! Want to die? Don't you see his expression?"

The originally arrogant clan members on both sides now retreated in terror, faces full of disbelief.

They looked at Kyle like they were looking at a suddenly mutated monster.

Indeed strange.

A man radiating such murderous aura, holding a stinking wreck like me—the image was absurdly incongruous.

More bizarre still, I could clearly hear the violent heartbeat from his chest—thump, thump, thump.

Abnormally fast, chaotically mad.

Even... accompanied by an extremely low, extremely suppressed whimper.

That was the resonance of the beast inside an Alpha.

But hadn't my wolf soul failed to awaken? Hadn't I been sentenced to death?

My consciousness began to scatter. Cold and pain made me clutch desperately at his chest.

This was my only bargaining chip left.

The last sensation was him laying me on a soft, dry bed. The most luxurious place I'd ever slept, covered in thick animal furs with the scent of sun-dried warmth.

Then I heard him roar at the door, voice carrying unprecedented violence and urgency:

"Healer! Get in here!"

"Heal her. At any cost."