Chapter 1

A splitting pain tore through the back of her skull, yanking her consciousness up from an endless dark abyss. Isolde gasped, her lungs burning as she choked on the icy air. She tried to force her eyes open, but her eyelids felt like lead, glued shut by dried blood.

The stench of rust hit her nostrils next, thick and metallic. Blood. It was everywhere. She tried to lift a hand to touch the source of the agony at the back of her head, but her limbs were stiff and frozen, as if they belonged to a corpse that had been lying in the snow for days.

[Host vitals critical. Life signs at 5%. Binding in progress. ]

A flat, mechanical voice echoed inside her mind, followed by a piercing alarm that made her eardrums throb. Nexus. The system. Before she could even process what that meant, a tidal wave of memories slammed into her brain, violent and uninvited.

She saw a world divided not into men and women, but into males and females. Males were born with a dual nature-a powerful beast form and a human form-granting them extraordinary strength and combat ability to hunt and provide. Females, like her, were born with only a human form, but possessed a powerful mental force.

This spiritual power was the only thing that could soothe the chaotic, raging sea of a male beastman's mind after battle. Without a female's touch, a male's spirit could shatter.

She saw hands-her hands-wielding a whip covered in barbs. She heard screams, saw men cowering on the floor, their backs torn to ribbons. Her stomach heaved, a violent spasm of nausea rolling through her as the sheer cruelty of those memories washed over her. That wasn't her. That was the original Isolde.

They were her mates, her five beast-husbands, bound by a sacred contract she treated as a chain of ownership.

The memory shifted. She was being dragged through the snow, the cold biting into her skin. Imperial guards threw her into this ruin like garbage, leaving her to rot in the Northern Wasteland. The humiliation and despair of that moment seared into her soul, mixing with the physical pain until she couldn't tell where the memory ended and her reality began.

A red panel flashed before her eyes, obscuring the dim light trying to filter through her lashes.

[Vitals: 5%. Status: Near-death. Immediate action required. ]

Isolde pushed against the floor, her palm scraping against rough, icy stone. Her hand slipped into something warm and sticky. Blood. Half-dried blood glued her palm to the floor, the sensation making her skin crawl. She was lying in a pool of her own blood.

Heavy footsteps crunched on the snow outside the door. Isolde's heart lurched against her ribs. She held her breath, forcing her body to go limp, falling back into the bloody mess on the floor.

The footsteps stopped right outside the rickety wooden door.

"Just go in and finish her," a young, furious voice snarled. The sound was thick with violence, instantly overlapping with a fragmented memory of a man being struck. She sifted through the chaotic, swirling mess in her mind, grabbing onto the face that matched that unhinged rage. Brennan. The name surfaced from the stolen memories. Brennan Shelton. "One stab, and we're free."

Isolde's blood ran colder than the stone beneath her. She squeezed her eyes shut tighter, cold sweat mixing with the blood trickling down her temple. They wanted her dead. They really wanted her dead.

"Don't be stupid." Another voice, calm and cold as the winter wind. Cameron Keller. "If we kill her now, the Imperial Court will investigate. We stab a female, we hang. It's that simple."

Isolde's mind raced, piecing it together. Cameron. It was Cameron who had shoved the original Isolde. He had pushed her, and she had hit her head on this very stone floor. The murder attempt wasn't a plan; it was already an accident that had happened.

Brennan kicked the wooden door in frustration. The rusted hinges groaned, and a shower of dust and snow fell from the rotting frame, landing on Isolde's face. She fought the instinct to flinch, to blink. She lay perfectly still, holding the corpse pose.

"If she hit her head and died on her own," Cameron continued, his tone devoid of any emotion, "then it's an accident. We walk out of here as free males. No contract, no her."

Isolde's heart sank to the pit of her stomach.

[Emergency Mission: Defuse the lethal crisis within 3 minutes. Failure results in host termination. ]

The red text pulsed like a death sentence. She couldn't fight them. She was at 5% health, facing two high-level beastmen. Her only weapons were the information gap and her acting skills.

The door groaned open. A gust of freezing wind swept into the room, carrying snowflakes that bit into Isolde's exposed skin. The sudden drop in temperature made her body betray her; a violent shiver racked her frame, her teeth nearly chattering.

Brennan froze, his hand still on the doorframe. "She's... she's still alive?" Disbelief and anger laced his voice.

Cameron's breathing hitched for a fraction of a second. Then, slow, deliberate footsteps approached her. Thud. Thud. Thud. Each step felt like a hammer driving a nail into her coffin. He stopped just a foot away from her head.

Isolde knew playing dead was over. She had to make the first move. She let out a weak, broken moan, a sound that scraped past her dry throat, full of pain and confusion.

Cameron stood over her, looking down. His eyes held no pity, only a deep, bottomless disgust.

Isolde slowly opened her eyes. She forced her gaze to blur, letting her pupils dilate as if she couldn't focus. She looked up at him, her expression hollow, lost, and terrified of the stranger looming over her.

She didn't scream. She didn't curse. Instead, she shrank back, her shoulders trembling as she tried to press herself further into the corner, away from him. Like a frightened animal.

Brennan strode over, his boots kicking up dust. He reached down and grabbed a fistful of Isolde's collar, hauling her half off the ground. "Don't play games with me!" he roared, his face inches from hers.

The collar dug into her throat, cutting off her air. Isolde's face drained of color. She didn't fight back. She didn't summon the contract power to punish him. She just stared at him, her eyes wide and innocent, filled with a confusion that bordered on stupidity.

Her lips trembled violently. Tears welled up in her eyes, spilling over her lashes-not from anger, but from pure, unadulterated fear. She looked from Brennan's furious face to Cameron's cold one, her voice barely a whisper.

"Who... who are you?" She swallowed hard, the words scraping out. "And who... am I?"

The room went dead silent. Brennan's hand, still gripping her collar, froze in mid-air. Cameron's eyes, which had been as unreadable as a dried well, finally flickered with a crack of sheer, absolute shock.