Prologue

Ragged breathing cut through the dense forest path.

“Hah, hah!”

Every frantic step was desperate, bordering on wild.

A glance over her shoulder caught black-masked assassins in pale blue eyes. There had been two of them at first, but their numbers kept growing.

‘D*mn it all!’

The gap was closing.

Ella snapped her head forward and ran, teeth clenched.

A trail of red blood scattered across the ground where her small body passed. The pure white saintess robes she wore were ruined with blood and dirt.

The smell of death pressing in from all sides made her head swim.

The forest path ended, and a salt-thick sea wind slammed into her.

The blazing crimson sunset stabbed at her eyes like an *ssault. She winced hard.

“Ugh!”

The Kraitus coastline under that dying light was thick with a grim, oppressive air. The dizzying sea cliffs stained in shades of vermillion were a breathtaking sight, but standing at death’s door, Ella found them only grotesque.

Whoosh.

Before she could even adjust to the sudden open view, a dagger came flying from behind.

It missed and lodged into the cliff’s edge. Small stones kicked by her feet tumbled over the side.

One step back and she would fall.

‘How many are there?’

Seven? Eight? For a job that was just killing one woman, the number of assassins was absurdly excessive.

Their intent to finish the job was unmistakable.

“Unbelievable.”

They surrounded her like hunters driving a fox into a corner.

Behind her, a sheer drop to the coast. In front, ten assassins.

Every direction was death.

‘I can’t end here like this!’

Ella grabbed her skirt and spun around.

A sharp, piercing ring tore through her injured left ear. The pain was like a blade driving in, and she crumpled, clutching her ear.

Dark red blood seeped steadily between her fingers. Her eardrum must have burst. She couldn’t hear a thing.

“Ugh!”

Ella grimaced and shook her head violently against the shrieking noise.

The violent motion loosened her hair tie, and long, full platinum-blonde hair spilled into the wind in a tangled mess.

A pointless death like this was never part of the plan.

She had only just laid the first stones of her revenge……

‘It can’t end like this.’

Helpless against the excruciating pain, Ella could do nothing.

Just before the sharp ringing swallowed her whole, something caught in her wavering line of sight.

A massive shadow.

‘……What is that?’

Before she could think, black and red erupted together.

Her vision was blurred, and the only sound was the piercing ring in her ears. Ella had no idea what was happening.

Then came the overwhelming stench of blood.

Her focus returned slowly.

“What in the world……”

The carnage spread before her left her speechless. She had been fleeing assassins only moments ago, so the disorientation was complete.

Every single one of the assassins who had been chasing her was dead, torn to pieces.

The bodies were so mangled they were barely recognizable, like something a demonic beast had gotten to.

The visual shock seemed to dull even the ringing in her ears.

‘What happened here.’

Ella’s gaze dropped to a severed wrist lying at her feet.

She picked it up without flinching, and her eyes narrowed.

“……This crest.”

A small tattoo was inked on the wrist.

A crescent moon inside a black triangle. Ella recognized the family it belonged to.

‘These were the Orpen duchy’s elite soldiers.’

The Orpen duchy was the family of Dienne, the crown prince’s longtime lover and current crown princess consort. The one person who wanted Ella dead most of all. Ella was the Empire’s only saintess and the crown prince’s intended bride, and Dienne’s jealousy had apparently finally boiled over into action.

“Dienne, as expected…… You never surprise me.”

An assassination attempt on the saintess during the Grand Temple’s prayer ceremony. Ella smiled bitterly at Dienne’s stupidity.

The ringing surged again and she staggered.

And in that moment, a shape larger than any man approached her slowly. Red eyes fixed directly on Ella.

The instant their gazes met, the agonizing ringing stopped.

“……A wolf?”

Silver fur rippled in the sea wind, dyed red with blood.

Whether it was the color of the burning sunset or someone’s actual blood, Ella couldn’t tell. But the closer the beast came, the more certain she was that it belonged to the assassins who had been chasing her.

Even so, she felt no revulsion. No fear.

‘Or is it actually a monster?’

But there was none of the particular aura that monsters carried. It was a creature she had never seen before, yet something about it felt strangely familiar.

The wolf, easily twice her size, stopped squarely in front of her.

It lowered its head, and their eyes met at the same level.

“Ah……!”

Only then did Ella understand why it felt familiar. It was those eyes. Red eyes tangled with desire and affection.

The face of the man who had longed for her slowly overlaid itself onto the wolf.

‘Yes…… the same color as his eyes.’

His hair had been silver too, like a beast’s.

He was the man Ella had chosen as her chess piece the moment she returned. The one she had tamed as her loyal hound and sharpest blade, all to bring the Becarto Empire to its knees.

“You…… look so much like someone I know.”

For a moment, the wolf’s mouth opened. It almost looked like a smile.

Ella forgot her own situation entirely and reached out on impulse.

She stroked the beast’s fur with the same tenderness she had once used to run her fingers through the man’s hair in a forest cave somewhere.

“Did you help me just now……?”

As if in answer, the silver wolf pressed its nose into her chest and burrowed close. It closed its eyes and soaked in her warmth, as though it had been waiting for her touch all along.

The wolf’s sudden behavior was absurd, and yet Ella’s heart began to pound.

Reacting like this to a beast.

“I must be losing my mind.”

His face surfaced again. Her heartbeat quickened further, rushing through her veins.

She had thought she was taming him. Thought she had made him her perfect, devoted hound……

‘Was it me who got tamed instead?’

The thought struck her out of nowhere, and Ella laughed softly at herself.

***

Not long after that strange encounter, Ella learned the identity of the wolf who had saved her.

Late at night when the moonlight had faded, the wolf came to the bedroom of the crown princess’s palace.

Ella had already spent two nights with him. She was certain.

“Haven.”

That great silver wolf was Haven.

Haven Montefeltro.

The fifth prince of the Kar Kingdom, and the chess piece she had been shaping into the man who would one day unify three kingdoms and return as emperor.

He transformed back into a human right before her eyes, and still she could barely believe it.

‘That’s impossible……’

The descendant of the wolf clan, said to have been wiped out centuries ago, was him……

And the story Haven told her next made her breath catch.

“To fully awaken my bloodline, I need three nights with the one I gave my virginity to. I gave it to you in that cave.”

Haven’s violet eyes shifted to red in an instant.

“And again in the glass greenhouse of the crown princess consort’s palace.”

A gaze drowning in fierce desire and devotion wrapped around her like a snare.

Sensation bloomed thickly along her skin, pulling up memories of the nights she had spent with him.

“We’ve already had two nights together……”

When their eyes finally locked, Haven’s curved into a languid, unhurried look.

“One more to go.”

Once his secret was out, Haven stopped holding back.

He still yielded to her every word, but something about him had become dangerous.

The man who used to flush at a single touch of her hand was gone.

Or had he simply stopped hiding what he truly was?

“Ella. Don’t smile at the Master, or the knight commander, or that godforsaken crown prince.”

The beast she thought she had tamed had come back.

Wild-eyed with jealousy.

“It just makes me want to k*ll them all.”

He said it lightly, like a joke, but Ella knew he meant every word.

Watching the killing intent settle beneath Haven’s smile, she felt regret for the first time.

“My Ella. Save that smile for me alone.”

Had it been a mistake to pull him into this revenge from the start?

Or had the real mistake been giving her heart to a mere chess piece?

“Only for me.”

Perhaps it had been wrong from the very beginning.

The moment she returned to her sister Marian’s body. That was where it had all gone wrong.

‘The reason Haven became like this……’

It was all my fault.

Ella closed her eyes tight, and her time began to roll back.