Chapter 1: I Hate Werewolves (But I Love Money)

INDY  

“Everly Rain, I hope your teeth rot for what you did to Clara,” I muttered, reading as a new comment popped up on the latest chapter of my story.  

“That’s a new one,” I chuckled. “They haven’t come for my teeth before.”  

“Oh, here’s another one.”  

“Are you seriously trying to make us feel bad for Lucinda? Girl, be for real. I’ll find where you fucking live and make sure you—”  

“Okay, that’s enough,” I said, shutting my laptop and closing my eyes. My temples were hurting from writing the entire day. Scratch that. I wrote some, deleted some, then wrote some, and deleted some more. It took me a groveling five hours to put out a single chapter, but the moment I uploaded it, the comments told me it was shit.  

Let me explain something first.  

I write werewolf books.  

However, there’s one teenie-weenie, minuscule, microscopic, not even slightly visible problem—I hate werewolf books.  

I hate their rules and their pack dynamics. I also hate how some of the men can act like utter dogshit (pun intended) and still be forgiven in Chapter 36 because they suddenly “soften their voice” and “kiss her temple gently.”  

Yet, here I am. Six books in. Two under a pseudonym—Everly Rain. I wanted it to be entirely different from my real name—Indiana Sage, a name my mom gave me because I was born in Indiana. Creative, right?  

The other four were under a ghost contract with some publishing house that treats me like a printer that occasionally bleeds. The current one I was writing had become my most successful one, ‘The Wolf Prince and the White Rose.’  

My latest crime was making Lucinda, the Wolf Prince’s original mate, attack Clara, the ever-innocent protagonist. That attack was supposed to be the final blow before Lucinda’s death. She had already been captured, detained, and tortured by the Alpha for all the atrocious things she had done.  

However, just to keep readers on their toes, I decided to let Lucinda escape one more time before she was finally killed in the hands of the Wolf Prince himself.  

The readers didn’t like that, though.

I sighed once more, slumping on my worn-out seat as I removed the egg carton underneath my laptop. It was the only thing saving it from overheating. It was already late into the night, and the moon was high in the sky.  

I glanced at the worn-out wall clock and saw that it was already 3 AM. I had to get up at 8 AM to go to my shift at the convenience store.  

“Are you not going to sleep?”  

I jolted in shock when Larissa, my roommate and best friend of seventeen years, spoke in a groggy voice.  

I shook my head and smiled. “In a bit,” I answered. “I’m thinking about how to appease my readers.”  

“Don’t,” she deadpanned. “All of the gods on this land know how hard you work for each chapter. Heck, you work hard in every aspect of your life, but you’re never recognized for it. It’s your story. As long as it isn’t grammatically atrocious or absolutely unethical, I say that you should write what you want.”  

Running my fingers through my hair, I leaned back against the chair. “What I like to write doesn’t sell at all, though. I need to write the way they want if I want to pay my bills on time.”  

“You can rely on me,” she presented.  

“I absolutely cannot.”  

She groaned in frustration. In truth, we have had this conversation plenty of times before. Although Larissa wasn’t exactly well-off, she had a better job than mine. She worked as a receptionist at a hotel nearby, and her parents sometimes sent her an allowance when her funds were short.  

Meanwhile, I had to drop out of college during my first year due to financial constraints. I worked a day shift in a convenience store, took up some photography gigs on the sidelines, and wrote my chapters in the evening.  

“You have enough money, though,” Larissa suddenly said, snapping me out of my thoughts.  

I turned to her, and she was already staring at me with a knowing look in her eyes.  

I pursed my lips before sighing.  

“It’s because your mother always asks for your money,” she deadpanned.  

“You know how it is,” I muttered. “It’ll be a pain in the ass if I refuse her requests. At least, she still calls me twice a month to see how I’m doing.”  

“Yeah—to ask for money.”  

The silence that followed right after wasn’t suffocating. It was just the plain truth.  

“You’ve always placed others first. You give your mom money even if you don’t have anything to eat. You let your first crush go because our other friend liked her. He clearly liked you at that time!”  

“Larissa,” I smiled. “That was back in first grade.”  

“Still,” she sighed. “Point proven. You’re the type of person who lights up the entire room, but your world itself is dim. I hope you can start living for yourself. At this point, you’re going to die without getting to experience the world in liberation.”  

I couldn’t speak after she said all of those words.  

I knew that her words held some truth. However, it was easier said than done. My life wasn’t meant to be simple the moment I was born.  

My dad was an alcoholic and died of liver cirrhosis when I was 19. Suddenly, the role of the breadwinner was thrust into my hands, so I had to give up everything and work my ass off to pay the debts that my father left behind. I managed to pay it all off when I turned 23, but it seemed the world was unsatisfied because my mother incurred another debt.  

The sound of my ringtone snapped me out of my thoughts, also breaking the suffocating silence that Larissa’s statement left.  

I looked at the caller ID and sighed right away.  

“It’s your mom again, right?” Larissa muttered. Then she shook her head. “Don’t answer it. You’ve already downed way too many cups of coffee and energy drinks for her to ask for more money at this time of the month.”  

“Hey, Mom,” I said, answering the phone, making Larissa sigh in disappointment.  

She usually only called me twice a month, and she had already done so. Somehow, there was a small hope inside my chest that she would be calling to actually check up on me.  

“Send me more money.”  

That hope was instantly shattered.  

I pursed my lips and heard Larissa sigh from her side of the room.  

“Mom, I already sent you some. I even sent you some extra because you said you got into an accident.”  

“Well, it’s not nearly enough,” she scoffed. Her background was a familiar pop song paired with numerous voices shouting in excitement, so I reckoned she was out in a club.  

“You have that writing shit, right? You’ve always been good at that, so send me some money. I know you’re not broke because you have three jobs.”  

I heard someone calling her over, and her voice changed into a sweet one—a tone she never used for me. Massaging the bridge of my nose, I grabbed my sixth bottle of coffee for the day and downed it in one go.  

Then…  

“No.”  

There was a slight pause on her end. It felt like even Larissa had stopped breathing for a moment.  

“No?” she repeated.

“I don’t have any money left to give you,” I said, my hands trembling—whether from anxiety or the coffee, I didn’t know. I felt lightheaded yet liberated at the same time. It was my first time saying no to her after all these years.

Again, my mom didn’t respond for a couple of seconds before her laughter filled the small room.

“So, this is what I get for raising you my entire life. You know what? My future would have been bright if I hadn’t gotten pregnant by your deadbeat father! You’re my biggest mistake and yet you couldn’t even spare some money for your mother.”

“What a selfish daughter you are.”

“You should have never existed.”

At that moment, my vision became dotted with black circles, and I found my heart beating erratically inside my chest. I had been feeling like this for the last couple of days, but I hadn’t gotten around to visiting the hospital.

Usually, it would halt when I didn’t drink coffee, but recently, it attacked me at the most random parts of my day.

“Indy?” Larissa’s voice broke through the haze; however, even then, I found myself slowly losing grip on the world as I knew it.

“Indy! What’s happening?”

Her voice grew more frantic, but on my end, it felt like everything was turning more serene. The beating of my heart continued in short, rapid bursts, but I didn’t find myself gasping for air anymore.

The black dots turned to white, and the ringing in my ears changed to the sound of nothingness.

With everything becoming more detached by the second, there was only one thought running through my mind.

Maybe I did drink too many cups of coffee.