Chapter 1

Accused of stealing recipes from my own sister, Cora, I was ruthlessly cast out from the healing center—by my own fated mate, the Alpha Kellan.

So I came home to my grandma's herb farm. Riding my wild horse, Shadow, wherever the hell we want to go.

But now the whole pack is scrambling to find me.

In my past life, at the Alliance's Grand Potion Competition, my sister always managed to submit the exact same rare potion recipes as me, just a little bit earlier.

They all called me a shameless thief, a plagiarist who stole my own sister's work. Even my own parents got on stage to vouch for her.

And Kellan... he threw the exile order in my face. His eyes were ice. He stripped me of my title for "dishonoring the pack" and shattered our mate bond right in front of everyone.

The agony tore my soul apart. I wanted to die.

My family called me a disgrace and cast me out.

The betrayal shattered my wolf. I lost my mind. In the end, one of her fanatics shot me dead in the street. A silver bullet laced with wolfsbane.

As I died, I still couldn't understand how she could get inside my head and steal my recipes.

Then I opened my eyes.

I was back. The day before the competition.

This time, my mind is filled with nothing but the wild. Let's see what kind of potion my 'genius' sister can come up with now.

...

“Careful, Freya. You’re going to break that vial. Are you ready for the Alliance competition tomorrow, or not?”

A familiar voice from the healing center.

I snapped my head around, stunned.

This was... the healing center.

There was no acrid smell of wolfsbane. Only the familiar scent of high-grade herbs.

I was reborn. It was the day before the competition.

"Freya's won the pack's top healer award so many times, she doesn't need to prepare, right?" Emma said, grabbing a potion from the rack beside me with a grin.

I froze. Her words sent a chill down my spine.

Only I knew the hell that was about to break loose.

In my last life, it was the highest-level healer competition in the Alliance.

The new healing potion I’d spent three months brewing... the moment they announced it, it became proof that I was a thief.

Two parchments flashed on the big screen.

Every detail was the same. The amount of Silverleaf. The brewing temperature. Even a typo from my private notes.

But the special purification method I developed to balance the potion’s properties?

Cora had no idea how dangerous it was.

She just copied it blindly.

The joke was, my whole life's work was stolen, just because she submitted it two hours before me.

The sleepless nights I’d spent in front of the cauldron, my eyes raw from the fumes. The burns that littered my hands. It was all a joke.

My own sister, Cora.

She stood in the crowd below the stage, her eyes red, staring at me in disbelief.

"Sister, why did you steal my recipe?" Cora sobbed, her body trembling in front of the entire pack and the Alliance leaders. "I trusted you so much, I even showed you my first draft..."

I tried to explain.

I wanted to scream that it was in a private, encrypted file on my phone. That I had never shown it to anyone!

But before I could speak, the crowd erupted.

The pack’s roars of anger nearly blew the roof off.

"Get the plagiarist out of the pack!"

"She has no shame, using a stolen recipe to compete!"

"A disgrace like her has no right to be a healer!"

I tried desperately to defend myself, but almost no one believed me.

My own parents, Rowan and Sylvia, took the stage. Their faces were stone. Sylvia held up fake photos—staged pictures of Cora supposedly "working" late into the night.

"We have no daughter as shameless as you," Rowan declared, his voice devoid of mercy. "From this day on, you are no longer a part of this family! You are not our daughter!"

But the final blow, the one that truly killed me, came from Kellan. Our Alpha. My fated mate.

In that moment, I looked at him, my heart full of hope, praying my Mate would show me a shred of trust.

But he just looked down on me. His eyes were cold, like he was looking at a pile of rotting garbage.

His crushing Alpha aura slammed down on me, forcing me to my knees.

"Freya," his voice boomed through the hall, a final, cold judgment. "You are not worthy of being a healer. And you are not worthy of being my Mate."

He severed our mate bond. Just like that.

The pain of my soul being ripped in two made me cough up a mouthful of blood. My wolf howled in despair.

He didn't even give me a second glance. He turned and pulled a teary-eyed Cora into his arms, shielding her.

No one believed me.

The Alliance guards threw me out. My phone blew up with death threats. They said they'd turn me into the lowest rogue, that they'd exile me to the wastelands...

No matter how many times I checked my phone, how I searched for any possible leak, I found nothing.

But how was Cora’s recipe exactly like mine?

All my potion ideas were mine alone.

I couldn't figure it out, even as I died.

Cora was a fool. She couldn't tell the difference between a healing herb and a common weed. How did she keep stealing my work?

Emma’s voice snapped me back to the present.

"Freya, I heard your sister is competing this year too. Who do you think will win...?"

Not long after I joined the healing center, Cora had somehow managed to get a position here too.

Panic seized me. My fists were clenched so tight my nails were drawing blood.