Chapter 148

Chapter 148
Fiona's POV

When I woke again, the acrid smell of disinfectant flooded my senses.

I tried to move, but my entire body felt as though it had been dismantled piece by piece, leaving me without the strength to lift even a single finger. My chest hurt most of all—there was a black hole there, steadily draining away my life force.

It was the backlash of rejection.

"Awake?"

I struggled to open my eyes and found myself looking into Professor Claremont's face. He sat beside the bed, syringe in hand, his expression shadowed by a complex mix of emotions that might have been pity.

"Professor Claremont... it's you."

My throat was parched, as if smoke were rising from it.

"Don't speak. Conserve your strength." He inserted the needle into my vein with practiced efficiency, and I felt the cool liquid flow into me. "This is a high-concentration suppressant. It should temporarily suppress the pain of the backlash."

As the medication entered my system, the agony that had threatened to tear me apart finally began to ease.

I gasped for air, and fragments of memory crashed over me like a tide: the great hall, Alexander, that cold rejection, and the sky stained crimson with blood.

I stared blankly at the ceiling as tears slid from the corners of my eyes and disappeared into my hair.

I tried to reach out to Rita—

She didn't respond.

She was curled in the farthest corner of my soul, eyes half-closed, lacking even the strength to lick her wounds. Her fur was dull and lifeless; the once-luminous gold was now caked with dust and blood. I could feel her shallow breathing, the suppressed panting of someone gravely injured. She was gathering herself, struggling, trying to piece together shattered bones from the ruins of betrayal.

"We won't think about him," I said to her through gritted teeth, fighting against the hollow sensation in my chest, as if a piece of my heart had been carved out. "We won't think about why Alexander made that decision. We won't think about those vows or those looks. Rita, we don't even have the energy to figure out why we received such great love and protection from Uncle Arthur, only to face abandonment by those closest to us in the end. Compared to that, the meaning of hatred should never outweigh the pursuit of love."

"What you need to do now is rest. Forget everything that happened in that hall that day—vomit it out like poison, and then stand up."

"We need to find Mother. We need to discover what secrets lie in the Golden Wolf bloodline. We need to make sure Uncle Arthur's death meant something. We have so much real work to do, Rita. Please... pull yourself together."

The shadow in the corner finally stirred.

Rita slowly raised her head. Those golden eyes that had once blazed like the sun were now bloodshot, yet they still held a startling defiance.

"Don't worry about me, Fiona."

Her voice was no longer resonant but hoarse and rough, like sandpaper scraping across stone.

"No one can truly break me. I'm just... working very hard to forget all of that."

She rose shakily to her feet and shook the dust from her fur. Her wounds were still seeping blood.

"No injury is beyond repair. You must believe in my strength, just as I've always trusted in yours. As long as you're still standing, I will never fall."

"Fiona?"

Professor Claremont's voice pulled me back from the mental landscape into reality. "It seems you've communicated with your wolf."

He skillfully withdrew the needle from my vein.

"I believe that from now on, every day you'll be preparing to become stronger."

As the medication coursed through me, the tearing pain finally subsided enough for me to breathe.

I gasped for air, and only then did I truly take in my surroundings.

This wasn't like the seaside villa he'd brought me to before.

There were no windows. The walls were thick gray concrete, and the air carried an indescribable stuffiness, like old paper mixed with the rust of metal. The overhead lighting was dim and oppressive, creating a suffocating atmosphere.

"Where is this?" I pushed myself up to sit, surveying the room warily.

"This is a secret facility," Professor Claremont replied calmly as he put away the syringe. "When you're able to move around, I'll show you a different world."

The next week passed in a blur of darkness and confusion.

Strangely, after those first few days of excruciating pain, I experienced no further loss of control over my bloodline powers. On the contrary, the force that had once been as wild and unmanageable as a beast now became docile. I could shift between human and wolf form at will, even precisely controlling each muscle's exertion and every rhythm of my breathing.

"This is nothing short of miraculous."

On the seventh day, after I pulverized a specially reinforced alloy punching bag with a single blow in the training room, Professor Claremont looked at the monitoring data and let out a genuine exclamation of wonder.

"Your recovery speed, and your mastery over your power... Fiona, you're like me—one of the rarest talents among mixed-bloods, the strongest one in ten thousand."

I shook out my slightly numb wrist and looked at the debris on the floor with a bitter smile.

"You're too kind, Professor. We live in the same era—I can't compare to a genius like you. After all, it's only a one-in-ten-thousand probability. In your presence, no mixed-blood would dare call themselves a genius."

"No, you don't understand."

Professor Claremont's smile suddenly vanished. His usually gentle face became unusually serious. He pushed up his glasses, his gaze sharp and penetrating.

"That's because you have no concrete concept of what one in ten thousand actually means."

"What do you mean?" I froze.

"Do you know how many mixed-blood werewolves exist in the world?"

His voice echoed through the cavernous underground chamber, carrying a heavy, oppressive weight.

"According to the Coexistence Council's classified archives, there are approximately sixty million registered mixed-bloods globally. Among these mixed-bloods, those with the potential to awaken their wolf spirit number less than one in a thousand. And among that one in a thousand, those who can achieve abilities like yours and mine are even rarer. There's a term called survivorship bias—have you ever considered what kind of lives those other mixed-blood werewolves lead beyond our circle?"

Professor Claremont didn't give me time to process this information. He turned and walked toward the deepest part of the basement.

I didn't hesitate long; my feet followed where my instincts led.

The air grew increasingly damp, reeking of suffocating mold.