

After my older sister Rachelle came home from dialysis, the atmosphere at home was suffocating. She curled up on the couch, thin as a rail. She was nagging me hard and telling me not to tire myself out too much at work. Dad was by the door smoking. To get money to treat Rachelle’s condition, he had sold our old house and land. Dirty and muddied, my fiance, who had always viewed Rachelle as a sister of his own, brought home his week’s salary. They all lamented how unfair life was to already poor and suffering people who had to suffer even more. I looked at myself in the mirror with my bleeding nose and flushed away the report with my acute leukemia diagnosis. During dinner, Dad suddenly said, “Ryleigh, Rachelle needs a kidney. You’re healthy and young. You might be a match.” I looked at Rachelle’s pleading eyes and coldly put my cutlery down. “I won’t do it. I’ll be a cripple with one less kidney. How am I supposed to find someone to marry then?” Dad slapped me hard, even as my fiance called me ungrateful. I slammed the door shut as I left. I looked for the nearest room to the hospital to rent so that I could wait it out until I died. The room I found was only five blocks away from the organ donation center.

When I was diagnosed with terminal Inner Wolf Decay, a System found me. It told me that if I could win the wholehearted romantic or familial love of just one out of four specific werewolves, I would get a healthy body and live. But for five years, I failed to win over a single one. Because they all fell for the same Omega—the fragile, hypocritical Chloe. Just because she framed me, claiming I ordered rogues to attack her, my targets glared at me with nothing but absolute disgust. My biological brother, Caleb, told me, "I don't have a sister as vicious as you." My pack healer, Julian, didn't believe I suffered from depression. He glared at me with revulsion and said, "Chloe is the one who got hurt. Stop playing the victim." My childhood friend, Victor, stared at me coldly. "You're so toxic. I really wish you'd just die." Later, just as they wished, my mission failed, and my inner wolf was actually going to die. But then, they were the ones crying and begging me not to go.