Chapter 68: Chapter 68: Aunt’s Secret (Part 1)

Martha Thorne’s POV

3:17 AM.

A stray cat was tearing at half a rotten fish head next to a metal dumpster in the alley behind the bar. The stench of fish, cheap beer, and sour vomit fermented in the damp air, a heavy weight pressing down on my throat.

I leaned against the cold brick wall, a nearly spent cigarette pinched between my fingers. The red glow of its tip flared and died in the thick darkness, like an eye refusing to close. I took a deep drag. The sharp sting of nicotine shot straight to my brain, but it couldn’t suppress the familiar, cold emptiness churning in my stomach.

Another all-nighter.

Another night of utter exhaustion.

Another haul of pathetic cash earned with smiles and my body.

My name is Martha Smith.

’But in my heart, I’ve only ever been that “half-breed” left on the steps of the orphanage’s iron gate.’

No one ever taught me about dignity. ’Dignity? How much is that worth? Is it enough for next month’s rent? Is it enough to buy a box of painkillers for the monthly, knife-to-the-bone abdominal pain that visits me right on schedule?’

My mother was a prostitute. She didn’t have me out of love, but out of a foolish fantasy. She thought that by having a child, she could secure a meal ticket for life. She even named me “Martha”—the name of a noble countess she admired. ’How ridiculous. A woman who couldn’t even spell her own name gave her daughter the name of a noble she could never hope to reach in her lifetime.’

She was wrong. Dead wrong.

That Werewolf father of mine never took her seriously. When my mother, holding me as a newborn, went fawning to his door, his first reaction was rage.

“Half-breed!” he roared in my mother’s face, spittle flying onto her pale cheeks. “You dared to give birth to my half-breed?! Don’t you know that for a pure-blood, the shame is worse than death?!”

That very day, my mother abandoned me at the gate of an orphanage.

Like a wild dog wallowing in the mire, I used my most primitive instincts to lick up every possible chance of survival.

Survive.

Rely only on myself.

After I came of age, I got a job at a bar. I knew which drink to serve with just a look from the boss. I knew which bottle of liquor to replace immediately from a customer’s mumbled complaint. I could even predict which of two drunks at the next table would throw the first punch three seconds later just by the way their eyes met.

Until that morning.

I was dragging my leaden legs out the back door of the bar, ready to catch the last subway train. In the alley, there was only the dim yellow streetlight and that stray cat, still gnawing on the fish head.

Then, I saw him.

He stood at the end of the alley, his back to me. He wore a well-tailored, dark gray suit, his posture so straight he looked like a ruler stuck in the filthy mud. He didn’t turn around. He simply raised a hand and, with one finger, gently tapped the air behind him.

The gesture was casual, yet it carried an undeniable, crushing authority.

I froze.

It wasn’t out of fear. It was instinct. The instinctual reverence for absolute power, honed in the orphanage, in the bar, on the countless edges between life and death.

He slowly turned around.

He had the face of a middle-aged man, with a strong jawline, high brow bone, and a nose as straight as a razor’s edge. His eyes were light gray, like two ice crystals veiled in a thin mist. They held no emotion, only a pure, detached coldness, as if he were inspecting an object.

Elder Darius.

I learned his name later. But in that moment, he was just a symbol—a symbol of “endings” and “judgment.”

He looked me up and down, his gaze like a scalpel, peeling away my cheap clothes, my weary skin, my vacant expression, until it finally landed on my eyes.

That look reminded me of my father.

The same coldness.

The same… disgust.

“Martha Smith?” His voice wasn’t loud, but it was like a block of ice crashing into the silent alley, stirring up a bone-chilling cold.

I nodded without a word.

“Your father is dead.” He stated it as a fact, his tone as casual as if he were remarking on the nice weather. “He died last night in a brawl. He owed a rather large debt. Before he died, he cried out your name.”

I stood rooted to the spot. The familiar knot of pain in my stomach suddenly sharpened.

“So?” I heard my own voice, hoarse and calm, like a dry well. “You want me to pay his debt for him?”

Elder Darius’s lips twitched upward ever so slightly. It wasn’t a smile. It was the ultimate, undisguised contempt.

“You actually dare to ask.” He took a step forward, his leather shoes making a crisp TAP on the wet ground. “What do you think you are? A half-breed scraping by in the lowly human world?”

He paused, his gaze like an ice pick, stabbing into my eyes.

“You have the blood of a Werewolf in you. Even a single drop determines where you belong. You weren’t born to wallow in the filth of the human world. You were born to obey.”

He reached out and, with two fingers, very slowly pinched my chin.

The pressure wasn’t strong, but it was enough to immobilize me.

“Your father’s debt,” he said, his voice low, each word like a bead of ice hitting the ground, “you will repay. The method will be of my choosing.”

I looked at him. I looked at the dead, rippleless ice field in his eyes.

’Angry?’

’Of course I was. It surged through my veins like lava. But on the outside, my face remained as still as stagnant water.’

“How do I repay it?” I asked.

He let go, as if touching me was a contamination.

“Simple.” He pulled a thin slip of paper from the inner pocket of his suit jacket. A few lines of text were printed on it. “This night school secretarial course. You have three months to graduate. You will apply to a startup company, and you must succeed.”

He stuffed the paper into my sweaty palm.

“The company is called ’Star Dust Creative Consulting Co., Ltd.’” He rattled off an address. “It has three founders: Thomas Bennett, Richard Thorne, and a woman—Isolde Bennett.”

He paused, his gaze like a needle dipped in ice, piercing the depths of my pupils.

“She is not human.” His voice dropped even lower, each word carrying an almost sacred, suffocating deadliness. “She is also a Werewolf.”

I held my breath without thinking.

But Elder Darius was no longer looking at me. He raised his hand and gently scraped the pad of his left ring finger with his nail. There, a faint, almost invisible old scar twisted, like an ancient rune that had been forcibly erased.

“She stole something,” he said, his voice so cold it was devoid of any inflection. “Something that was meant to be guarded by the Conclave for generations.”

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