Chapter 69: Chapter 69: Aunt’s Secret (Part 2)

Martha Thorne’s POV

Elder Darius took a step forward. His breath grazed my ear, like a viper flicking its tongue.

“Your mission,” he said, “is to stay by Isolde’s side, monitor her every move, and find the location of that treasure.”

I suppressed a shiver and tried to ask calmly, “What if she finds out I’m a Werewolf too?”

“She won’t. To her, your faint, filthy scent—tainted with inferior human blood—is less than that of a moth drawn to a flame. She won’t give you a second glance. You just need to be quiet enough, docile enough, and live… like a shadow.”

He paused, the corner of his mouth finally curling into a faint, cold arc.

“Do this,” he said, his voice dropping low, yet laced with a chilling allure, “and your father’s debt will be wiped clean. And not only that—”

He turned slightly, allowing the thin moonlight from the alley’s entrance to fall precisely on his breast pocket. Something there, in the darkness, seemed to emit a faint, ethereal, blue-gray glow.

“I will give you a reward beyond your wildest dreams.”

I didn’t ask what it was.

I didn’t need to.

A man who could freeze the blood in my veins with a single gesture at three in the morning; an elder who could snuff out a Werewolf’s life as easily as he used me as a tool; a man with a strange object in his breast pocket that dimmed the very moonlight…

The “reward” he promised was by no means money, status, or even a life of peace.

It was power.

The power to tear apart my humiliating past.

The power to make everyone who ever trampled on me kneel and tremble before me.

I clenched the slip of paper in my hand, my nails digging deep into my palm.

’It hurt.’

’Good.’

’The pain reminded me this wasn’t a dream.’

“I understand.” I heard my own voice, hoarse and steady, like a stone worn smooth by a river over a thousand years.

Elder Darius nodded, the gesture like he was inspecting a newly calibrated weapon.

Then, his figure vanished into the thick darkness in an instant.

Only the stray cat remained, still perched atop the trash can, its eerie green eyes like two clusters of silently burning will-o’-the-wisps in the dark.

I slowly exhaled.

My breath condensed into a small cloud of white mist in the frigid pre-dawn air, then quickly dissipated.

I turned and walked toward the subway station.

————

For three months, I barely slept. I worked at the bar during the day, and at night, I sat in the back row of a classroom, devouring every word, every formula, every technique on “how to be the perfect secretary” like a famished wolf. I learned fast. So fast that even my teachers were surprised.

They didn’t know I wasn’t learning secretarial skills. I was learning how to disguise myself, how to lie in wait, how to use the most harmless posture to carry out the most lethal espionage.

The day I got my certificate, I wore my only dress that made me look respectable and walked into the interview for Star Dust Creative.

When the door to the interview room closed, I could feel a bead of sweat slowly trail down my spine from the nape of my neck, cold and sticky.

The Star Dust Creative interview wasn’t held in some glamorous conference room in a modern office building. In the beginning, they used the top floor of a temporarily rented, old-fashioned apartment. Sunlight slanted through the dusty floor-to-ceiling windows, cutting pale stripes of light through the dust motes dancing in the air. There was a long oak table, three chairs, and on the table lay three résumés—mine, and those of two other women.

They were all better than me.

And me? Twenty-three years old, a night-shift bartender and janitor at a bar, a high school dropout. The only “certificate” I had to my name was a completion certificate from a night school secretarial course—it had a blurry seal, and the edges of the paper still felt faintly tacky from the wet ink.

I knew that with this résumé alone, I didn’t even qualify for a second glance.

’So, I didn’t plan on relying on my résumé.’

’I planned on relying on… human nature.’

’Specifically, Isolde Bennett’s human nature.’

And with a few insignificant little tricks, I did indeed land the job.

I started work.

On the very first day, I discovered this small startup was far more complex than it appeared. It was like a carefully wrapped piece of amber. The outside was warm, off-white linen curtains, the aroma of pour-over coffee, and a few abstract paintings in soft hues on the walls. But inside, it sealed three distinct, yet intertwined, forces.

Thomas Bennett was the amber’s warm resin. He was always in a perfectly pressed shirt, spoke in a slow, deliberate manner, and had a smile like the spring sun that could turn the sharpest question into a gentle counter-query. He handled the finances, the legal affairs, all the respectable external matters. He was Isolde’s husband, and also her sharpest shield.

Richard Thorne was the vibrant crack within the amber. He was handsome, flamboyant, with a hearty laugh that seemed completely artless. He loved telling inappropriate dad jokes in the breakroom, making the young receptionist giggle. But I watched him for three months and noticed that every time he passed Isolde’s office, his pace would unconsciously slow by half a beat. If she looked up at him, he would immediately flash an even more brilliant smile, but when that smile faded from his eyes, it was like a thin layer of ice covering a turbulent undercurrent.

The way he looked at her was never the way a younger brother looks at his older sister.

It was the way a man looks at a woman—filled with scorching heat, repression, and frustration.

And Isolde Bennett was the amber itself—transparent, hard, impenetrable. She never worked overtime, never lost her temper, never showed any sign of fatigue. She painted, a great many paintings, all landscapes. No people, no faces, just empty roads, silent trees, and misty lakes. She drank a grassy-smelling tea from a cup that never left her hand. She was gentle and polite to everyone, including me.

The days passed, one by one. I became Star Dust’s most reliable secretary, organizing files, arranging schedules, fending off pointless social engagements for Thomas, and cleaning up Richard’s messes. I learned to speak the sharpest words in the softest tone, to carry out the most precise espionage with the most humble posture. I recorded every pause of Isolde’s paintbrush, the page number of the Wolf Clan Code that Thomas read alone late at night, and the cherry blossom painting Richard gave her on her birthday—it was exquisitely drawn, but the signature, “To my dear sister,” was written with a slightly trembling hand.

But the treasure was still nowhere to be found.

I gradually began to suspect that the “treasure” Elder Darius spoke of wasn’t something you could hold in your hand at all. It might be a piece of knowledge, a ritual, a power hidden in her blood that only awakened at specific moments. And I, a “mutt” whose own bloodline was a contaminated mess, didn’t even have the right to get close to it.

I took the initiative to contact Elder Darius. “I want to marry Richard Thorne.”

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