Alisa POV: "Get out of the car, Alisa. Don't make me repeat myself," Antwon Gordon said, his voice cold as he slammed the door of the black Maybach. I pushed my door open and stepped out. A freezing wind carrying the sharp scent of cedar and motor oil hit my face. Ahead of me stood the main residence of the Gordon Pack, a massive stone mansion that looked like a medieval fortress. Antwon didn't look back at me. As a senior executive of the Gordon wolf pack, he walked straight up the marble steps, the gold signet ring on his finger glinting faintly under the streetlights. Yesterday he had taken me in from a impoverished border territory—not out of kindness, but because he needed a pawn to marry in place of his own biological daughter, Jayde Gordon, a pawn that could be discarded at any moment. I picked up my faded canvas bag. The jagged scar running across my chest throbbed with a dull ache against my ribs. Keep a blank face, I followed him up the steps. Two guards pushed open the heavy oak doors. The glare of the crystal chandelier made me squint, and the thick, suffocating pressure of high-ranking werewolves filled the foyer. In werewolf society, genetics dictated everything from the moment of birth, and those at the top made sure the air itself reminded you of your place. A maid in a crisp uniform hurried forward. It was Tessa. She took Antwon's tailored coat with a bow, then turned her gaze on me like a radar. She twitched her nose and her eyes filled with open disgust. "Mr. Antwon, is this the girl you brought back from the border?" Tessa asked. She covered her nose with her hand and took half a step back. "She doesn't have a single trace of an inner wolf's scent on her. She's completely wolfless. In our world, a genetic defect who can't shift or access the pack mind-link smells worse than a rat in a sewer." Antwon frowned and pulled a wet wipe from his pocket, scrubbing his hands as if sharing the car with me had dirtied his skin. "Watch your mouth, Tessa. Take her to the guest room at the end of the second-floor hallway, and make sure she doesn't wander around." He turned his head toward me, his gaze dripping with condescension. "Alisa, the Gordon Pack is a billion-dollar enterprise, and we don't feed freeloaders. Stay in your room and behave. I have an important arrangement for you in a few days." I didn't even lift my eyelids. "Fine." Antwon's jaw tightened at my flat tone. He let out a cold snort and walked up the grand staircase. As soon as the master was out of sight, Tessa dropped her polite posture and sneered at me. "Follow me, you gene-less trash. Don't get your dirty shoes on the Persian rug." I said nothing, following her up the service stairs as the wooden steps creaked under our feet. The room at the very end of the second-floor hallway was cramped and damp, with a narrow window that could only be pushed open an inch. Tessa tossed a brass key onto the narrow single bed. "Dinner time is over. Pack rules state we don't save leftovers for strays, so you can starve tonight." She glared at me, crossing her arms over her chest. "Don't think being adopted means you're a real Gordon now. You're just a scapegoat brought here to take someone else's place." "Shut up," I said, my voice completely flat. Tessa froze, her mouth parting in shock as if she couldn't believe a wolfless girl dared to talk back to an Omega servant. She gritted her teeth, her face flushing red. "You just wait!" She slammed the door shut so hard the walls shook. Silence returned to the small room. I walked over, turned the deadbolt, and threw my canvas bag onto the bed. Unzipping the main compartment, I reached into the false bottom and pulled out a heavily modified, custom red terminal. I pressed my thumb to the sensor. The screen lit up, and cascading green code flooded the display as I connected to the encrypted interface of the Apex Network, the cross-pack dark web. A soft chime sounded. My exclusive ID, Cipher V, blinked in the top right corner as the supreme administrator. Dozens of encrypted emails sat in my inbox, with a high-bounty intrusion commission pinned at the very top. I yawned and rubbed my stinging eyes as a wave of narcoleptic drowsiness washed over my brain. "Make it short," I murmured to myself, resting my fingers on the keys. I hit the enter key and launched my decryption sequence. Instantly, the target's top-tier corporate firewall flashed a red alert, attempting to back-trace my IP address. My fingers flew across the keyboard, injecting a ghost protocol in three seconds flat that bypassed their core defense. The screen turned green. A system notification confirmed that the fifty-thousand-star-coin bounty had been wired to my offshore anonymous account. I closed the red terminal and shoved it under the thin pillow. My stomach cramped with a quiet growl. Closing my eyes, I decided to sleep for an hour before heading down to the kitchen to find food. Just then, the terminal vibrated under my pillow. I pulled it out and saw a direct message from Nightshade, the number-one ranked hacker on the leaderboard. "You arrived?"

