The Defective Wife's Lethal Comeback

The blinding glare of the crystal chandelier felt like a physical assault.

Jolie's eyelids snapped open. She tried to push herself up, but her limbs felt like they were filled with wet cement. A sickening, unnatural weakness dragged her right back down into the plush velvet of the sofa.

Before she could even process the texture of the fabric beneath her fingertips, the memories hit. They didn't just play in her mind; they electrocuted her nervous system. A high-voltage surge of another woman's life-the original Jolie Pennington's life-tore through her skull. Jolie clamped her teeth down hard on her lower lip, tasting copper as she forced herself to swallow the agonizing pain.

She was no longer on Earth. She had transmigrated into a high-tech universe ruled by Primals-males who could shift into devastating beasts, driven by a biological need to hunt and consume energy. But that energy was a poison. Without a female to act as a catalyst, to soothe their psychic sea and regulate their feral state, a Primal would eventually go mad. Females were the ultimate prize, the only cure.

Unless, of course, you were the original Jolie.

A piece of medical paper flashed in Jolie's mind. Genetic Compatibility Index: 0. A defective female. A biological dead end.

The memory shifted violently. She felt the phantom sting of a heavy paper check slapping across her face. It was General Aloys Patterson, Jolie's state-mandated Primal partner, publicly paying a colossal fine just to annul their pairing. The humiliation in the original Jolie's chest had been so profound it had literally killed her spirit.

Jolie felt the residual heartbreak lingering in her ribcage. Her stomach churned with the ghost of the original Jolie's despair. She closed her eyes, feeling the crushing weight of a life unlived, a soul broken by a society that valued only utility. For a fleeting second, the sorrow threatened to drown her own consciousness. No, she told herself, her mental voice sharp and unyielding. I cannot be swallowed by this despair. Her era is over, and now it is mine. I will not die trembling in the dark. She let out a dark, breathless scoff. Pathetic. Jolie ruthlessly crushed that lingering weakness, locking it away in the darkest corner of her mind. She didn't have time to cry over a man she didn't know. She had to survive.

The sharp, rhythmic click of high heels against marble echoed from the hallway. Someone was approaching the lounge, and they were moving fast.

Jolie's survival instincts hijacked her body. She instantly let her muscles go slack, closing her eyes and slowing her breathing to mimic a deep, vulnerable sleep.

The heavy door of the lounge swung open. The scent of expensive, synthetic roses flooded the room. Catina Serrano, her stepmother, hurried in.

Catina sank onto the edge of the sofa. A velvet-gloved hand reached out, gently patting Jolie's cheek. "Jolie, darling. Wake up."

Jolie forced her eyelids to flutter open. She let her gaze wander, perfectly playing the role of the traumatized, discarded social pariah. She looked up at Catina with wide, vacant eyes.

Catina reached into her designer clutch and pulled out a small, silver vial. A flash of pure malice danced in her eyes before she masked it with a sickeningly sweet smile. "Drink this, sweetheart. It's a portable soothing agent. It will help calm your nerves after... well, after that nasty business with Aloys."

Jolie's sharp gaze immediately caught a subtle, unnatural shift. The liquid inside the vial wasn't the clear, thin consistency of a standard soothing agent; it was thick, almost syrupy, with a faint, iridescent sheen. Combined with the flash of malice she had just witnessed, her instincts screamed. This wasn't medicine. It was an illegal, high-grade aphrodisiac.

Catina wasn't trying to soothe her. She was trying to destroy her.

Jolie kept her expression perfectly blank. She parted her lips obediently. Catina tipped the vial, letting the thick liquid slide into Jolie's mouth. The moment it hit her tongue, Jolie pressed the back of her tongue hard against the roof of her mouth, sealing her throat. She didn't swallow a single drop.

Catina watched her throat, waiting for the bob of an Adam's apple that wasn't there, then smiled in satisfaction. She stood up, grabbing Jolie by the upper arm and hauling her to her feet. Jolie let her legs wobble, playing the part of a drugged, helpless victim.

As Catina hauled her up, Jolie let out a violent, fabricated cough. She doubled over, her free hand coming up to muffle the sound, and seamlessly spat the entire mouthful of the thick liquid deep into the absorbent fabric of her own sleeve.

"Come along," Catina cooed, dragging Jolie out of the lounge and toward the VIP stealth elevator. Catina pressed the button for the top floor.

Inside the glass box, Jolie intentionally slumped, letting the dead weight of her body press heavily against Catina's side. Through the glass, Jolie's eyes darted around, memorizing the layout of the emergency stairwells and the security cameras.

The elevator chimed. The doors slid open to a silent, dimly lit hallway. Catina half-dragged, half-carried Jolie to the double doors of the presidential suite at the very end of the corridor.

Catina pulled a black keycard from her tailored jacket pocket and swiped it against the scanner. The lock clicked green. The door cracked open, revealing a pitch-black interior. A heavy, suffocating silence bled out from the room.

Then, a sound shattered the quiet. It was a low, guttural, wet breath. The sound of a massive beast struggling for air.

