Chapter2

"Put it on, Elara. Marry me." Elias wrapped his arms around me from behind, sliding a diamond ring that gleamed with a cold light onto my ring finger.

It had been three months.

Ever since that snowy day, he had taken care of every single detail of my life with flawless devotion.

At that moment, his chin rested in the crook of my neck, his breath warm against my skin.

But his gaze had already slipped past my shoulder, fixated dead on the nightstand.

"You've already agreed to marry me," he murmured, his voice dropped low and laced with a sliver of urgency. "Now, you can open the second golden apple, right?"

My heart skipped a beat.

For three months, he had been subtly probing every single day for the whereabouts of the third apple.

I looked at the engagement ring on my finger, trying to suppress a gnawing sense of unease. I picked up the second golden apple, found the mechanism at the bottom, and pressed hard.

Click.

The metal split open.

Something solid tumbled out. It was a tooth.

Over two inches long. Frowning, I pinched it between my fingers, feeling the rough grooves carved into its surface.

Engraved upon it were two extremely brief words.

Wolf. Steal.

"What kind of beast's tooth is this? A dog's?" Holding the tooth, I turned around, looking behind me in confusion. "Why would my grandmother put—"

My voice abruptly cut off.

Elias stood three paces away from me.

The color had drained completely from his face. Those dark eyes, previously brimming with affection, were now locked onto the withered yellow fang in my hand.

"Elias?" I took a step forward.

His elbow knocked over the coffee mug on the desk, the shattering ceramic sounding deafeningly harsh. My fingers subtly tightened.

"You recognize this thing, don't you?" I stared at him, pressing the question step by step.

He forced a stiff twitch at the corner of his mouth.

"Of course not." "Your grandmother... was truly a powerful oracle. The things she left behind are so bizarre, it startled me."

He closed the distance in long strides and clamped his hands heavily onto my shoulders.

"Elara," he said, staring into my eyes, his words coming out in a rapid-fire rush. "The first two were useless, so the third one must be a prank too. Where did you put it? Let's open them all today. I want to know what else my teacher left behind."

The third one again. In an instant, the memory of those four deep, dark fingerprints on my grandmother's portrait frame from three months ago flashed through my mind.

I violently wrenched myself out of his grip and backed away to a safe distance.

"No. Grandmother said the third one is a death mandate. No one is allowed to touch it."

Elias's hands froze in midair.

He slowly lowered them, looking at me. "I am your fiancé. Let me put it away for you."

"There's no need." I stared straight into his eyes. "I didn't keep it in the house. I hid it somewhere only I can find."

The air instantly cemented.

The way he looked at me in that second, I honestly thought he was going to lunge forward and snap my neck.

But, with brutal rigidity, he held himself back.

A few seconds later, he slipped back into that tender, affectionate masquerade.

"Alright, whatever you say." He walked over and pressed a kiss to my forehead, just like he always did. "Keep it safe. Go to sleep early."

Midnight.

My eyes snapped open.

The sheets beside me were cold. Elias was not in the room.

Riiiip—

A faint, agonizing sound drifted up from downstairs.

I threw off the blanket, my bare feet sinking onto the freezing floor. Barely daring to breathe, I crept out of the bedroom at an agonizingly slow pace and peered down the old wooden staircase.

Elias knelt in front of the fireplace.

He was tearing my house apart.

The sofa cushions were shredded to pieces. The ancient manuscripts and books my grandmother left behind were trashed like garbage, trampled beneath his feet.

"Where... where the hell is it..."

He acted like a madman, letting out heavy, guttural growls while crouching on all fours, his hands digging into the floorboards' seams and ripping them up piece by piece. I stood in the shadows of the second-floor hallway, both hands clamped brutally over my own mouth.

Because I saw it. Directly under the moonlight, his broad, knuckle-heavy human hands were changing. His human fingernails sharpened rapidly at a visible speed, mutating into murderous, glinting claws.

Slash—!

Those claws swiped viciously.

The solid, sturdy oak floorboards were instantly shredded into splintered fragments.

That withered yellow fang engraved with the words Wolf. Steal. stabbed straight from the depths of my mind.

That was no prank prophecy.

The monster my grandmother had been staring down from her grave was exactly this wolf, wearing my fiancé’s skin and sleeping beside me every single night.