Nouvelles After Death Werewolf & Romans Hypocrisy Family Emotions

My elder sister, Alice, was a white wolf. A witch had foretold that my power would devour hers, that the moment I shifted during our coming-of-age ceremony, she would die. The only way to save her was to suppress my power, let her shift first at the ceremony, and break the curse. To save her, my parents spent eighteen years breaking me. And the night before our ceremony, they followed the witch's orders and locked me in the basement with silver-banded iron chains. "Be good, Maria. The silver will only delay your shift. Just get through tomorrow, and your sister lives. Then we can all stop suffering." The chains pressed against my chest. I could barely breathe. But something was wrong. My shift was starting, early. I slammed my fists against the door. "Mom, it's starting. I'm shifting now—" "Don't lie to me." Her voice cut through, sharp and loud. "The witch said both of you shift on ceremony day. Or are you really that eager to watch your sister die?" Footsteps faded down the hall. The pain hit, searing, ripping through every bone. I curled into the corner, feeling my wolf slip away.

I was Garrett Blackwood's lost sister, separated from my Alpha brother for ten years. When I finally returned to Stormfang Pack, I discovered he already had an adopted sister. I became the unwanted one. Even when I was brutally murdered, no one sought justice for me. Not until three years later when the case was reopened and my diary was found. Only then did my powerful Alpha brother finally collapse under the weight of his delayed remorse.

Everyone in my family is one of the strongest pureblood Alphas in the pack—except me. I’m an Omega. My brother and sister awakened their wolves at twelve. I'm fifteen, and mine still hasn't shown the slightest sign of waking. My family was convinced that the Mercer Alpha blood in me simply hadn't manifested yet—and that it was their duty to bring it out. To sharpen my senses, my brother dumped me in Nightwood Forest when I was still a child. When the tracking signal failed, he insisted that I find my own way out. I wandered for a day and a night before collapsing from dehydration. When my mother arrived, she comforted my guilt-stricken brother. “Daniel was only trying to help you,” she told me. Then she turned to him. “Just don't make it so difficult next time.” To provoke my wolf, my sister put me through nerve training using Alpha pressure. I knelt on the floor, trembling and begging her to stop as pain split my head apart. But she only stared at the line spiking across her screen and exclaimed that my Alpha blood was finally responding. My father carried me back to my room. “Vivian is only trying to help you. If your wolf awakens early too, no one will ever look down on you again.” Later, they designed an awakening experiment for me. They locked me in a room at forty-two degrees below zero, trying to recreate the extreme conditions in which my brother and sister had awakened. During the experiment, the thermal barrier failed, and every cry for help I sent through the mind-link was blocked. I watched the temperature keep falling as my eyes slowly closed. That was when I finally understood. My greatest mistake wasn't being ordinary. It was being born into an Alpha family that couldn't accept an ordinary child.

When I was eight, a prank by my little sister, Alice, left silver poison eating away at my heart. To save me, my dad knelt at the Temple of the Moon Goddess for ninety-nine days. Only then did he win two moonstone pendants from the Goddess, enough to hold the poison at bay. After that, Alice became the family pariah. They stopped speaking to her. They wouldn't even let her smile. For my sake, my father traveled far and wide searching for a cure for the silver poison. My mom quit her work as a healer to care for me, because the moonstone pendants needed her at the Moon Temple every day to replenish their magic. I always believed the Moon Goddess watched over me, blessing me with the best family in the world. That belief lasted until the day registration for the Imperial Academy closed. Three minutes remained before the Imperial Academy's registration portal closed. Then a sudden thunderstorm drained the portal's power crystal. Without hesitation, my mother ripped the pendant from around my neck and poured its magic into the portal. I clutched at her clothes, my lips turning blue. "Mom... I can't breathe..." But she looked at me with nothing but disappointment. "Grace, you've already taken all the love and resources that should have been Alice's. Now you want to rob her of her future too? "You still have the backup pendant, and yet here you are playing the victim! I'm so disappointed in you!" She shoved me into my bedroom and locked the door. But she didn't know. Alice had borrowed the other pendant for her graduation ball.