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***