Chapter 2

Dad looked very pleased with my "compliance". After all, openly challenging the Council's decision was a major taboo among werewolves, even for a pure-blood like me.

Linda also smiled with satisfaction.

After they left, Ella stayed behind.

"Ivy, let me help you pack your things," she said.

She stood meekly before me, releasing an artificial, overly sweet scent. But as her gaze swept around the room, they held an unconcealable greed—the kind a lesser wolf had for resources above their reach.

"I also didn't expect the Council to make us swap rooms."

Ella looked up with a challenging glint flashing in her eyes. "Ivy, doesn't your wolf really feel like tearing me apart now? After all, I just stole your fated mate, and now I'm taking the room you've lived in for ten years."

I suppressed the urge inside me to teach her a lesson and turned to get my suitcase.

Suddenly, Ella let out an exaggerated scream and fell hard onto the floor. "Ivy…"

When she fell, her arm happened to hit the corner of the desk inlaid with silver wire. Silver had a strong burning effect on werewolves, so her skin instantly turned a burned purplish hue.

"Ivy, what are you doing?" someone yelled.

Ethan, relying on his keen hearing as an Alpha, instantly burst through the door. His expression was dark—a sign of his rising anger—as he carefully picked Ella up.

"Ethan, I'm fine. Ivy didn't mean to do it," Ella cried while forcing a pained, light laugh. "It doesn't hurt at all."

"You're burned, and you say it doesn't hurt?" Ethan looked at the wound on her arm, his eyes filled with pain.

When he turned to look at me, his golden pupils abruptly contracted, and a cold chill emanated from him.

"Ivy, if you have any grievances, take them out on me. Don't hurt Ella. She's a fragile she-wolf who just shifted—unlike you, who was born a noble pure-blood werewolf and lacks nothing."

I thought my emotions would no longer be swayed by the mate bond. I also thought I would never shed another tear over Ethan.

But in the end, I was still just a she-wolf whose bond wasn't fully broken. I didn't have a body made of steel, nor a heart that was unbreakable.

Ethan was an ally who grew up with me. He was also my fated mate, an arrangement blessed by the Moon Goddess herself, for three years.

However, in just a few short days, he fell in love with a young she-wolf who just completed her first shift, all because it was "a novel feeling".

Now, he saw me as a vicious and heartless werewolf.

I didn't want to cry. If anything, I wanted to laugh. Yet my tear ducts ached, swollen and ready to burst.

"Ethan, has your nose stopped working? Can't you smell what kind of person I am, or the stench of lies coming off her?" I sneered.

Ethan's brow furrowed slightly. He looked at me with the scrutinizing eyes of an Alpha, though his expression seemed to soften slightly.