Jolie's heart slammed against her ribs.

"The family arranged a private therapist for you inside," Catina lied smoothly. Jolie caught the smug, calculating gleam in her stepmother's eyes. Catina had clearly thought this through. The man inside was a top-tier General, but in his feral, drug-addled state, his memory of the encounter would be completely wiped. When the authorities eventually found the gruesome aftermath, Catina would simply weep for the cameras and blame the hotel's faulty security system, washing the Pennington family's hands of the tragic accident while permanently disposing of their greatest embarrassment. Catina gave Jolie a firm shove toward the darkness. "Go on."

Jolie stumbled on purpose. As she caught her balance against the doorframe, her right hand darted out, her fingers slipping seamlessly into the pocket of Catina's jacket. She pinched the spare black keycard and slipped it into the hidden fold of her skirt in less than a second.

Before Jolie could fully stand, Catina planted both hands on Jolie's back and shoved her with brutal force.

Jolie pitched forward. She tucked her shoulder, rolling onto the thick carpet to absorb the impact and avoid snapping a wrist.

From the hallway, Catina let out a cold, venomous laugh. "Good luck, you useless trash."

The heavy wooden door slammed shut. The electronic lock engaged with a heavy, metallic thud.

Jolie was trapped in the dark.

Jolie scrambled backward until her spine hit the freezing wood of the door. Her hands flew over the surface, desperately searching for the interior release panel. Her fingers found the smooth glass of the scanner. She pressed it.

A small LED light flashed angry red. Catina had locked it from the outside using maximum security clearance. The door was a dead end.

Jolie didn't waste a single breath panicking. She reached down and unbuckled her high heels, tossing them silently aside. She pressed her bare feet into the thick wool carpet, eliminating any sound her footsteps might make.

Deep inside the suite, the heavy breathing grew louder. It was accompanied by the sound of fabric ripping and the heavy, wooden frame of a bed groaning under immense weight.

Jolie forced her eyes to adjust to the pitch-black room. A sliver of pale starlight bled through the gap in the heavy blackout curtains, casting a faint, silvery line across the floor.

It was a massive, opulent suite. In the dead center of the room sat a circular king-sized bed. A towering male figure was writhing on the mattress. The air in the room was thick, suffocatingly hot, and reeked of aggressive male pheromones mixed with the sharp, chemical tang of a military-grade aphrodisiac.

Jolie held her breath. She kept her back to the wall, sliding inch by inch toward the marble wet bar on the left side of the room. She needed a weapon.

Her hip brushed against the edge of the bar. A metal cocktail shaker wobbled and tipped over, striking the marble counter with a sharp clink.

The sound was microscopic, but in the silence of the room, it was a gunshot.

The man on the bed froze. The writhing stopped instantly.

General Aloys Patterson sat up. In the darkness, his eyes glowed with a terrifying, feral gold light. He locked onto Jolie's exact position with the precision of an apex predator.

Jolie's stomach dropped to the floor. Her hand scrambled blindly across the bar top until her fingers closed around the cold, sharp handle of a metal letter opener. She gripped it in a reverse hold, bending her knees into a defensive stance.

Aloys let out a roar that vibrated the glass in the windows. His feral index was completely redlined. The drugs pumping through his veins were destroying his sanity, demanding release.

He launched himself off the bed. He didn't run; he moved with a terrifying, supernatural speed that defied human physics. The sheer air pressure of his movement hit Jolie a second before he did.

Operating purely on adrenaline, Jolie threw her body to the right, diving into a harsh roll.

Aloys's massive hand swiped through the empty air where her throat had been a millisecond prior. His palm slammed into the solid marble of the wet bar. The stone exploded. Shards of marble shrapnel flew across the room, raining down on the carpet.

Jolie gasped, her lungs burning. The physical power of a high-level Primal was absolute. She couldn't fight this.

Aloys spun around. His chest heaved. The drugs were screaming at him to mate, but his severe mysophobia-a deep, psychological disgust of females-was violently rejecting the urge. He caught the scent of her female pheromones. A look of absolute revulsion twisted his handsome, sweat-slicked face.

He grabbed his own head, his fingers digging into his scalp as he let out an agonized groan. The contradiction between his biological drive and his psychological hatred was tearing his mind apart. He slammed his forehead into a concrete pillar, trying to use the physical pain to clear the chemical fog.

Jolie didn't wait. She bolted toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, praying she could use the letter opener to shatter the glass and climb out.

She only made it two steps.

Aloys stopped hitting the pillar. His golden eyes snapped back to her, completely devoid of human reason.

He lunged. His massive body tackled her to the floor. The impact knocked the wind out of Jolie's lungs in a violent rush. He pinned her to the carpet, his weight crushing her ribs.

Jolie screamed, thrashing wildly. She brought the letter opener down, driving the metal blade straight toward his broad shoulder.

The tip pierced his military-issued shirt, but the moment it hit his skin, it stopped. His muscles were as dense as titanium. The blade bent, completely useless.