Alisa POV: I stared at Nightshade's two-word message on the glowing screen, my thumb hovering over the keypad before I pressed the mute button without replying. A heavy wave of exhaustion crashed into my skull. Ever since my original wolf core was violently cut out of my chest years ago, this chronic narcolepsy had been impossible to control. I pulled a black sleep mask over my eyes, dropped onto the hard mattress, and fell into a deep coma-like sleep. Hours later, a sharp cramp in my stomach woke me up. Outside the narrow window, the estate was pitch black. I pulled off my sleep mask and checked my red terminal; it was eleven o'clock at night. I unlocked my door and stepped out. The second-floor hallway was dead silent, lit only by dim wall sconces. Relying on my photographic memory of the building's layout, I walked down the winding back stairs and found the mansion's open-concept kitchen. I pulled open the massive double-door refrigerator. Cold air spilled out, revealing shelves packed with raw, bloody steaks and high-calorie energy supplements designed for a werewolf's rapid metabolism. There wasn't a single piece of cooked food meant for a normal stomach. Moving to the corner pantry, I found some discarded regular vegetables, rice, and several pouches of dried medicinal herbs. I rolled up my sleeves, turned on the stove, and began prepping the ingredients with a steel knife-since silver was fatal to werewolves, not a single piece of silverware existed in this house. As a hidden master of medicinal cuisine, turning plain ingredients into a restorative meal was effortless for me. Fifteen minutes later, a rich, savory herbal aroma filled the kitchen, completely covering the metallic stench of raw meat. I had just ladled the steaming broth into a ceramic bowl when the kitchen door was shoved open. Tessa stood in the doorway in her nightgown, her eyes locked onto the bowl in my hands as her throat bobbed with a hard swallow. "What are you doing? Who gave you permission to use the kitchen stove?" she snapped, marching toward me with a nasty scowl even as her eyes gleamed with greed. I stepped to the side, dodging her reaching hand. "I found the ingredients myself." "What is that smell? Did you put some illegal performance drug in there?" Tessa demanded, stepping closer to snatch the bowl. I looked at her with ice in my eyes. "It has nothing to do with you." Tessa's face twisted with rage, and she swung her arm to knock the bowl out of my hands. "You wolfless piece of trash, how dare you talk to me like—" My eyes narrowed as I shifted my weight to strike her wrist, but the sharp clicking of high heels echoed from the corridor outside. A heavy cloud of Chanel perfume drifted into the kitchen first, clearly sprayed on thick to mask an impure, low-grade werewolf scent. "Tessa, what is all this racket in the middle of the night? I just got back from a Hollywood film set and my head is splitting." Jayde Gordon walked into the kitchen wearing a pricey silk evening gown, her light brown eyes full of arrogance and irritation. As the pampered starlet of the Gordon Pack who claimed purebred bloodline, she looked at everyone around her like dirt. Tessa instantly dropped her vicious snarl and put on a fawning smile, bowing her head. "Miss Jayde, you're back." Jayde pinched her nose with two manicured fingers and shot me a disgusted glare. "Why does the kitchen smell like a poor gutter? Who is she?" "This is the wolfless stray Mr. Antwon brought back today to take your place in the marriage," Tessa reported eagerly. Jayde's gaze swept over my cheap clothes and my bare, unmade face before she let out a sharp laugh. "So you're the replacement. Looking this pathetic, you're a perfect match to go serve that wheelchair-bound cripple from the Dawson Pack." Holding my warm bowl, I didn't give her a single glance and walked straight toward the kitchen exit. Stung by my silence, Jayde stepped sideways and blocked my path with her arm. "Stop right there! Did I say you could leave?" I halted my steps, looked straight into her eyes, and began counting down in a flat, emotionless voice. "Five. Four. Three..." Jayde froze. She clearly didn't know what I was going to do, but a cold shiver ran down her spine under my deadpan stare. "What is wrong with you? Are you crazy?" she muttered, instinctively pulling her arm back. I brushed past her shoulder with my bowl and walked into the dark hallway without looking back. Behind me, Jayde stood rooted to the tile floor, the rose tattoo on her left collarbone twitching as she clenched her fists. "You just wait! A pathetic scapegoat dares to act arrogant in my house!"

Alisa POV: After finishing my herbal soup and sleeping through the rest of the night, I walked out to the estate's back garden the next morning holding a mug of black coffee. The morning air outside was clean, free from Jayde's heavy perfume and the suffocating dominance pheromones that high-ranking wolves constantly released indoors. I looked down at the gravel path, calculating how much more money my friend Sophie needed at the research institute to fund the gene therapy for my narcolepsy. I noticed Tessa and a few other maids whispering by the hedges, clutching trash bags and casting sharp, judgmental glares my way. They were clearly waiting for an opportunity to stir up fresh trouble, their petty malice radiating in the morning sun. I didn't give them the satisfaction of a reaction. To them, this estate was the entire world; to me, it was a temporary cage I was already planning to pick the lock of. I finished my coffee and walked calmly back toward the house, ignoring the muffled snickers behind me. Climbing the stairs back to my cramped guest room, I checked that the hallway was empty before locking my door. I pulled the custom red terminal from under my pillow, typed in my passkey, and logged back into the Apex Network. On the public forum channels, thousands of users were frantically refreshing the page, trying to track down the legendary hacker Cipher V for high-level jobs. My fingers moved rapidly across the keyboard as I accessed the supreme administrator's encrypted bulletin board. I typed a single line of text: Dealing with personal matters. Cipher V is suspending all commissions indefinitely. The second I hit send, the entire dark web forum went dead silent for three seconds before exploding with tens of thousands of shocked replies. Ignoring the chaos on the public board, I switched to my private message tab. Nightshade's message from last night was still waiting. I thought for a second and typed a reply. "I arrived at a place full of stupidity and prejudice." Almost the exact second my message went through, a reply popped up on the black screen. "Need me to flatten the place for you?" Nightshade's words carried his usual arrogance. The corner of my mouth curled up slightly. "Not necessary. I can handle them myself." The other end went quiet for a moment, then sent over a string of disguised code. I recognized it instantly as a stealth IP tracking probe. Narrowing my eyes, I tapped three keys, built a reverse firewall, and bounced the probe straight back down his data tunnel. "Testing me?" I sent back coldly. "Just making sure you're safe," Nightshade replied without a hint of guilt. I ran a reverse analysis on the residual data Packets from our brief clash. A blurred geographic coordinate popped up on my map interface, showing that Nightshade's signal source was located right here in the central metropolitan territory, just a few miles from the Gordon estate. I squinted at the blinking red dot on the screen, realizing the top hacker on the leaderboard was much closer to me than I had thought.