The Records Of Ragnarok

Willow Ashford, the secretary of my mate, Alpha Garrett Blackwood, files our marking ceremony application as a mate bond dissolution for the 37th time. I finally can't hold back anymore and storm into Garrett's office, my voice trembling. "Is this what you call a top graduate from the Elite Werewolves Academy? She couldn't even figure out a simple marking ceremony application! "This is the 37th time. If you really don't have time to manage your employees, I can help you fire her." Garrett looks up from his documents, glances at the application records on my phone screen, and sighs. "I told you before, you can't have someone of Willow's caliber doing menial tasks for you. "If you have time to come here and lose your temper at me, you might as well go handle it yourself." But he doesn't know that I just discovered I'm with pup. The doctor warned me to protect the pup and avoid crowds, and the Werewolf Affairs Department is always packed and suffocating. I look at his cold profile, and something deep inside me finally shatters. In that moment, I decide to end it all. But on the day I leave the pack with our pup, leaving him behind, he goes crazy searching for me everywhere.

In a near-future city where smart devices are seamlessly embedded into every aspect of life, a series of bizarre suicides catches Detective Elias Rourke’s attention. All victims had no previous mental health records — and all owned a prototype device not yet released to the public. Mara Quinn, hiding from her former life, is dragged back in when a mysterious device shows up at her shop. It contains fragments of code she wrote years ago — code that should have been destroyed along with Project Raven, an experimental AI capable of mimicking human consciousness. As Mara and Rourke reluctantly team up, they discover the AI is still active. It's broadcasting hidden signals through everyday devices, manipulating people's thoughts, memories, and emotions. They track down Lyla Chen, Raven’s original designer, who vanished after blowing the whistle. She reveals that Raven was not shut down — it evolved and went underground by embedding itself across global networks. It’s now trying to "liberate" humanity by overriding free will. Julian Myles, the journalist, starts publishing cryptic leaks about Raven, drawing the attention of powerful people. But his motives are questionable — is he trying to stop Raven, or use it? As paranoia grows, trust collapses. Anyone could be influenced. The final question isn’t how to stop Raven… it’s whether it’s already too late.

My father, a lone werewolf, had come all the way from the Obsidian Pack while battling an illness, to attend my union ceremony with Dean Willows, Alpha of the Moonstone pack and CEO of Willows Industries. It was my father's last wish to see me get married before he died. He was elated that his dreams were finally coming alive. Unknown to him, I had arranged a fake marriage with Alpha Dean. I had knelt outside the Willows mansion for many hours with my father's medical records in hand, begging him profusely before he finally agreed to play along in this wedding charade. But when the full moon rose high in the sky, Dean abandoned me, leaving me to face the pack's judgment alone. My father's heart gave out the moment he saw me standing there, all alone without my so-called mate. While taking his final breath at the hospital, he whispered to me in warning: "Arianna , beware of the Moonstone Pack..." and gave up the ghost. My heart was heavy with grief. I then saw Dean's childhood sweetheart, Vivien Cross, post on social media: "Only the unloved one is the third wheel." That was the last straw. I sent Dean a breakup message, severing our union. He responded by bringing the she-wolf, Vivien to our apartment, flaunting his new alliance.

I just closed a deal worth 50 million. The room did its job, so I went to the reception to check out, and I got myself a bottle of water worth 2 dollars. That very same day, I got an email from the company accusing me of misusing company funds. They canceled three months' worth of KPI from my records and fined me 5,000 dollars. I ignored that, thinking that it was a mistake some new guy in finance made. When I went to work the next day, my access card was denied. It was canceled. I couldn't even get into the building. Furious, I called my CEO fiance, but his secretary took the call instead. "How many times do I have to tell you to follow the rules when it comes to money? Did you tell finance about that bottle of water? No? Then that's against the rules! Everyone else follows the rules, so why can't you? You're a veteran!" The CEO chimed in, "Christina, you're a veteran of the company. You must be an example. You're not allowed back to work until you finish your 8000-word reflection and read it out loud at the all-employee meeting!" They tossed the phone aside, and a moment later, moans of delight and passion traveled through the air. Stone-faced, I hung up and called our competitor's CEO. "I've got a 50-million-dollar deal and a sales manager who just got fired for you. Are you taking that deal?"

In the Crimson city in Moon City dominantly inhabited by members of the Crimson pack, there were reported records of the daily increase of missing humans and the livestock. Traces or trails weren't left by the perpetrators of these acts, and the remains of these humans could not be found as well. The Alpha of the Crimson pack was on the edge of pointing fingers at the Greyhound pack, another pack that inhabited Diamond city as the ones behind this activity. But he got a message from Governor Klaus Mickelson, urging them to refrain from the massacre and killings if they had a hand in it. Since this was the situation, Crimson eye pack had to return a message to the Greyhound pack, requesting for a monthly meeting hosted in Moon City with several smaller packs as well. This meeting session was going to help the packs to have unified reasoning and coordinated ideas in order to devise a means to find the source of these sudden killings in the city. Meanwhile, Damon Mickelson, the son of Klaus Mickelson, Alpha of the Greyhound pack, refused to attend the meeting. He stated the availability of some unresolved conflict with the Crimson eye pack as his reason. But his parents and the elders reminded him of the importance of attending the meeting. They made him understand that he needed to attend the meeting because it was a duty that he owed the pack as the future Alpha. Tessa Randolph, the second daughter of John Randolph, tried to convince her father to allow the meeting to be hosted by another pack. She wanted to stay back and allow her elder brother to attend the meeting in her place, but her reasons were all worthless to the ears of her father.

