Teng... Teng...

The tolling of the giant grandfather clock felt like a death knell echoing deep within Aria’s chest. Every single strike made all the muscles in her body seize up. The air inside the room suddenly plummeted, turning so freezing cold that her breath formed a thin mist as it left her mouth.

Xavier took a step forward. His fangs elongated, and black veins began to bulge around his sharp, chiseled jawline. His crimson eyes no longer held cold arrogance; instead, they flared with a wild, uncontrollable bloodlust.

Aria squeezed her eyes shut, tightly gripping her black wedding gown, bracing herself for the excruciating pain that was about to tear through her neck. ‘Mother... I’m sorry,’ she thought in utter resignation.

However, the agonizing seconds ticked past without any pain.

Instead, what she heard was the sound of a heavy crash accompanied by a choked, intensely painful groan. CRASH!

Aria opened her eyes in shock. Xavier was not pouncing on her. The Alpha was on his knees on the marble floor, clutching his own head as if his skull were being struck by a sledgehammer. His well-built frame trembled violently, and cold sweat poured down, drenching his black shirt.

"Go..." Xavier growled, his voice hoarse, warping into a low, primal canine rumble. "Hide... under the table... now!"

Aria froze. "W-What?"

"I SAID GO, HUMAN!" Xavier roared.

Groaning in agonizing pain, Xavier crawled with great effort toward a bedpost made of pure wrought iron. With trembling hands, he reached for a bundle of pure silver chains that had been deliberately placed there. Without a moment's hesitation, Xavier wrapped the wolf-weakening chains around both his wrists, locking himself securely to the bedpost.

Aria jolted backward. Her mind raced. He... he is purposely chaining himself up? Xavier didn't want to kill her. He was fighting to restrain something inside him.

Before Aria could fully process what was happening, Xavier's screams of agony shattered the silence once more. The Alpha's body convulsed violently. His eyes, which had been a fiery red, suddenly turned pitch-black—entirely black, with no whites remaining.

From beneath the shadow of Xavier’s body on the floor, something horrific began to manifest.

A dense, pitch-black smoke that reeked of sulfur billowed out from the Alpha's body. The smoke swirled in the air, condensing to form a pair of colossal shadow claws with razor-sharp talons. This was not a wolf's power. This was pure, concentrated black magic.

The shadow claws moved independently, hovering in midair as if they possessed a consciousness of their own.

Locked down by the silver chains, Xavier could only howl in sheer frustration, desperately trying to pull back the dark energy bleeding from his body, but he failed. The magic entirely ignored its host.

The pair of black shadow claws spun slowly in the air before finally detecting the presence of another living soul in the room. Slowly but surely, the claws turned, aiming their sharp tips directly at Aria, who was frozen in the corner of the room.

Aria backed up until her spine pressed flat against the wall. There was nowhere to run. The door behind her was locked beneath layers of heavy iron chains from the outside.

"Run... Aria... Run!!" Xavier screamed with the last shred of his consciousness, uttering her name for the very first time.

But it was too late. The black shadow claws lunged, tearing through the darkness of the room, hurtling straight toward Aria’s throat with lightning speed.

The freezing wind brought by the shadow claws whipped against Aria’s face, reeking of death and stale blood. Her survival instincts took over. Instead of freezing, Aria instinctively threw both hands up to shield her face and neck.

The shadowy black talons slashed across Aria’s right arm. A burning pain instantly flared through her skin, tearing the black silk of her wedding gown and slicing into her flesh. Fresh, deep crimson blood immediately gushed from the wound.

Aria screamed in agony, completely resigned as she waited for the next fatal strike that would end her life.

However, the darkness that was supposed to consume her body suddenly exploded into a deafening hiss.

The exact second the droplets of Aria’s crimson blood splattered and hit the shadow claws, the black mist violently convulsed as if drenched in acid. The black smoke rapidly faded, writhing in agony, and layer by layer, disintegrated into fragments of ash that vanished into the air before they could even touch the floor.

The room suddenly fell deathly quiet.

Xavier, still chained to the bedpost, gasped heavily with what little strength he had left. Slowly, the pitch-black color receded from his eyes, returning to a pair of fiery red irises that were now wide with absolute shock.

He had witnessed the entire thing. The previous five brides had been torn to shreds because the black magic bleeding from his body could not be contained by anything. Yet this human girl... her blood had just annihilated the cursed magic with a single touch.

"You..." Xavier’s voice was hoarse, barely audible. "Your blood..."

Aria couldn't hear Xavier's words. Her head spun violently. The burning pain in her arm, the sheer psychological shock, and the crushing pressure of the supernatural energy that had just occurred completely drained her of all strength. Aria's vision slowly went black. Her body gave out and she collapsed onto the cold marble floor, falling unconscious.

The next morning, sunlight pierced through the large windows of the wedding chamber.

Outside the door, a crowd of maids, guards, and even several elders of the werewolf council had already gathered. Their faces were tense. A few maidservants had brought fresh burial shrouds and blood-cleaning tonics, preparing to evacuate the corpse of the sixth bride just as they had done so many times before.

The iron chains were roughly unfastened, and the heavy oak door was swung wide open. The head palace butler stepped inside with his head bowed, prepared to pay his final respects to the bride’s remains.

