The Alpha's Villainess

Chapter Eight

Look, I knew that Aurora didn’t really need my help. Obviously, she was going to be fine even if I didn’t intervene. She had a long, eventful life ahead of her, filled with many moments of retribution. But what if we could make the events of her birthday a little more... satisfying? Hopefully rewarding enough for Aurora to stop seeing me as a threat and to not hate me entirely. I was sparing her from her lowest moment, a day she described in the book as being the worst day of her life. With this plan, she would avoid all of that and make Liam into the joke instead.

Then bam – next thing you know, we’d be leaving Easthaven, laughing together about how pitiful Liam looked when she rejected him, and slowly growing closer during our journey to the Capital. A trip that would only take a few days to arrive. Just in time for her to be swept off her feet by her loving Victor, forgetting all about me in the process of the plot continuing. The next time I crossed her mind, I’d already be cozying up in a small – yet comfortable – house somewhere in the outskirts of town, with a fresh loyalty sworn to the Aeredale Empire to protect me from Easthaven, and a menial job to keep me going.

Operation: Become a Forgotten NPC.

...Well, that was the plan, at least.

As cool as I thought it would be to fully befriend Aurora and hang around to watch the story unfold, I had to remember that I wasn’t a main character who was meant to survive this world. I didn’t have good ol’ fashion ‘plot armour’ like she did. Staying nearby, even if I did manage to completely change Aurora’s opinion of me, was only going to take me down a dangerous path.

And, hey, I wasn’t delusional. I knew I wasn’t some grand hero. Having died already once, I wasn’t too keen to experience it again anytime soon for the sake of entertainment. I might have been given a second chance, but I was perfectly content with not having the spotlight on me. Not to mention, I was fairly confident I could use my modern knowledge to make a decent living for myself if I really tried. Or, rather, if I could be bothered.

Or maybe I’d just be an artist again. Because that had really been working out for me.

On second thought... maybe hospitality or retail jobs were paying decently these days.

As I’d already suspected, Aurora’s birthday was just over a week away. We stayed up the whole night talking about how we would escape, making sure to collect more supplies before the big day. For a cover as to why I knew so much, I told her about the original plan Liam had devised to embarrass her, explaining that he had wanted me to help him execute it. Using this knowledge, we were able to agree on a scheme that she seemed happy with.

She didn’t trust me fully yet, even after several days of bringing her food. I expected that though. It would obviously take a lot more than some stolen bread rolls to change her opinion of me. I just had to hope that the plan would at least ease her anxiety a little.

My biggest worry was just my ability to blend in with everyone else. I was in a completely new world now, thrown in with only basic world knowledge. It was an extreme adjustment to say the least. Where I lacked understanding on certain things, I had no choice but to play it off as part of my recovery. As if the drowning had given me temporary brain damage.

More important than anything else, and most crucial to the plan, was that I did my best to avoid other people. Including my own family and Liam. If they suspected I was too different, acting too strangely, they might go looking and discover how I went down to the basement every night after everyone went to sleep. For now, I pretended to be resting in my room for most of the day, still ‘recovering from my unfortunate accident’. It was the only thing I could think of to keep a low profile.

I still managed to learn a lot in the short time I spent in the pack, despite my efforts to stay in the background. Learning about who held what positions, the proper way to greet those of rank vs common birth, and I refreshed my memory on which werewolf mechanics the book employed. Being that there were so many different variations, it was hard to keep track. I quickly picked up how there were fated and chosen mates, second chance fated mates, a Goddess-based religion, and unquestionable alpha orders, but there weren’t things like mind link connections, omegas, lycans or half-wolf bipedal beast forms.

I also found it odd how, despite the book clearly being based on a historical fantasy setting, with royalty and castles, they didn’t always speak as formally as one would expect for the time period. After thinking on it for a while, the only thing I could come up with to explain it was that the original writer hadn’t kept the tones completely consistent between scenes. The story was solely written for entertainment purposes, so historical accuracy was clearly not high on their priority list.

I also clarified that the packs within the world were all unique and separate, each with their own Alpha, but ultimately in this region they all still bowed to a higher authority, the Alpha King. He was found within the centre of the Aeredale Empire, in a place known as the Capital. All those who resided within the walls of the Capital were referred to as being citizens within his direct ‘pack’, although any who served an Alpha within the empire was still required to adhere to Aeredale’s higher authority.

Only those who didn’t affiliate themselves with any pack, choosing to be labelled as a ‘rogue’ instead, were exempt from the Alpha King’s power. But to become such a thing was considered dirty, a large number of their population being made up of exiles or criminals. If you were a rogue, you were the unwanted scum of the werewolf world. There was rarely any coming back from such a status. This, at least, seemed to be consistent across most of the books I’d read before.

With all this in mind, there was still one thing that, no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t seem to figure out though.

“Aaaaand... shift into a wolf,” I commanded, staring at myself in the bedroom mirror. “Now.”

After an entire week of trying, I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. Now, with only a few hours until Aurora’s birthday event, I was basically out of time. It wasn’t like I had anyone I could ask for help with this either. It was something I was already supposed to know. That every werewolf knew naturally. I just had to hope that I wouldn’t need it.

With a depressed sigh, I gave up yet again. It almost felt as though I was being robbed of something incredible, arguably one of the best parts of living inside a werewolf book. I’d been dying to try it out the second I had a moment to myself, but no matter what I did, I just couldn’t seem to change forms.

Maybe once we got to the Capital I could learn. I imagined it would be a lot less stressful to try there once I was free of this place.

I looked towards the clock on my dresser, seeing the hour starting to grow late, and knew that I needed to begin preparations for the plan. Everything was going to change tomorrow morning. Maybe not even for the better if something went wrong. This past week I’d just had to keep telling myself that it was better than being burned to death via magical white flames in a few months. Yet I was nervous, nevertheless.

As I got changed and fixed up my appearance, I turned to leave my bedroom... only, as I attempted to do so, I instead found myself face-to-face with Scarlett’s mother. Someone I had managed to mostly avoid for the last few days. Someone I really didn’t have time to deal with right now.

...But someone who was now in my room anyway, looking incredibly pissed off.

And I braced myself for the slap I assumed was coming.