Chapter 4

Fiona's POV

"Look what you've done!"

Victoria's voice was so shrill it nearly split my eardrums.

Her eyes were rimmed red, yet she still clung to her haughty posture—like a peacock on the verge of falling apart, feathers stubbornly raised.

"You knew perfectly well that Emily was my best friend! Now the whole school is saying my sweet, kind friend has been sleeping with my future brother-in-law! Do you know what they're calling me on the forums? A pimp! A go-between! Fiona, why couldn't you have come to me first? Why did you just take it upon yourself to do this!"

God, could she really be so shameless in twisting things around?

The corner of my mouth curled into a mocking arc. "Wow. You poor, poor thing, dear cousin. The way you're accusing and condemning me, for a moment I can hardly tell right from wrong anymore. One would think I peeled the clothes off Emily myself and shoved her under Caleb's body."

"You—!"

Victoria jolted, her pupils shrinking to points.

She raised a trembling finger and pointed at me. "A fiancée who can't even keep hold of her own man. You think exposing something like this in front of everyone is some kind of glory? You've done nothing but slap your own face!"

"Is that so?"

I gave a faint smile and took a step closer. Victoria flinched back instinctively, until her back struck the cold carved cabinet and sent the silver candlestick at her elbow rattling.

She was afraid of me. That fear, I supposed, sprang from the natural human aversion to werewolves.

But it had never once stopped her from tormenting and bullying me with her words, all through our childhood.

Today, though, I hadn't come to settle old scores.

"So tell me, cousin—what should I have done? Swallowed it all, then come crying to you and begging you to win me justice? Should I have hoped you'd go and plead with your dear friend Emily, ask her to bow out gracefully, to please stop wrecking the love between me and my fiancé? Is that it?"

"Shouldn't that have been exactly how it went?"

Victoria shrieked, her nails nearly digging into her palms.

I watched her rage, watched her come undone.

At first I hadn't quite understood why she was so furious.

Perhaps it was because she couldn't bear to see the timid little creature she'd always known—battered by the disappearance of her parents, reduced to living on others' charity—still find it in herself to raise the banner of open defiance. And under that hateful red hair, those absurd, thick lenses like the bottoms of beer bottles, no less.

I let a soft smile play across my lips. "Victoria, since you care so much about the family's reputation, I do have a fine idea for 'saving face.'"

I lowered my voice, letting something dangerous flicker in my eyes, like a snake flicking out its tongue. "Why don't you marry Caleb yourself? His name is already in ruins, and the Thorne family needs a respectable marriage to stop the bleeding. You could even tell the world that I simply had my good friend Emily test him out for me—to see whether a werewolf's little gift really can send a person to heaven and back."

Victoria's face went white in an instant. She staggered, catching herself on the edge of the cabinet, her fingertips trembling like dry leaves in the wind.

I knew every word I spoke landed like a poisoned dagger, thrust with precision into her rawest, most vulnerable wound.

She could never have imagined that when it came to humiliating people, I could reach the very heights of the art myself.

"Enough!"

Arthur's gaunt face had gone livid, the whiskers hugging his cheeks quivering.

He could hold back no longer and had to step in to stop the farce.

"Fiona, how can you speak such shameless filth in front of everyone? Did your parents never give you a proper upbringing?"

I lifted my head and fixed my eyes steadily on him.

"I'm sorry, Uncle. Before my parents left, the manners I learned were meant for offering kindness to others."

But after they vanished without warning the year I turned twelve—without leaving me so much as a single word—

Arthur had brought me here to be fostered, and for ten long years I had endured nothing but neglect and scheming.

The word manners had long since lost any power to make me feel safe.

As for what I'd said in front of everyone tonight? Compared to what Caleb had done in front of everyone, what was it, really?

"Hard to imagine," Arthur said, his cold eyes sweeping me up and down. "In my memory, Caroline was such an elegant, gentle woman. And yet she gave birth to a daughter as ill-mannered as you."

The mention of my mother sent the pent-up, surging blood in me lurching into sudden, abnormal motion.

"You've met my mother?"

My ears pricked up, and a scalding heat rose in my cheeks.

As far as I knew, my father—heir to the Sterlings—had struck out on his own long ago. He had always lived at the Sterling ancestral estate, leading a life all but cut off from the world.

His dealings with my uncle's family had never been close. In fact, you could say they kept their distance from every relative alike.

Of course, only as I grew older did I come to understand—perhaps it was because my mother was a pure-blooded werewolf. Their union had borne enormous social pressure. And there was the need to conceal that thing so many coveted—the golden bloodline.

I stared into my uncle's eyes, my heart pounding wildly.

For years I had lain low inside that library, searching for any trace of the so-called "Forbidden Book of God" my mother had once told me about, and for the true reason behind her and my father's disappearance. I had never once broken through.

And now, hearing my uncle speak my mother's name, all the blood in my body began to boil.

"Of course I've met her—at your father's wedding. A single passing acquaintance." Arthur curled his lip in disdain. "A pity that the union of wolf and human could only ever produce a mediocre, unreasonable half-breed like you."

I fought to steady the burning ache inside me, almost tasting the blood where my fangs had pricked the inside of my lip.

"Mediocrity is a gene I can't change. But being unreasonable—that I absorbed over these years of living on others' charity. Don't you think, Uncle, that this proud, unreasonable creature you see before you tonight is exactly the same as your own flesh-and-blood daughter?"

"You—!" Victoria finally snapped. "You lowly half-breed mud-blood! What right do you have to compare yourself to me?"

She lost all control, snatched up the silver candlestick from the table, and hurled it straight at me.

Crack.

Its sharp edge grazed my cheek, opening a thin line of blood.

And in the same instant, the surface of that wound began to corrode.

A piercing pain shot through me. I looked down at the blood in my palm—it had already darkened from bright red to deep black.

Silver!

"Victoria!"

At the sight, a glint sparked in Arthur's murky gray eyes. He barked a sharp reprimand at his daughter, even as he rushed forward to stand before me.

"Fiona! Are you all right?"

"Victoria! You know what that thing does to Fiona! No matter how angry you are, you should never have acted so rashly."

"Father, are you really going to take her side? This half-breed slut won't die that easily! The venom that spills out of her mouth does far more damage to me than any cut from a silver candlestick!"

Clutching my cheek, I slowly straightened out of my crouch.

I couldn't suppress a stab of worry—not that my face would be scarred, not that I'd be gravely hurt.

I was worried that the sudden pain from a moment ago was already beginning, step by step, to ease.

I knew it was the golden-wolf bloodline within me, healing the wound. And I knew that in the way Arthur looked at me now—

all that supposed concern was a lie. What was real was the probing, the curiosity.

I couldn't let myself appear unharmed.

I couldn't let them see that I wasn't actually afraid of silver.

I couldn't let a single soul know that pure, powerful golden-wolf blood ran in my veins.

"My face—it hurts! It hurts so much! Damn it! Victoria, are you trying to kill me?!"

I dropped into a crouch on the spot and put on a show of agony.

At that very moment, the butler eased the door open, trembling.

The scene before him plainly left him at a loss.

"Mr. Sterling, this—"

"What is it!"

Arthur turned to the butler impatiently.

"Professor Thorne is here."