However, his footsteps froze. A hysterical shriek escaped the mouth of one of the maids behind him.

In the center of the room, Aria was not lying stiff as a corpse. The human girl was sitting on the edge of the bed, her arm securely wrapped in clean white linen. In front of her, Lord Alpha Xavier sat quietly on the floor, allowing Aria to meticulously apply a healing salve onto the remaining wounds on his temple.

Aria was still breathing. She was alive.

The entire room froze in utter disbelief. For the first time in history, a woman had successfully made it through her first night with the Bloodmoon Alpha and welcomed the dawn completely unharmed.

Xavier paid no mind to the shocked stares of the people standing at the threshold. His eyes were locked entirely on Aria, staring intently at the human girl who was now looking back at him with remnants of fear in her eyes. The Alpha knew his destiny had just changed.

However, as Aria stood up to adjust her torn gown, her hand accidentally brushed against something bulging beneath the bed pillows. Aria looked down and subtly pulled back the edge of the pillow.

A folded piece of worn-out paper was hidden there. With a swift, silent movement, Aria concealed the paper in the palm of her hand before Xavier or any of the servants could notice. While Xavier turned to speak to his guards, Aria slightly opened the paper and read the messy handwriting scrawled inside:

"Do not trust the Alpha. Your mother's mysterious illness... he is the cause of it. You have been sacrificed."

Aria's heart instantly dropped to the pit of her stomach, staring at Xavier’s broad back with a terrifying new sense of dread.

That morning, the Grand Hall of Bloodmoon Palace, usually buzzing with werewolf gossip, fell completely silent. News that Aria—a mortal human girl with no inner wolf—had managed to survive her wedding night spread like wildfire blown by a gale. Not only had she survived, but she was also found tending to the unconscious Alpha. To the Council of Elders led by Beta Magnus, this was both a harsh slap in the face and an impossible anomaly. The five previous pure-blooded brides had ended up as piles of lifeless flesh due to the ferocity of Xavier’s curse. How could a mere piece of weak human flesh suppress such a monster?

Inside her luxurious new room, Aria sat on the edge of a velvet-canopied bed. Xavier had moved her from the chained bridal chamber to the Amethyst Pavilion, the innermost area of the palace with the tightest security. Two gigantic wolf warriors stood rigidly behind the oak door of her room, ensuring that not even a single insect could enter or leave without permission.

Click.

The door opened, and a well-built man stepped in with his ceremonial cloak draped over his shoulders. Xavier. His face was no longer as pale as last night, but lines of exhaustion were still clearly etched at the corners of his sharp eyes. His gaze, the color of honey gold—signaling that his human side was in control—instantly locked onto Aria's gauze-wrapped arm.

"How is your wound?" Xavier’s baritone voice broke the silence, sounding deep yet possessing a gentleness foreign to Aria’s ears.

"I am fine, Your Majesty," Aria answered formally, bowing her head slightly to maintain her distance. She had not forgotten the fact that the man in front of her could turn into a black mist monster in the blink of an eye.

Xavier walked closer and sat on a single chair across from Aria. He stared at his own palms, which were completely free of the burn marks from the silver chains last night.

"The palace physician has examined the residual energy in the bridal chamber," Xavier paused, his eyes narrowing inquisitively. "Your blood... possesses an ancient purifying glow. The moment your blood touched that black mist curse, its magic shattered. You are the antidote I have been searching for all this time, Aria."

Aria clenched her hands in her lap. "So, is that why you moved me to this luxurious pavilion? Because I am useful as your walking medicine?"

A faint, bitter smile touched Xavier's firm lips. "In this palace, usefulness determines whether you deserve to live or die, Aria. The Council of Elders wants your head because they fear what they do not understand. By placing you here under my direct command, not a single one of them will dare to touch you."

Xavier stood up, giving a final order to the guards outside to tighten their patrols before walking away, leaving Aria drowned in her own thoughts.

That night, the atmosphere in the Amethyst Pavilion was so quiet that the ticking of the clock sounded like the strikes of a judge's gavel. Aria tried to lay her weary body down on the incredibly soft silk mattress. However, her mind remained in turmoil. She thought of her mother back in the village. Had the 100 gold coins she sent arrived yet? Had the physician there treated her mother’s black lung disease?

As Aria turned onto her side, her head felt something obstructing beneath her silk pillow. Something hard and rustling.

Aria startled. She sat up and quickly reached under the pillow. Her hand pulled out a neatly folded piece of dull parchment. With her heart beginning to race, she unfolded the paper. The writing inside was written in a deep red ink that resembled dried blood.

Aria read the text line by line, her breath catching in her throat:

"Do not be deceived by the luxury that monster gives you, Aria. Your presence in this palace is no coincidence, but a trap. The black lung disease your mother suffers from in the village was intentionally engineered and spread by Xavier's secret order. He needed your purifying blood, and the only way to bring you here without suspicion was to make your mother terminally ill so that you would volunteer to be his sacrifice."

Aria's hands trembled so violently that the parchment slipped from her grasp and fell onto the blanket. Her eyes widened in utter horror, while the room around her felt as though it were collapsing and spinning out of control in an instant.