Chapter 4

Audrey

"So that's the truth of Klein's death!"

"Did Audrey ever find that damned mole? Who was she?!"

"Have we been wronging Audrey this whole time?"

"But if she really was undercover, who was she passing her intelligence to?"

Right then, my whole body began to shake, and I couldn't stop the words spilling from my lips. "Medicine... Give me the medicine... the blue medicine..."

Eugene looked at me. The hand he had almost reached out went still, and the shock in his eyes curdled into disgust, the same look he gave every Blue Ghost addict.

In his eyes, such people were the very definition of weakness and self-ruin. Rats in the gutter. Maggots that never see daylight.

The crowd below stopped talking too, watching me with complicated eyes.

Pity. Sympathy. Revulsion.

Edna sighed. "Audrey lived in the Dark Moon Pack for so long. Picking up some of their vices was bound to happen. But everyone knows that once the Blue Ghost has you, it never lets go, not in this lifetime.

"Such a pity. In the end, she couldn't resist it after all."

In a few short sentences, she twisted fifteen years of living undercover into the story of a dragon-slayer who became the dragon.

But I only looked at the disgust in Eugene's eyes and asked myself one question.

Becoming this, for him. Was it worth it?

He may never know what you endured for his sake. Was it worth it?

Before I found the answer, the Memory Crystal began pulling at my memories again. It hurt less than the first two times, yet somehow it was even harder to bear.

I felt suddenly, terribly empty. My wolf had died.

With my wolf's last dying whimper, the third memory appeared before the crowd.

The scene was a battlefield in chaos.

It was the first open clash between the Dark Moon Pack and the Flame Pack. Everyone knew the story: in that battle, Eugene's friend Hilary died at my hands, protecting him.

Eugene had witnessed it with his own eyes.

After that, Eugene went to the priest and unilaterally severed our mate bond.

Whispers rippled through the crowd.

"We all saw it happen back then. Even if Audrey was undercover, she still killed Hilary. That's a fact."

"Right. Hilary only fought her to protect Eugene. Audrey could have just gone through the motions. Why did she have to kill her?"

"And have you forgotten? She stabbed Hilary eighteen times... Who does that, except a lunatic?"

"Maybe she was already lost in a Blue Ghost hallucination by then."

Eugene's fists slowly clenched. He stared at the images pouring from the Memory Crystal, refusing to miss a single detail.

He wanted to see exactly why I had used such brutal means to kill Hilary.

Then the vision closed in on my thin, pale face. One hand was locked around Hilary's throat, and I looked like a vengeful ghost that had crawled up from hell to claim a life.

"So you're the mole. I've finally found you."

"You got my brother killed. Now I'm going to kill you and avenge him!"

Hilary's face was turning purple from lack of air, and still she managed a taunting smile. "Go ahead. Kill me. Then the whole Dark Moon Pack will know you did it. Think they'll still trust you after that?"

I gave her one cold look and said nothing. Then I abruptly released her, drew my bow, nocked an arrow, and fired at Orson Reed, the Alpha of the Dark Moon Pack.

It was a silver arrow of my own making, coated in lethal poison.

Hilary saw Orson in danger and shouted, "Look out!"

She shifted into her wolf form and lunged, meaning to knock the arrow off course.

But the arrow, already loosed, suddenly swerved in midair and shot straight at Eugene.

Hilary couldn't dodge in time. It took her through the heart.

To everyone watching, Hilary had taken my arrow to protect Eugene.

The Dark Moon Pack saw it too. They glared at her in fury. Unless Hilary had already betrayed the Dark Moon Pack, they couldn't think of a single reason she would give her life to save Eugene.

I drew my dagger and, in front of everyone, stabbed Hilary eighteen times like a madwoman, leaving her unable to utter a final word.

Her warm, bright-red blood sprayed across my face, yet I remained unnaturally calm for someone committing murder.

At the end, I bent close to her ear and whispered, "Go to hell. Spend every moment there repenting what you've done."

The scene overturned everything the crowd had believed. Voices surged like a wave, and Eugene shot to his feet in disbelief.

It had never crossed his mind that Hilary, who had lived and fought at his side day after day, was the mole buried in the Flame Pack all along!

That in the end, Hilary hadn't even died protecting him.

Nothing was what he had seen with his own eyes.

But the vision didn't stop there. It followed me through the drifting fog, deep into the Phantom Forest, to a small wooden cabin.

Covered in mud and blood, I knocked on the door.

"Mrs. Hayes, I have new intelligence."

Only then did the crowd understand. All those years, I had never stopped sending intelligence back to the Flame Pack; I had simply passed it through Vera Hayes.

They stared at the Memory Crystal's vision, desperate to learn who Vera Hayes was.

The next moment, the cabin door opened, and a middle-aged woman stepped out.

The moment Edna saw Mrs. Hayes's face, she went white as paper. Every trace of her composure vanished.