Chapter 3

Ivy turned her glare back to me.

"Sage, don't think you're special just because you got a Beta deputy to back you up. He’s nothing but a Pack dog. I don’t give a damn about him!"

Derek’s expression turned utterly cold. The polite, professional smile on his face vanished. Nobody liked being called a dog.

But Ivy, spoiled her entire life, completely ignored the dangerous shift in the room. She kept mocking me, starting rumors on the spot:

"Your mother died early, and your grandmother is paralyzed in bed. You couldn’t even afford tuition. Didn't you sell your body to get your name on the Vance Industries internship list?"

With every word she spoke, the murmurs around us grew louder.

Several classmates who didn’t know me began to believe her lies.

"Wait, is her family really that broke?"

"No wonder she never eats at the nice diners. She’s desperate for cash."

"Could Ivy be telling the truth? The Vance Industries internship is almost impossible to get. How could a poor orphan get chosen over everyone else?"

"Yikes. She looks so innocent, but she's actually so wild behind closed doors."

I dug my fingernails deep into my palms, turning them white.

My slapped cheek was still burning, and my twisted arm throbbed. I couldn’t even tell what hurt more anymore. I wanted to cry, I was furious that she was spreading disgusting rumors, and I was terrified that everyone would believe them.

It was true that I was poor.

Even though my mother was a witch, I didn't inherit any magical talent except for this hyper-sensitive body.

My grandma had been paralyzed from a stroke for five years. Her medical bills were over four thousand dollars a month. I worked three part-time jobs and studied late into the night to keep my scholarship just to pay for school.

But I got the Vance Industries internship fair and square. I beat out over three thousand applicants through five rounds of brutal interviews. I had nothing to be ashamed of.

Yet, the words clogged in my throat. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.

The blood rushed to my head, and my ears buzzed.

Standing beside me, Derek saw my pale face and the endless tears streaming down. His expression changed instantly.

Only he knew what this meant.

One night a year ago, Ivy had hired a group of thugs to corner me in a dark alley behind the campus.

They dragged me to a corner and beat me. As I curled into a ball, one of my ribs snapped. The agonizing pain surged through my body like electricity. I nearly blacked out.

At that exact moment, Alpha Victor was hosting a routine meeting in the Pack council hall.

In the middle of his speech, his face turned deathly pale. He clutched his chest and collapsed to the floor.

The Pack elders panicked. The healers from the Silver Moon Clinic rushed in, but his vitals were perfectly normal—except for a massive, dark purple bruise that rapidly formed on his chest, right where I had been kicked.

The healers were baffled. Victor couldn't explain where the pain came from either.

Over the next few months, similar phantom pains occurred. Sometimes, while signing documents, his arm would feel as if it were being sliced by a blade, yet his skin remained intact. Sometimes, he would wake up gasping in the middle of the night, feeling as if he were being strangled, though there were no marks on his neck.

The Pack doctors ran every test possible—brain CTs, cardiac ultrasounds, blood analysis. Everything was normal.

Some elders even feared he had been cursed by a rival pack. They brought in the Elder Luna to perform a blessing ceremony, but nothing changed.

Until one day, Victor visited Northwood University.

I happened to run into Ivy in the hallway. She slapped me in front of everyone, her nails scratching my face. The instant the sharp pain registered in my brain, Victor, who was in the principal’s office, dropped his coffee cup. He collapsed to the floor, clutching his face, his shirt soaked in cold sweat.

The principal was terrified, thinking he had been poisoned.

When the school doctor examined Victor’s cheek, they watched the skin turn red and swell up in real-time, exactly as if he had just been slapped.

At that moment, Victor finally understood.

It wasn't a curse. I was his Fated Mate.

A witch’s daughter had become the fated mate of an Alpha werewolf. Fate had forged a unique bond between us.

My physical pain was transmitted to him through the blood-bond, magnified tenfold.

Every time I was bullied, beaten, or hurt, he felt ten times the agony instantly.

If I were to be fatally injured, his heart might literally stop.

Only Derek knew about this secret. That was why Victor had ordered him to watch over me twenty-four hours a day. Anyone who dared to make me suffer would pay with their lives.

Derek’s voice was tense as he roared at the warriors:

"What are you waiting for? Confiscate the phones of anyone who recorded videos or spread rumors! Note down their names. The Pack Tribunal will issue subpoenas to every single one of them!"

Seeing Derek panic, Ivy became even more arrogant.

"Oh? Are you sleeping with her too? Is that why you're protecting her so desperately?"

"The way this dog guards its bone is hilarious."

She snatched my canvas bag from the side and slammed it onto the floor.

That bag held my grandma’s imported medication.

As the bag hit the floor, the plastic bottles shattered.

The yellow pills scattered everywhere, rolling into the dirt, ruined.

"Go on, pick them up," Ivy sneered, her eyes dripping with malice. "Don't you dogs love fetching things?"