Prologue

"Vile thing, you can't escape today!"

"We'll burn you to death!"

"Everyone, surround her!"

Covered in sweat and bleeding from numerous cuts and wounds, I limped through the woods in desperation. It was cold, the dark night made even more terrifying by the thousands of torches flaring around me. In my haste to get away from the malicious faces of the pack members, I stumbled on a rock and fell flat on my face.

At this moment, I knew my efforts were futile. There was no escaping the nightmare about to descend.

For as long as I could remember, my parents had been trying to kill me. Everyone hated me. Abhorred my very existence. When death eluded me, the torture began.

I was thrown in an underground cell, starved for years in another attempt to kill me.

After years of loneliness and starvation, I still ended up surviving. Then the day came when I was dragged out. To be experimented on, paraded around like a pariah, before the Alpha, my father, decided to tie me to a pillar to be burnt to death by the entire pack.

He found my existence a disgrace, a smear that tainted his great lineage of Alpha bloodlines. To erase the appearance of this monster in the linage of his bloodline, the most beloved and blessed children of the Moon Goddess, he told the pack I was a cursed being blessed upon them by the moon to be offered as a sacrifice and bring prosperity to the pack.

Of course, his words were far from the truth, but who cared for the truth? The Black Moon Pack was ecstatic upon hearing this news. It wasn't everyday that a pack received the Moon Goddess's blessing. And when this blessing could bring prosperity to their pack, why would they question it?

So they grabbed a stone and anything that could cause severe damage, and threw it at me in the name of the Moon Goddess.

Then, with knives and torches, they chased me through the pack and into the woods to encircle me, and tie me to a tree for their burning ritual.

"Vile thing, it's time for you to be sacrificed!"

"Yes! It's time to fulfill the purpose of your birth!"

"Throw your torches! Burn her to death! The Moon Goddess will bless our pack!"

"Burn the Vile Thing!"

I didn't plead or cry for mercy. I didn't attempt to make them see the madness of their actions. There would be no point, because no one would listen to me.

So I remained silent and still, and watched them throw their torches at me with crazed zeal. Internally sighed, and closed my eyes as the first tongues of flame licked my feet and slithered up my body. Scorched my hair and consumed my flesh, until I lit up like a torch from inside out and melted like goo to the ground.

It hurt like hell, with the fire searing through my organs and burning to the depth of my soul until nothing but anguish clouded my senses. But even with the excruciating agony, I didn't scream.

Because pain...was the only constant, my only companion through the years.

When the blaze flared, the crowd cheered. Some shifted into their wolf forms and howled towards the moon, while others held hands and danced in a ring.

No one found anything wrong with the barbaric act of burning a living person alive. 

Exalted and exhilarated, the pack members howled like lunatics under the full moon, until the flame died and the girl turned to ash before their eyes. After another howl, they dispersed from the region.

Silence settled in the atmosphere. A gentle gust of wind blew, sweeping the stench of burnt flesh and smoke into the woods, where the crunching sound of leaves and ragged breathing broke the tranquil air. 

Suddenly, a disheveled figure burst through the trees and tumbled down the slope, before coming to a stop a few feet from the charred tree.

"Who are you? I didn't do anything to you, so why do you want to kill me?"

The terrified voice of the female slammed into me like a giant hammer. I gasped, and became aware of something. I didn't have hands or feet, or any physical form for that matter. In the form of an invisible energy, I floated above a puddle of goo. My body, which melted in the inferno of the fiery heat.

A few feet away, a young girl with red hair and blue eyes, was scrambling on all fours, shaking and weeping in terror as three figures shrouded in black cloaks emerged from the woods and stalked towards her.

Even disheveled and covered in wounds, the girl was good to look at. Subconsciously, I imprinted her face, the size of her figure, her height, down to the smell of her scent in my mind.

"If I look like her, will my family accept me?" I internally wondered, and felt the familiar hum of power throb in the puddle below me as it slowly began to take form in the girl's image.

"Please, let me go. My father will give you everything you want. He's the Alpha of the Evergreen Pack!" The girl pleaded. The desperation in her voice made me recall my earlier predicament. She, like me, was alone. And like me, it seemed her existence couldn't be tolerated as well.

The three black figures sniggered, a cackle so sinister my skin crawled from the vile sound.

"Give us everything? We want your life, your vitality, your wolf. Can you give it to us?"

"My life....can you take my wolf and spare my life? I'm only 14 right now. My wolf hasn't awakened yet. But if you let me go, I promise you when my wolf awakens, you can take it!"

"Heh. Stupid girl, you're not in a position to negotiate with us."

"Why would we let you go, when we went through the trouble of alerting our presence to the Elders of the Annual Convention, just so we could kill you?"

"Let alone 14, even if you were 7, we would still have a way to seize your wolf!"

With that, the figures of the three flashed and appeared in front of the girl. Before I could react, my eyes widened in horror at the petrifying sight that unfolded before me.

Restraining her by the arms, the three cloaked figures bent down and opened their mouths. They sucked the girl's life, youth, and ultimately awakened her wolf. Howling in a bloodcurdling shriek, the wolf separated from the girl's body with a suction force that, for a split second, I thought would snap.

Just as I was expecting the wolf to be yanked back into the girl's body, a more powerful suction force erupted from the body of the middle figure and forcefully ripped the wolf from the girl's body. In a single gulp, it swallowed the wolf.

"Burppp..." The figures straightened, and the girl slumped lifelessly to the ground.

"Malivik Usan will be out searching for his daughter. I'll digest the spirit of her wolf. It'll take me at least six hours to duplicate her face. Until then, keep him occupied." The middle figure commanded, and the other two nodded in agreement. 

"Her body..."

"Leave it for the jackals."

With those cold words, the figures in black flashed and disappeared.

Silence returned with a chill so cold, I shuddered down to my soul. After a moment of hesitation, I floated down to the puddle of goo that was once my body, and slowly morphed into a human figure.

And took her appearance.

Flexing my new limbs, I hobbled to the girl's side and froze.

From the instant of my birth to the moment I was burned alive, I never cried, never shed a single tear, even when pain wrecked my body with the force of a malignant tumor. I never crumbled under the knife on the experiment table, nor did I break down under the stoning of the pack members.

However, this time, when I saw the girl's empty face, a gasp of shock and a howl of grief ripped through my lungs and tumbled out my lips in a choked whimper.

This...how is this possible? How could this happen?

Tears slid down my cheeks and dripped on her face in an endless string. An unfamiliar ache throbbed from the depths of my heart for the once beautiful creature lying before me.

Goddess! Her face!

She looked nothing like the radiant, gorgeous creature she was a few seconds ago!

Like a doll whose creator had forgotten to give her eyes, ears, mouth, and nose, the girl's features were completely wiped, erased clean from her face!

'How can something like this happen?' I internally screamed.

"Dear Child, haven't you been asking me the purpose of your birth? Well, look closely. This is the purpose of your birth."