Chapter 5: A Blood Full Deal

Ophilia's POV

Light hit me like a blade the moment my eyes opened, white and searing, and I slammed them shut again with a gasp.

I tried once more, slower this time, blinking through the sting as I dragged myself upright on a bed I didn't recognize.

"What happened?" My own voice sounded foreign, cracked, as I pressed a hand to my throbbing skull.

Before the thought could settle, a figure materialized at the edge of the bed — a woman with long white hair and a black cloak that seemed to drink in what little light the room had. I hadn't heard a door. I hadn't heard footsteps. She was simply there, as though she'd stepped out of the shadows themselves.

In her hands sat a small wooden bowl, herbs crushed to a fine paste inside it. She tipped in a pink liquid, and the mixture bled from green to a deep, glimmering blue, flecks of something like stardust swirling across the surface.

"Who... who are you?" I stammered, scrambling backward until my spine hit the headboard. Her face was a map of wrinkles, deeper and more numerous than the silver strands falling around it, and something about her stillness made my skin crawl.

"Relax, Ophilia. I won't harm you."

She knew my name.

Ice shot down my spine. I hadn't told her anything — I hadn't told her who I was.

"Don't look so shocked. I know your name. I mean you no harm." Her voice was calm, almost amused, like she could hear the panic scraping against the inside of my skull. "Now come here. Let me tend to that scar."

I didn't know this woman. I had never laid eyes on her in my life, and everything about her — the wrinkles, the cloak, the way she seemed to answer questions I hadn't asked yet — told me to run. And yet something deeper than fear, something quieter, refused to flinch. My spirit, if that's what it was, wanted to trust her.

"Why should I trust you?" My voice came out barely above a whisper.

"You've been asleep for three days. I've been the one keeping you alive." A pause, heavy and deliberate. "If I wanted you dead, Ophilia, you already would be."

Three days.

The words hit harder than they should have. Three days, gone, swallowed whole. And then the memories crashed back all at once — the gathering, the howling, the chase through the trees, Chase's black fur and that white streak, the branch, the pain, the black.

My hand flew to my head, searching for the wound. There was nothing there. No blood, no swelling. Nothing at all.

"I healed you," she said simply. "Now come. One last dose."

I hesitated — every instinct screaming at me to stay where I was — but I moved toward her anyway. The blue potion touched my skin where the scar should have been, and it vanished, like it had never existed at all.

Who was this woman?

"There's something you need to know, Ophilia." Her tone shifted, dropping into something graver, something that made the room feel colder. "You are the last living Crimson wolf."

Crimson.

The word slammed into me again, the same word Sydney had spat at me like an insult I wasn't meant to understand.

"What is a Crimson wolf?" The question tore out of me, desperate, hungry for an answer I'd been denied my entire life.

"Crimson wolves are omegas — easy to underestimate, easy to overlook at a glance. But their minds move faster and sharper than any other bloodline that's ever existed. That gift made them hunted." Her eyes didn't leave mine. "They were the rarest bloodline the Makasi Moon Pack ever produced."

So I wasn't sick. I wasn't cursed. I was the last surviving thread of something ancient and rare.

"They dominated wherever they lived — which made them a threat. But they couldn't shift. No claws, no fangs, no defense against wolves who could. So they were hunted down, one by one, until almost nothing remained."

Relief and grief tangled together in my chest, so tightly I couldn't separate them.

"How do you know I'm the last one?" My voice shook now, curiosity overtaking caution.

"Because I have watched this bloodline die for four hundred years, Ophilia. Slaughtered, one family at a time — until a single couple went into hiding. Eighteen years ago, even they were found."

"Wait — does that mean—"

"Yes," she cut in, quiet and certain. "Those were your parents."

The truth landed like a detonation in my chest. I wasn't only an Omega, unwanted and disposable — I was an orphan, and had been from the very beginning.

Grief threatened to pull me under — until the rest of what she'd said finally registered.

Four hundred years.

"You've been alive for four hundred years?" I breathed.

A slow, knowing smile spread across her face. "Isn't it obvious? I'm a witch."

Terror ripped straight up my spine. Witches were forbidden — hunted, banned, spoken of only in warnings meant to frighten children. I was standing in the home of exactly the kind of creature the pack had taught me to fear my whole life. Suddenly the potions, the strange smell clinging to the air, the unsettling paintings on the walls — all of it made a horrible kind of sense.

She caught the fear crossing my face and sighed. "Relax. We aren't the monsters you've been told we are. Though — never mind. It doesn't matter right now."

Shame twisted in my stomach. I shouldn't have reacted that way. Not to the person who'd kept me alive.

"Where is your necklace, Ophilia?"

My stomach dropped. *Sydney still has it.*

"Why does that matter?" I asked, though dread was already crawling up my throat before she answered.

"The blood of a Crimson wolf burns through energy faster than your body can replace it. Without that necklace, you'll waste away and die within two years."

Death. The word detonated in my skull, and panic clawed up from somewhere deep. I couldn't go back there — not after the humiliation, not after I'd struck the Luna Mother across the face in front of an entire room.

"Please." My voice cracked. "I need your help."

"It's Laura. And don't worry — I already know exactly what happened at the pack house that night." Her eyes glittered, sharp and knowing. "I'll help you. On one condition."

*Of course there's a condition.* My stomach turned to stone, but I nodded anyway, desperation drowning out every warning bell in my head.

She drew a syringe from beneath her cloak and pressed it into my palm, the glass cold against my skin.

"You'll return in two weeks with this filled with royal blood."

I didn't ask why. I didn't dare. I only nodded, my hands trembling around the syringe.

She crossed to a shelf and returned with a small vial. "Two drops of this, and you'll wear whatever face you imagine. Go back. Take what's yours."

I didn't hesitate. I swallowed it whole.

Pain tore through me instantly — bone grinding and reshaping, skin splitting and knitting itself back together in the same breath. I bit down against the scream building in my throat.

When it finally released me, I staggered to the mirror. My black hair had turned a deep, unfamiliar brown, framing a face I'd never seen before in my life.

Somehow, the new face made me look better in this size

"What should I call you?" Laura asked, delight blooming across her ancient face.

The name left my mouth before I'd even decided to speak it, louder and steadier than I intended.

"Call me Brenda."