Chapter 1

I was reborn.

Staring at the shimmering energy barrier outside the Sterling Ridge Pack's banquet hall, a barrier that barred my entry, my wolf, Fen, let out a long, relieved sigh.

In that single moment, my own mate was publicly humiliating me, equating me with homeless rogues.

The pack members around me offered looks of scorn or pity, but none of them knew the truth: I was ecstatic. I was reborn.

I had returned to the day of my fated mate, Alpha Isaac's, inauguration ceremony.

In everyone's eyes, I was just a clueless, clingy Omega orphan.

Bloodline, status… Alpha Isaac and I were worlds apart.

He was the heir to a powerful Alpha bloodline. I was a pack orphan, taken in by the former Alpha and his mate, with no name or bloodline to call my own.

Just because we had sensed our mate bond the day I turned eighteen, I foolishly thought it meant forever.

Everyone pitied Alpha Isaac, believing the Moon Goddess had played a cruel joke on him.

He thought so, too.

So on the day of his inauguration, he erected an energy barrier to lock me out, while I stood there in a starlight gown I had spent weeks crafting, hoping to stand by his side.

"Ayla, we're not trying to make things difficult for you. This is Alpha Isaac's order."

"You know what day it is. Fallon is inside. Your presence will only make everyone uncomfortable."

Alpha Isaac's most loyal Gamma stood at the entrance, his expression carved from stone as he delivered the message.

On either side of him, guards reinforced by Alpha Isaac's domineering aura formed an impenetrable wall.

All of this, this entire fortress of protection, was to keep me—a defenseless Omega—out.

Everyone knew Alpha Isaac loathed me. So deeply that he claimed our bond was a curse upon his bloodline.

In my last life, I failed to enter the banquet as well.

Like an abandoned pup, I waited from dawn until dusk, starving for even a sliver of warmth from my mate.

Later, I developed a fever in the cold wind and fainted, my inner wolf on the verge of collapse.

When the former Alpha couple found out, they scolded Alpha Isaac and tried to force our bonding ceremony.

The day before the ceremony, Alpha Isaac's first love, Fallon, suddenly collapsed, suffering from a supposed "bloodline curse."

In the judgment of Alpha Isaac and his inner circle, it was my "jealousy" that had triggered it.

Alpha Isaac wanted revenge for his beloved Fallon.

He used his Alpha command to suppress me, cutting off all contact with the pack, and locked me in a secret chamber filled with the toxic fumes of liquid silver and wolfsbane.

I begged him countless times to just sever the bond and let me go. Each time, he refused.

Alpha Isaac had roared that if the Moon Goddess cursed him with me, then I had to endure it.

That agony—being rejected by my mate while the poison of silver and wolfsbane seared through my body, day and night—was my reality for five whole years.

In the end, my sanity shattered. My wolf, Fen, chose to shatter her own spirit to save me, and I followed her into the void.

The irony was, in the final moments of my life, as my inner wolf faded to nothing, I saw Fallon.

She wasn't suffering from any curse; instead, she was radiant as the pack's new Luna.

She had never been afflicted by any bloodline curse. It was all just a scheme she had concocted to frame me.

Her and Alpha Isaac's love story was celebrated as a tale of true love breaking the shackles of fate.

From beginning to end, I was just the villain standing in the way of their romance.

And in this life?

I am going to live. I am going to stay far, far away from Alpha Isaac. I am going to take my wolf, Fen, and find what it means to be truly free.