Whore of the Werewolf Billionaire

Rowena was smiling towards me; a sweet, unfeigned motherly smile that I could easily fall for if I was not on my right mind.

I blinked, hoping that I was just imagining things, that I never found this gallery hall and never heard Rowena's voice under the bright light of day.

Yet she was there, still grinning as if it's the only expression she knew. If a smile could kill,

I have already dropped dead seconds ago due to my eyes not peeling away from the image of her smiling a few moments later.

"Rowena..." I breathed, touching the frame, the names engraved on it. Rowena Cruz and Alpha Bryant. Year 2000.

"So you have found me," her eerie voice echoed in my ears. "I know that you have always been a smart girl, Elaine."

I couldn't hide my blush though. It has been a long time since I've heard a compliment from someone other than Tyler. Speaking of which...he has not come home yet even though it's past four in the afternoon, the time that he promised to me that we'll be having a marathon of Netflix movies and shows.

"Where are you and why have you managed to reach out to me?" A heartbeat later, I found myself conversing with the quietude again.

She was gone, maybe because I urged her to. This shit is already scaring me. Just by the thought of hearing your dead friend's voice while bathing in the sight of the pool is such a hair- raising, save-me-Tyler-please kind of situation.

But my curiosity didn't balk even for a second. So I let it take over, better let it lead my actions rather than letting fear guide my hands. I scanned my eyes around for about five seconds and return my gaze to the picture, studying it until—

"Is this a journal?" I swallowed the fear trying to get hold of me again, threatening to choke the breath out of me.

What if this is a dangerous book that shouldn't be opened? What if this very journal will wreak havoc here in Stella's Soul and demands the life of every resident that lives here?

'You're just overthinking,' I whispered to myself in order to calm down the rapid beating of my heart.

It helps though, yet as soon as I opened the leather journal, I realized Rowena's name is written in blood on the first page since it stinks very much and turned into a dark, brownish color.

"There, you found my journal." So this is her instrument then: the reason why she manages to talk to me at this hour.

"But why would you contact me now? Why, Rowena?!"

"This must end," her voice bounced at each picture. "With everything that happens, this must all end. With you."

This...all of these. This does not make sense. How can Rowena reach me in the living realm when she's already on the other side?

"What are you, Rowena?" My heart could have grown its own feet and escape from my very chest and run away. "You're not just a mere mortal bride, are you?!"

I stepped back, only to bump at something solid. A body.

"Rowena? How "

"Open my journal." Her voice is utterly authoritative, one that I just heard now.

"Why are you doing this?"

"Just do what I say."

So I did, ignoring the bloody handwriting on the first page.

"Read the one dated on November second, year 2000."

I released a sharp breath, "It's the day of your wedding!"

"Read it," she ordered. "Solemnly."

  'Solemnly?' I shrugged, keeping those words on my own. 'Where the heck is Tyler? Did he abandon me for good this time?'

My eyes darted to where my hand rests atop my belly, to where a growing life lingers, slowly adding to my excitement to this marriage life. Slowly driving me crazy, to be frank.

Rowena gave me a tight nod, her appearance is now a little bit less scary than when I see her during me and Tyler's first day of being married. She was wearing a classic wedding veil, her face pale but bright. No signs of blood nor violence shrouding her body. Maybe being a ghost makes you your own boss on how the hell you want to look like to someone, more like the same being alive. The difference is that one can appear as headless when being a ghost, which makes it more quirky and spooky.

I braced my mind, my heart, and my soul before flipping page after page, its sound

adding to the never-ending drumming of my pulse.

And then I found it, written in a different ink compared to most of the journal entries. It

was written in red, bloody dark red. As if Rowena dried any animal's body just to let it be the ink that tells her story on her very special day.

  Slowly but surely, I read each word, letting my stomach digest it even though it

protests and almost turning upside down.

***

  ; I will do this. I must do this.

