No being in the world was born perfect.
Some were born with sharp claws, royal blood, and everything provided for them on a silver platter, while others were born unlucky, destined to always be a stepping stone for someone else—becoming so frail that even breathing felt like a chore. Blair had spent her entire life accepting where she fell on that line.
"Sign your name there, and you’ll become Mrs. Deruno."
The smooth, authoritative voice cut through the quiet room as a legal document slid across the polished glass table, coming to a halt directly in front of her.
Blair swallowed hard, her throat feeling dry and tight. She couldn’t understand what was going on. Why her? How had a penniless, terminally ill human end up sitting across from three of the most powerful pureblood beastmen in the empire?
Only twenty hours ago, she had been lying in her own blood on the floor of her run-down apartment.
The rain had been drumming heavily against the thin glass windows when Jason threw the divorce decree onto the cheap wooden coffee table. Beside him stood a lavishly dressed female beastman whose manicured claws were wrapped snugly around his arm.
She had looked around the cramped, leaky space with open disgust, scoffing at the faded curtains Blair had mended by hand.
"You’re so cheap, you can’t even take care of yourself. What makes you think you can hold on to someone like Jason? Wake up," she sneered and laughed.
"Sign it, Blair," Jason demanded, his voice flat and devoid of any warmth.
This was the fifth time he had shoved those papers in front of her.
Four times before, Blair had torn those sheets to pieces, weeping on her knees, begging him to remember the freezing winter night she found him bleeding out in an alley. She had spent every single cent of her meager coffee shop wages to buy his cheap beast-suppressants and fresh meat, nursing him back to health when no one else cared if he lived or died.
When they legally bound themselves, she had naively believed she was building a safe home of her own.
To Blair, those two years of backbreaking labor, cold nights, and skipped meals were proof of her devotion. But to Jason, they were a humiliating mark of his past weakness.
Blair sat on the edge of the worn sofa, her hands resting in her lap. Her chest burned with a deep, hollow ache. The doctor’s words from earlier that morning echoed in her mind: Your condition has crossed into late-stage pulmonary hemorrhaging. Without high-grade care, you have thirty-days at most.
With trembling fingers, Blair picked up the pen from the table. She didn’t tear the paper this time. She didn’t beg. With tears burning her eyes, she quietly signed her name on the dotted line, officially severing their bond.
Jason sneered, snatching the finalized document off the table. He tucked it into his jacket and turned toward the door, eager to leave her behind without a second glance.
As he took a step away, something inside Blair snapped. A final, desperate wave of grief surged through her aching chest. She forced her weak legs to stand, stumbling forward to grab his arm.
"Jason..." she whispered, her hands shaking as she clutched his sleeve. "Will you say... all this time, you didn’t love me at all? Not even one bit?"
Jason paused, his shoulders tense. He looked down at her small, pale hand on his coat, his face twisting with pure disgust.
"Let go of me," he growled, shoving her back with sudden, violent force.
Blair’s frail body flew backward. Her back slammed hard against the cold wall, and as her balance failed, she tumbled sideways onto the floor. Her temple struck the sharp, heavy edge of the wooden coffee table with a sickening thud.
Blinding pain exploded behind her eyes.
Blair lay collapsed on the cold floorboards, her vision blurring into dark, unstable shapes. The copper taste of blood flooded her throat as she gasped for air.
Through the haze of her fading sight, she watched Jason turn back to look at her one last time, his voice cold and mocking.
"Love you?" Jason scoffed, his sharp jaguar fangs flashing under the dim light. "Who would love a pathetic, useless thing like you? You don’t bring anything to the table. You should be glad you were at least of some use to society by taking care of me when I needed it."
He turned and walked out, slamming the heavy wooden door behind him.
Blair lay motionless on the floor, listening to the fading echo of his footsteps. His final words shattered what little was left of her heart. A useless thing...
All those years of pouring her health and her wages into him meant nothing. She had been nothing more than a temporary tool. Tears leaked from her blurring eyes, mixing with the dark blood on her cheek.
My life meant nothing, she thought silently, her chest heaving with weak, shallow breaths. It would be better if I just died right now...
As the edges of her world began to turn completely black, a strange, sharp static hummed directly inside her brain:
BZZZZT—
[Initiating connection with the host...]
Blair’s consciousness flickered in the dark. A voice...? A hallucination?
She felt a strange, quiet sense of relief wash over her broken mind. I must be dying... Well, maybe this way, the noise in my head will finally stop.
The noise of people telling her she would never be good enough, she was worthless, she stole other people’s place... They all faded, and darkness swallowed her whole.
But she didn’t die.
When Blair opened her eyes the next morning, the apartment was dead silent. The morning sun was pale and cold against her face. Her head throbbed with a dull ache, and dried blood caked her temple, but her heart was still beating.
She forced her weak body up and left the empty apartment behind.
Her steps had led her to the regional marriage bureau—not to fight, but simply to confirm if Jason had submitted the signed papers. He had. Seeing her name officially severed from his on the government display felt like a final door closing on her existence.
As she stepped outside the grand building, she found a massive, glittering crowd of beautiful, high-status women lined along the grand entrance, desperately hoping to be noticed by a fleet of dark, sleek hover-limousines.
Blair pursed her lips tightly, clutching the thin, faded fabric of her coat against her trembling frame. Compared to these glowing, impeccably dressed beastwomen draped in silks and jewels, she felt painfully out of place—like a stain on society dressed in rags.
Lowering her head, she tried to shrink into herself, desperate to slip past the lingering crowds unnoticed before anyone could mock her.
She had only taken two steps when her path was abruptly blocked.
Two tall, stern guards in black uniforms stepped directly into her way, their broad shoulders blocking out the pale sunlight. The high-status women around them gasped, whispering in shock as the guards bowed respectfully toward Blair.
"Mrs. Deruno," the head assistant standing behind them spoke smoothly, gesturing toward a private elevator. "Please come with us. The masters are waiting for you in the top-floor conference room."
Blair blinked. "Who?"
Before she could process what was happening or explain that they had surely mistaken her for someone else, she was escorted upstairs—straight into the Derunos’ realm.
Which brought her to the current situation.