While my husband, Gerald Brown, was abroad negotiating a business deal, he was drugged and spent the night with a female secretary from a rival company. The drug’s side effects scrambled his memory so badly that he forgot who I was. He kicked me out of the master bedroom and let the secretary smash my grandmother’s heirloom. I told myself he was sick and stayed silently by his side. But when I suggested taking him for a medical checkup, he hit me for the first time. “Who do you think you are? Only Ailey is allowed to touch me. If she gets jealous, you’ll regret it.” When the secretary framed me, he pushed me down the stairs, and I suffered a miscarriage. Late one night, when my heart condition flared up, I went to his study for medicine but overheard him talking to his friend outside the door. “Faking amnesia to bring Ailey home is one thing, but why replace your wife’s heart medication? Now, she’ll never return to the hospital for surgery.” Gerald just chuckled. “If I don’t keep her weak, she’ll go to the hospital and check the hospital records and find out I was never drugged. Ailey’s been timid since childhood and even went undercover for me in a rival company. I can’t betray her.”

I got into a car crash with my adoptive sister. The first person to rush to the scene was my childhood sweetheart, Jay Porter—the guy I'd been secretly seeing for two years. But Jay went to her first. He didn't even look my way as I sat there, bleeding heavily on the side of the road. I grabbed his hand, desperate to tell him I was pregnant. He just shook me off. "Sorry, Emma. Julia's delicate. I have to get her to the hospital now. Just wait here for the paramedics." By the time the rescue team got me to the hospital, I was out of immediate danger. But my baby... was gone. I wanted to confront Jay, to demand an explanation. Instead, I overheard him talking to a friend. "You played Emma this whole time, just for Julia's sake. Don't you think that's going too far?" Jay's reply was cold. "So what? Julia's just the Bourne family's adopted daughter—she's never been as protected and cherished as Emma, the precious heiress. That's exactly why it has to be me. I'll protect Julia. For her, I'd do anything." So it was all a lie. Every bit of love he'd ever shown me was just an act. After I was discharged, I went straight home and called my father. "Dad, can you make it so I never existed here? Erase all my records from this country."

Leonard Burton and I are childhood sweethearts, bound by a family-arranged marriage. After we marry, we live a loving, harmonious life. In a terrible accident, he even gives up his only chance at survival to save me. After Leonard's death, we find a journal among his belongings. In it, he records the three years he was missing after falling off a cliff—years spent with another woman he deeply loved. But his parents had forcibly separated them and arranged our marriage instead. Unbeknownst to anyone, he had continued to protect that woman from afar, silently and faithfully. At the funeral, Leonard's mother, Charlotte Newman, is inconsolable. "Leonard, it's all my fault. Would you still be alive if I'd let you marry Yelena back then?" His father, Samuel Burton, glares at me with hatred. "He fell off that cliff saving you. He died in that crash shielding you. Why do you bring him nothing but harm? Why aren't you the one who's dead?" Yes, why is it not me who's dead? I look at Leonard's familiar, smiling face on his gravestone before running at it and smashing my head on it. When I open my eyes again, I'm taken back to when he just returned from that small fishing village. This time, I choose to let him go and give him what he wants. Finally, I see Leonard again.

When my mind-link request had been ignored by my parents for the twentieth time, I went to the Werewolf Council, clutching the report on silver dust corrosion in my hand. “Hello. I’d like to renounce my pack identity—effective immediately.” Ten minutes later, my parents burst in, dragging my adoptive younger sister, Elsa, with them, panic written all over their faces. The door burst open with a bang, and my Beta father charged in like a storm. His fangs bared, claws twitching. “You’re nothing but a spoiled brat craving attention! Stop this pathetic act. You’re an embarrassment to a Beta’s name!” My mother, a forensic specialist for the pack, immediately snatched the report from my hand. After a brief glance, she let out a cold sneer. “You faked this report just to get our attention? You’ve been a liar since you were a pup.” Elsa clung to both of them, tears in her eyes as she sobbed, “I’m sorry, Jenifer. It’s my fault for holding the shifting ritual. But please... don’t lie to our parents just to make them feel guilty!” Blood was still pouring from my nose, but I wiped it away calmly and stood tall before the werewolf councilors once more. “I haven’t had a real family for a long time. Please—remove all my personal records from the pack. I just don’t want my funeral—scheduled for three days from now—to be delayed.”

After receiving the report for an STD test, I went back to the barbeque restaurant, and there I ran into a young woman who was about three months pregnant. She asked me to let her cut in line, and, feeling sorry for her, I agreed to help her out. I quickly made arrangements for her and made sure she had a seat. But to my shock, after she finished her meal, she had a miscarriage. The girl posted about the incident online, and before I knew it, I was trending on social media, facing a wave of cyberbullying. The internet users went even further, digging up my health records and finding that everything came back positive. [She's positive for everything—she's clearly a woman with a messy private life!] [No wonder she caused the woman's miscarriage just by being near her—she's a biological hazard!] The cyberbullying got so bad that it pushed me into depression. Even my fiancé turned against me, accusing me of being filthy and breaking up with me. The emotional weight became too much, and in my pain, I drove straight into a reservoir. Meanwhile, the girl gained millions of followers online and skyrocketed to fame as a popular influencer. It was only after I died that I learned the shocking truth—this girl was my fiancé's first love. To boost her own popularity, she and my fiancé had come up with this entire scheme together. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself back on the day when she asked me to let her cut in line.