Aloys felt the sting. His jaw ticked violently. He ripped the letter opener from her hand, crushing the solid metal into a crumpled ball of foil with his bare fist, and tossed it aside.

His burning hands clamped down on her wrists, pinning them to the floor above her head. His face lowered, his ragged, scorching breath ghosting over the sensitive skin of her neck.

Jolie couldn't breathe. The heat radiating from his body was unnatural. The drugs were taking over, and she was about to be torn apart.

Her survival instinct shattered her limits. Deep within her chest, a strange, dormant lock snapped open. A rush of pure, icy-green energy flooded her veins, racing toward her fingertips.

The green energy felt like a freezing river bursting through a dam. It surged through Jolie's bloodstream, overriding the weakness of her zero-GCI body.

In the pitch-black room, Jolie's eyes flashed with an eerie, luminescent emerald glow.

Aloys felt it. Even through the haze of the aphrodisiac and his feral madness, his combat instincts flared. The aura of the female beneath him had mutated from prey to something highly dangerous. His jaw clenched, and he tried to crush her wrists to neutralize the threat.

Jolie let out a guttural scream. She channeled every ounce of the freezing green energy into the palms of her hands and pushed it outward, flooding the environment.

In the corner of the suite, three expensive, decorative potted vines reacted instantly. The Arborgenesis Gift-a power she didn't even know she had-injected them with terrifying vitality.

The fragile, decorative stems exploded in size. Within half a second, they mutated into massive, thigh-thick vines covered in dark, pulsing veins.

Four of the colossal vines slithered across the carpet like giant anacondas. They whipped through the air and snapped around Aloys's thick ankles, locking on with the grip of a vice.

Aloys roared in shock and fury. He tried to yank his legs free, his muscles bulging as he applied thousands of pounds of force.

The vines didn't snap. His brutal strength only managed to leave faint white stress marks on the bark.

The distraction cost him his leverage. Jolie seized the split-second opening. She drove her knee upward with brutal precision, slamming it directly into his groin.

Aloys let out a choked grunt. The crushing grip on Jolie's wrists loosened just a fraction of an inch.

Jolie ripped her hands free. Her palms glowed brighter, casting a sickly green light over Aloys's enraged face. She directed the remaining vines straight at him.

Two thick branches lashed out, wrapping around Aloys's biceps. With a violent jerk, the vines hauled his massive body backward, ripping him off Jolie and dragging him through the air.

Suspended above the floor, Aloys's survival instincts took over. His body erupted in blinding, crackling blue lightning. The Thunder-attribute power of a top-tier Primal illuminated the suite in strobe-like flashes. He channeled the high-voltage electricity directly into the vines, trying to incinerate them.

Jolie's heart skipped a beat. She instinctively activated her secondary Gift: Sylvan Soul. A shimmering, translucent membrane of life energy coated the vines, acting as a perfect biological insulator.

The blue lightning exploded against the membrane. The outer bark charred and smoked, filling the room with the smell of burning wood, but the core of the vines held strong.

With a flick of Jolie's wrist, the vines slammed Aloys into the far wall.

CRASH.

The impact shook the entire hotel suite. The expensive silk wallpaper tore, and the drywall fractured into a spiderweb of cracks.

Aloys was dizzy, his vision swimming. The combination of the aphrodisiac, his psychological revulsion, and the massive over-exertion of his lightning power pushed his feral index past the point of no return. His body was shutting down.

His eyes bled crimson. With a final, inhuman bellow, he flexed his left arm so hard the bone popped, physically snapping one of the charred vines in half.

Jolie's breath hitched. She couldn't let him get loose. If he touched the floor, she was dead. She slammed her hands together, focusing all her remaining mental power into the ultimate Arborgenesis execution.

The hardwood floor beneath Aloys splintered and erupted. A massive, primary root burst from the ground directly behind him. It split into a hundred smaller, razor-sharp branches that wove together at blinding speed, forming a dense, inescapable wooden cocoon that pinned Aloys flat against the cracked wall.

Aloys thrashed wildly, his lightning sparking weakly against the wood.

The tiny thorns lining the vines dug deep into his skin, injecting a potent, plant-based neurotoxin.

Aloys's movements grew sluggish. His chest he heave as he fought the paralysis. His golden eyes, burning with a lethal promise of murder, locked onto Jolie's silhouette in the dark. He memorized her scent, her shape.

Then, the toxin won. Aloys's head rolled forward, his chin hitting his chest as he slipped into total unconsciousness.

Jolie collapsed onto the carpet. Her clothes were soaked in cold sweat. Her chest heaved as she sucked in greedy lungfuls of air.

She stared at the terrifying man cocooned on the wall. She had actually survived.

Suddenly, a crisp, mechanical voice echoed directly inside her brain.

[System Alert: Ultra-high concentration of feral regulatory energy detected. Do you wish to absorb? ]

Jolie froze. She looked up at the unconscious Aloys. The terror in her chest evaporated, instantly replaced by a cold, calculating greed.