Spirit Beast's Vengeance

The pain hit me so hard it felt like my soul was being ripped out. I was Jocelyn Fuller, wife of Ethan Blakely, living a quiet life rooted in Southern tradition, bound by an ancient pact to guard his family' s fortune through my sacred albino alligator. Then, terror struck. My spirit beast, my very essence, was brutally killed – skinned, burned, leaving me collapsed and vomiting blood, feeling every agonizing second of its death through our shared bond. My husband, Ethan, returned, not with remorse, but with rage, fueled by his "devout Christian" mistress, Maria, and her televangelist, Brother Rufus. He accused me, the woman who gave him everything, of barrenness and jealousy, publicly shaming me, ordering me whipped for a truth only I knew. How could the man I loved, the man I saved from death three years ago using my very life force, believe such monstrous lies? How could he betray me so utterly, sacrificing the very source of his family's power and my own soulmate for a manipulative woman and her supposed "miracle child"? As the whip descended, each lash shattering my skin, the ancient seal holding back my true power fractured, transforming passive pain into an earth-shattering roar of awakening.