Bad Love of Evil รักร้ายของนายสารเลว

My name is Aveline Storm, and I am supposed to be dead.

The Sable Coven burned my mother when I was seven years old. I didn't cry. Storm witches don't cry we thunder.

I watched from inside a hollow oak tree in the Forbidden Forest while the Sinclair wolves held the torches. Their Alpha at that time, Kade's father, stood there in his human form, his eyes glowing yellow.

"Storm witches bring death! Their lightning killed our Luna!" the Pack's old priestess screamed. My mother was tied to the stake. Her white hair, the same white hair I have, was blowing in the wind. She didn't beg. She just looked straight at my oak tree as if she knew I was there and whispered, "Run, my little storm. Run and never stop."

Then they lit the fire.

I ran. For eleven years, I ran.

Now I am eighteen. Or I will be, tomorrow at midnight. And I am tired of running.

I live in the human city of Blackthorn. It's the only city that exists between two nightmares. To the east is the Sable Coven territory where the witches who cast me out live. To the west is the Sinclair territory where the wolves who killed my mother live. Blackthorn is neutral ground. Humans own it. Or they think they do.

Humans don't know that the CEO of the biggest company in their city turns into a giant black wolf with ice blue eyes on full moons.

By day, I am Aveline, the barista with dyed black hair. I wear cheap brown contact lenses to hide my natural ice-blue eyes, and big round glasses that Mrs. Lina, my boss, says make me look like a librarian. I work at Midnight Brew, a small coffee shop directly across from Sinclair Corporation Tower.

Every morning at 6 AM, I mop the floor, make 200 cups of coffee, and watch humans in suits run to that tower. Sometimes, I see them the wolves. They walk like humans, but they smell different. Like wet earth, like forest after rain, like blood. Their eyes linger on me a second too long, as if they smell something they shouldn't.

I have to put a concealment spell on myself every morning. It takes half my power. If I don't, any wolf within fifty meters will know what I am.

"That storm scent... is that a witch?" I once heard one of Sinclair's guards mutter as he bought a latte. I almost dropped the cup. Lightning sparked in my palm under the counter.

By night, I am not Aveline the barista. I am the last storm witch.

I live in a one-room attic above Midnight Brew. No heating. The roof leaks. The walls are covered in salt circles my mother taught me to draw to hide from tracking spells. In the middle of the room sits her grimoire.

The Sable Coven Council told me to burn it when they exiled me. They said, "Aveline, you are a defective witch. You cannot even control your own storm. You will bring shame to our bloodline."

They exiled me because I refused to marry the Elder's son, Warlock Joren. He was forty, had three wives already, and wanted my storm blood for his children. I said no. So they stripped my coven mark off my wrist with a hot iron. The scar is still there a burned-out moon.

The grimoire is the only thing my mother left me. It is bound in black wolf skin the skin of the first Sinclair Alpha her ancestor killed. Its pages are alive. When I am scared, it rains inside my room. Literally. Water drips from my ceiling even if it's sunny outside.

Tonight, it is raining hard inside my attic.

Tomorrow is my eighteenth birthday. For a normal girl, it's a party. For a storm witch, it's Judgement Day.

When a storm witch turns eighteen, her power fully awakens. Either she learns to control it and becomes a full witch... or the storm inside her heart eats her alive. My mother told me her own sister died on her eighteenth birthday. Her chest exploded with lightning from the inside.

I am scared. My powers have been getting worse.

Last week, a customer yelled at me because his coffee was cold. I got angry, and all the lightbulbs in the cafe exploded. Mrs. Lina thought it was faulty wiring. Yesterday, I sneezed and the espresso machine short-circuited.

I am a walking thunderstorm. And I have no one to teach me how to stop.

I sit on the cold floor, opening the grimoire to a page about "Concealing a Storm Witch's Scent." It says I need three ingredients: moonwater, ash from a burned coven mark, and a fang from a black wolf a Lycan.

I have the first two. The fang is the problem.

To get a Lycan fang, I have to go to the Forbidden Forest. The same forest where my mother was burned. The forest that belongs to the Sinclair Pack. If they catch me there, they will kill me on sight. No trial. Wolves don't do trials for witches.

But the old seer in the human market, Old Mara, told me, "If you drink tea with powdered Lycan fang on the Blue Blood Moon, no wolf or witch will ever smell you again. You will be invisible. You can finally live."

Blue Blood Moon. I have heard that phrase before. My mother used to whisper about it. A moon that turns blue and red at the same time, that only appears once every hundred years. It's a moon of fate. Of mates. Of curses breaking.

I look out my small, cracked window. Across the street, Sinclair Corp Tower is still lit. Forty floors. On the very top floor, one office light is still on at 11 PM.

Everyone in Blackthorn knows whose office that is. Kade Sinclair. The Alpha Lycan. The billionaire who never sleeps. The cursed one.

They say he is cursed to be allergic to every woman. That if any woman touches his skin, he breaks out in burns. That he has never had a girlfriend. That his wolf rejected an arranged mate when he was fifteen by almost ripping her throat out.

They say he hates witches more than anyone in this world, because a Sable witch maybe even my own aunt killed his mother with lightning when he was ten.

I shiver. I have white hair under this black dye. Ice blue eyes under these brown contacts. The exact eyes that killed his mother.

My phone buzzes. It's a message from Mrs. Lina

Aveline, don't be late tomorrow. Sinclair Corp has an international meeting. Many customers. Also, happy early birthday. I left cake in the fridge for you.

Cake. No one has given me a birthday cake since my mother died.

I close the grimoire. The rain inside my room gets heavier. Thunder cracks outside real thunder, not mine. The sky is restless.

I make a decision. Tomorrow night, after my shift, I will go to the Forbidden Forest. I will find a fallen Lycan fang I don't need to kill a wolf, just find one. I will come back before midnight, make the tea, and hide myself forever.

A simple plan.

I pull my thin blanket over me and try to sleep on the floor. I dream again. I always dream of the same thing before my birthday. Rain. Cedar smoke. And a pair of glowing ice-blue eyes watching me from between the trees, calling me in a voice that is not human.

"Mate."

I wake up gasping, my hands sparking with lightning, burning my blanket.

Tomorrow, my life as a hiding rat will end. I just don't know yet if it will end with freedom... or with a forbidden bite on my neck that will ruin me forever.