Chapter 1
[POV: Vivian]
My heel sank into the ankle that had been twisted in the fight.
“Remember, Ethan,” I murmured, my voice low, almost lover-soft, “I make you hurt because I like you.”
He let out a muffled groan, a bead of cold sweat forming at his temple. Still, he stubbornly lifted his gaze—icy, hostile, everything I wanted him to be.
My name is Vivian Blackwood. My assignment is simple and brutal: play the vicious stepsister in his life, use relentless torment as the whetstone to sharpen him, until whatever wolf is sleeping inside him finally claws its way free and crowns him a true Alpha.
He—Ethan Hawthorne—was chosen by the Moon Goddess; he’s the story’s destined hero.
When the mission is done, I’ll walk away with enough money to buy my freedom.
“Why did you get into a fight?” I pressed, adding a tilt of pressure with my foot. He flinched, just so. Perfect.
“They deserved it.” There was no warmth in his voice.
Sensing my scrutiny, he dropped his head and reattached his mask of docility.
“Who pushed your buttons?” I asked. The principal had told me on the phone—he’d taken on multiple opponents and sent several to the infirmary. A perfect humiliation, if I played it right.
“Just some people I don’t like,” he said, evasive.
I pulled my foot back and looked down at him from above. “Fine. That’s enough for today. Don’t die in my house—that would be inconvenient.”
His limping silhouette receded down the hall, a thorn digging into the soft tissue of my conscience.
Once I shut my door, the wolf inside me began to stir, twitching like a caged thing. A cold alarm crept up my spine—an instinctual warning that his injury had crossed a line.
It was absurd: my wolf, the part of me that answers only to my own spirit, was sounding alerts for him. It reminded me that before his wolf could awaken fully and lead a pack, I had to keep him alive—basic, inconvenient health maintenance.
So this is my life now: play the villain, moonlight as his guardian. For five years every time I struck harder than I should, that ancestral bell tolls in my bones.
I dug an ointment out of the drawer—the one I’d bought that afternoon—and swung the door open. Ethan’s room was at the end of the corridor.
I didn’t knock. I turned the knob and walked in.
Steam still hung in the air. He’d just showered, hair dark and damp, every button of his pajama top done up to the throat. The wet strands lay against his forehead, making the brooding cut of his face look unexpectedly ascetic, almost painfully handsome.
He stiffened when he saw me—alert, wary.
I didn’t do small talk. I tossed the tube toward him.
“Here.” He caught it without thinking.
I tugged one corner of my mouth into a cruel smile. “Put it on yourself. If you’re a cripple, I’ll have nothing left to amuse me.”
His expression shifted. Not the usual mute submission. He lifted his chin and looked at me straight on. For a fraction of a second something unreadable flashed in those frost-covered eyes—concern? amusement? Both?
“Are you hurt, Vivian?” he asked suddenly.
I blinked. “What?”
He held the ointment between his fingers and spoke low, measured: “You barged in here like this just to give me this?”
He was a good actor.
I snorted, using the sound to mask the sudden panic that had pricked at me. “I don’t want a cripple cluttering up the house.”
I turned to leave.
“Vivian.”
His voice stopped me. I didn’t look back.
He spoke so softly, so distinct I could have sworn it was a whisper carved in glass: “This ointment— it smells different than the last one.”
At that moment the blood in my veins went cold.
