นางร้ายอย่างข้าขอเป็นภรรยาท่านแม่ทัพ

The Moon Goddess continued. “Your mother carried the white wolf bloodline. After she died, her soul returned to me. It breaks her heart to watch you suffer. If you want to go to her, you can leave this body behind, and I'll bring your soul home too.”

I froze for a couple of seconds. My mother wasn't gone?

My legs shook when I stood, but it wasn't fear. It was joy.

Finally.

I could finally leave this hellhole.

The walls of the silver prison were built from stone, and there was a jagged outcrop on the wall across from me.

I took a deep breath, backed up two steps, and threw myself at that sharp edge with everything I had.

Someone slammed into me from the side and caught my whole body, hard enough that we both crashed into the rack beside us. I heard a voice I knew too well.

“Are you trying to fucking die?”

I looked up.

It was Daddy Darius, head of the Dragon clan, King of the entire shifter world.

I never thought he'd come down to a filthy place like this himself.

The arm pinning me pressed against my shoulder and never let up. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and there was a thin line of blood at his right temple.

I opened my mouth, dazed. “Daddy Darius…”

“Shut up.” He shoved me off and rubbed the shoulder he'd hurt catching me. “I stopped having a daughter four years ago.”

Right. Four years ago.

I laughed, a bitter, broken sound.

I thought about the time I was kidnapped as a kid by an enemy clan. They threatened Darius, demanding a fortune in dragon's blood as ransom.

Darius, who never bent to anyone, the Dragon King who made the whole world tremble, was terrified they'd hurt me.

He gave them everything they asked for. He nearly drained himself dry.

By the time they sent me back, he was slumped in a chair, his face white as paper, his lips tinged bluish-purple, too weak to even lift his hand.

I threw myself at him and cried, and he patted my back, his voice faint but steady. “Don't cry. A little blood is nothing to me. It'll grow back in a few days.”

That was before.

Ever since Rex brought Vivian home four years ago, that man—the one who'd drain his own dragon's blood for me—was gone.

I'd always heard that my four daddies had a first love. It was Vivian's mother, Cecilia.

They say years ago, the whole shifter world was still ruled by the old King. He believed a witch's prophecy that one of my four daddies would one day take his throne and kill him, so he ordered all four of them executed.

The four of them barely escaped with their lives.

On the run, they met my mother.

My mother carried the rare white wolf bloodline, a lineage so uncommon she was a born healer. She took in those four men, all of them at death's door, and nursed them back to health, one painstaking day at a time.

She hid them somewhere safe, trained alongside them, and spent every bit of her savings on potions traded from witches to awaken the bloodlines of all four.

In the end, the witch's prophecy came true. They returned and killed the old King. Darius became the new King, and the other three became the new heads of their clans.

I heard my mother was meant to marry Darius.

But right before the wedding, Cecilia showed up.

The moment she appeared, all four of them lost their heads over her.

Cecilia was just like Vivian. She always looked at my daddies with those big pitiful eyes, sobbing that my mother had wronged her.

And my four daddies believed her without hesitation, every time. They always blamed my mother.

Until one bad fight drove my mother out of the house in anger, and on the road she was attacked by rogue wolves.

She was nine months pregnant by then, and she'd lost her ability to shift. The rogue wolves tore her apart.

No one realized I was still alive inside her, until my four daddies cut me free.

The day my mother died, all four of them went to pieces. They drove Cecilia away and swore at my mother's grave that they'd be good to me for the rest of their lives.

They never expected that sixteen years later they'd find Vivian in rogue wolf territory, half-starved and beaten down to nothing.

That was when they learned Cecilia had died less than five years after they cast her out. Vivian had been an orphan since she was four.

Drowning in guilt, my daddies took Vivian in too.

They decided Cecilia hadn't really done anything wrong after all, that it was my mother who'd been petty and small-hearted, who'd stormed off and gotten herself killed by the rogue wolves.

After Vivian came back, she was exactly like her mother. In front of my daddies she was always soft and meek and saintly, while she lied about me, said I'd hit her, and begged them not to be angry, not to punish me.

I explained myself so many times, but my four daddies never believed me.

They said I was just like my mother, petty, unable to stand seeing anyone else happy.

So every time Vivian shed a tear, they punished me half to death.

Within a few years, I'd gone from the little princess of the shifter world to garbage rotting in a silver prison.

Darius glanced down at the red welt on my temple where I'd hit the wall, and his brow furrowed.

He suddenly reached out and gripped my chin. “You really are just like that mother of yours. All you know how to do is use death to scare people.”

“But she was smarter than you. She always did it when all four of us were there to see. And you? Hiding in this dump, throwing yourself at a wall, for whose benefit?”

I didn't make a sound.

Nothing I said ever mattered. I'd said so much before. Did they ever listen to one word?

I lowered my eyes. “Of course, Your Majesty. So you came all the way here—surely not just to watch me hit a wall?”

He paused.

Then he frowned. “Don't flatter yourself. Today is Vivian's birthday. We're taking her up north to see the aurora. She said you've always wanted to see it, and she begged us to bring you out so you could come along.”

The aurora.

I'd longed for the northern lights since I was little, always nagging my daddies to take me.

But the road was long, my four daddies were always busy, and I was born premature with a frail body, so they promised they'd take me when I turned twenty.

I finally made it to twenty. And now they were taking another daughter instead.

Four years ago, I could have torn the whole palace apart over this.

But now I only lifted my head and told him, “I'm not going.”

“You nearly killed Vivian a few years back and she's still willing to forgive you, and you're still making a fuss?” A flicker of fury crossed Darius's face. “Not your call.”

He grabbed me by the collar, dragged me out of the silver prison, and shoved me into the back seat of a black off-road truck.

He took me to another one of his apartments first, hosed the mud off me, then tossed me a clean T-shirt and jeans. After that he hauled me downstairs, started the truck, and headed for the palace.

He drove and warned me coldly. “You'd better have learned your manners in that prison these past years. When you see Vivian later, no more bullying her.”

It felt like someone took a hammer to my chest.

Yes. I'd learned my manners.

Soon we reached the edge of the Flame Forest. That forest is cursed. They say centuries ago a spell went wrong, and the whole forest has burned ever since, the fire never dying, never spreading.

I made a sudden decision.

I yanked the door open and rolled out sideways.