Chapter 1 Cursed Wolf

From the mire, born to reign. I'm the female, your one and only King. Summer was nearing its end, and the cicadas had already fallen silent. In the lush, mountainous borderlands, a pale-skinned werewolf girl and a hunched, weathered old woman stood before a tombstone. They were paying their respects to the werewolf girl's adoptive mother. The girl's name was Hadley Yorke, and she was born seventeen years ago into a werewolf pack of the North Delsphere—the Brimstone Pack. Seventeen years ago, the mate of the Brimstone Pack's Alpha, Lysandra Calloway, gave birth to her first daughter after a painful labor. However, when Lysandra looked expectantly at her newborn, she discovered a white-furred anomaly. “A white tail?” Lysandra whispered, trembling as she gazed at the infant's snow-white fur. “How can your fur be white? This is the mark of the cursed wolf!” The pain of childbirth was nothing compared to the despair of realizing her child was a cursed wolf. In the legends of the werewolf history, the appearance of a white wolf in a pack always heralded upheaval and catastrophe for the tribe. A thousand years ago, there had been a white wolf named Nikolas. He was an Alpha King who ruled the entire werewolf Delsphere with ruthless cruelty. Nikolas demanded absolute submission from all werewolves. Every pack's Alpha was subservient to him. He also established a system where all wolves' instincts were linked to his power. Any disobedience would result in being remotely strangled to death by him from afar. He even declared himself above the Moon Goddess. Rejecting her blessings, he wanted to choose his mates freely and didn't want to be bonded by the Moon Goddess Pact. Nikolas shattered the werewolves' faith and the freedom of their souls, plunging them into an era of absolute darkness. Eventually, the Moon Goddess chose a valiant fighter who killed Nikolas while he was gravely injured, liberating the werewolves from his tyrannical reign which had lasted for years. Before his death, however, Nikolas cursed all future white wolves born in the Delsphere. Every white wolf who was born by stealing his power would flawed beings, and their bloodlines would bring endless disaster to their packs. No one knew why Nikolas' curse targeted future generations instead of the warrior who defeated him, but over the next millennium, every white wolf born into the werewolf packs indeed brought disaster, and each one proved to be a defective being with incomplete wolf traits. As a result, any newborn showing signs of the white wolf's bloodline was mercilessly killed by their pack. Recalling the legends of the white wolf, Lysandra shivered uncontrollably. Yet as she sniffed the healthy scent of her newborn, a peculiar thought struck her. My daughter is healthy. She is not a flawed white wolf, nor a being born of stolen power. She is born naturally and is perfectly healthy. Looking down at her pale-skinned, black-haired daughter, Lysandra made a bold and courageous decision. She would save her daughter even though her daughter was a white wolf. She would not let anyone know she had given birth to a white wolf. If anyone were to find out, her daughter would undoubtedly be killed. The infant in her arms wailed, and the newfound sense of motherhood filled Lysandra with determination. She snapped back to reality and hugged her baby tightly. “Don't be afraid, baby. I will protect you!” She secretly entrusted her loyal subordinate with the task of delivering her daughter to a rogue couple who owed her a favor. In exchange, the couple gave Lysandra their own newborn daughter to raise in Hadley's place. The couple left the Brimstone Pack with Hadley, and for seventeen years, no one—except Lysandra and her loyal subordinate who helped her with the delivery—knew the truth. That was until a week ago when the Brimstone Pack's Alpha, Jasper Yardley, uncovered the secret Lysandra had hidden. “How dare you hide something this significant from me?” He discovered that the daughter he had raised for seventeen years was not his biological child. Instead, his biological daughter was a white wolf. Jasper felt as if he had missed out on something huge. That was because every Alpha of the Delsphere, regardless of their pack size, knew one shared secret: the white wolf was never truly a cursed wolf. In reality, white wolves possessed the potential to become the next Alpha King, capable of uniting all the packs of the werewolf Delsphere. The reason every white wolf born after Nikolas' death had been defective was because Alphas had secretly harvested Nikolas' blood, attempting to artificially create a new Alpha King. That way, they could control these flawed creatures behind the scenes in order to attain power. “What have you done?” Jasper roared, his eyes bloodshot as he grabbed Lysandra by the throat. “Who allowed you to give birth to a flawed pup?” When he was younger, Jasper had genuinely cared for Lysandra, the mate he had chosen. Unlike other Alphas, he had no intention of using her to birth white wolves, as such experiments often resulted in the deaths of both mother and child. Moreover, he had never entirely believed the ancient legends. To his shock, Lysandra had given birth to a white wolf. Lysandra had never betrayed her mate and had given birth to her pups naturally. “I didn't... I didn't know...” Lysandra weakly defended herself. Just as she was on the brink of suffocation, Jasper released her. He knew Lysandra would never betray him, but he refused to believe the white wolf had been naturally conceived. He resolved to investigate the events of that year and, above all, to retrieve his lost daughter. After all, she was a white wolf. With her, his small pack could rise to greatness. Hiding his brutal side, Jasper smiled at Lysandra. “She's our daughter. We can't abandon her just because she's flawed. Let's bring her home.” Really? Could the Alpha of a pack truly be willing to accept a cursed werewolf? Lysandra couldn't believe her mate's deceitful words. No matter what she thought, she had no choice but to obey the Alpha's decision. Meanwhile, Hadley, now a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl, received shocking news of her own. Her biological parents were coming to take her home.