Chapter 8
585words
"You look half-starved," he said bluntly.
Before she could react, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her through the stunned crowd, escaping the suffocating ballroom.
They ran into the forest behind the manor. Under bright moonlight, Damian led her on a mock hunt. He didn't treat her like a fragile Omega needing protection, but as an equal running at his side.
That night, the wildness she'd suppressed for five years finally found release in a safe place. For the first time since returning to the Dracotts, she could breathe freely.
She thought this golden-haired Alpha might be different.
She soon learned otherwise.
Two weeks later, she passed Seraphina's music room and saw Damian sitting there, entranced. This was the same boy who'd told her to her face that Seraphina's harp playing was "as boring as a lullaby."
Now he listened with rapt attention, his gaze never leaving the perfect Omega bathed in moonlight. Seraphina's premium pheromones—irresistible to any Alpha—had him completely under their spell.
In that moment, Genevieve saw the truth with perfect clarity.
Her brief taste of freedom in the forest had been nothing but a passing whim. She was just another toy to amuse him—one that would soon be discarded.
That brief moment of clarity was soon crushed beneath an even harsher reality.
Seraphina resented her return. After all, being a baron's only daughter was quite different from being one of two. At the werewolf nobility academy, Seraphina declared Genevieve a "bastard" with tainted blood, while positioning herself as the Lunar Goddess pursued by every Alpha. This contrast became Genevieve's daily torment.
On the eve of the academy's "Moonlight Dance," Seraphina's magnificent moonlight silkworm dress was ruined with foul-smelling "putrid herb" juice. All evidence pointed to Genevieve—the last person seen near the dress.
She had no defense.
Her parents allowed no explanation. Against Seraphina's tearful accusations, any defense was useless. On the full moon night—when werewolves felt their power and desires most keenly—she was locked in the Dracott family's cold, damp detention cell.
The true nightmare began when she returned to the academy the following day.
A group of elite Alphas, led by Damian Blackwood, cornered her in an empty corridor. Without a word, they simultaneously released their aggressive, exclusionary pheromones.
Dozens of powerful Alpha pheromones engulfed her like an impenetrable net. The hellish assault threatened to crush her very soul. The air turned scorching and thick; she couldn't breathe, grew dizzy, felt her organs being crushed by invisible weight.
In that terrifying onslaught, she was a capsizing boat desperately seeking anchor. Her eyes instinctively sought the golden-haired youth who'd once helped her escape, who'd run with her through moonlit trees.
Did she see reluctance in his eyes? A hint of compassion?
No.
Nothing. Only cold, lofty indifference. And when their eyes met, a contemptuous laugh.
"A bastard from the Forsaken Lands," he announced clearly for all to hear. "Her stench would only pollute the pure air of the Blackwood Wolf Pack."
Those words broke something inside her that would never heal.
Her world collapsed.
From that day on, Genevieve's heart turned to stone.
She no longer yearned for family, friendship, or that myth called love. She buried her softness and dreams, living only for herself. She would become stronger, gather wealth and power enough to protect herself, and one day crush those who had crushed her.