;For it is only through her journal I can find the answers to my questions-

This is only where I can find the truth, no matter how dark it is.

"You...you're a "I drop to my knees, shock suffocating the life out of me.

I should have known. I should have known that the enemy had been inside Stella's Soul all along even before my arrival. I should have known that Rowena was not that innocent as she looks, that she's a wolf wearing a sheep's skin.

  She's a monster under the guise of a victim.

"I'm a Hearteater," she confessed, her eyes twinkling with sorrow. She can act as dramatic as she can for all I care. But to me, she's just the same as the others, as them a fucking, heart- eating, shape-shifting, cunning monsters.

  "I know what you're thinking. You hate me even more now compared to the time you've been oblivious to my true identity.

I tried to act as innocent as I could. It is the only way I can extract the truth from recent happenings. "H-how?

  Yes, I am cunning as well, but I am doing all of these for Tyler. For his kind that has become my family and for Stella's Soul.

"You may think I'm a monster," Rowena lifted her head and looked me straight in the eye. "But you must remember that all of these would never happen if you have never existed."   So existing is a sin, then. My existence is a mistake itself.

So much for hoping for a better life and the best version of myself.

; "I may be a different monster than you but I can still fix all of these. Even monsters have dreams, you know."

  She chuckled nervously. "Like conquering the world?"

"Like conquering one's fears," I answered. I tilted my head, the most swaggering smirk enlightened my face despite the dark truth that splashed my soul. "And making sure I will never make the same mistake again."

"Easy for you to say. But trust me, I have done it before and look what happened to me." Her grin is more haunting with her clean, youthful face compared to the one when she appeared as bloody as hell to me. "I strived to be different from the kind I was born with. Yet, thriving to be different is just like walking straight to the grave you never expected that will one day spill your end along the way." She clicked her tongue before inhaling like me, disregarding the fact that she's already dead. "Just do what Eliane says."

  "Eliane is gone," I blurted. "I chose Tyler over her."

Rowena laughed darkly. She laughed and laughed and laughed. For minutes long. And for all I care.

She was still laughing when I slapped her face and managed to do so despite the fact that she's already a ghost. "I shall choose my fate now. I shall choose wisely. I will not let my destiny bleed like what has happened in the past."

"Choice is an illusion. Eliane is just making fun of you all this time-torturing you as if you

can still change what will happen. What must happen."

Liar. I should have known Rowena was a liar, a good naïve-looking liar. My baby kicked, I don't know how he managed to do that even though I'm still in my first trimester.

"And why should I believe you?" I muttered in a villainous tone. My left brow hoisted, my arms folded across my chest.

"You might act as strong as you are. But I tell you, the Forest Queen always wins." Rowena's challenging stare is making me vomit. She never acted like this before. Maybe she's- "You're not Rowena, are you?" I inched closer, my icy green eyes never looking away from her gaze.

And the world slowly shifted. The one I always see as bright and colorful became gray and dull, and pale. As pale as the entity now standing before me, still in Rowena's clothes. "Eliane," I whispered. "I should have known earlier it was you. Such a deceiver-" "So are you, Elaine." She eyed me and Tyler's wedding picture, the one that has the largest size compared to the other former couples who had been in the Honeymoon House. "How long are you going to continue this scheme?"

She clicked her tongue. I took a step backward. "The people around you see you as rainbows and butterflies, Elaine. How long do you think Tyler will notice that you have an uncanny resemblance to me?"

  "Stop it." My voice is but a whisper compared to Eliane's thundering one. "Do you know that Tyler is the only one who managed to get a glimpse of my painting in the Three Bitches' Temple before it was burned and the ashes tossed outside of Stella's Soul? I'd pay a thousand gold coins just to see your husband's expression that his wife is actually the very entity that he desired to end."

"No matter what you do, or say..." I filled my lungs with enough courage to speak. "I will never be like you. I may have been you and you may have been me, but I will not repeat the same mistake you have made. I have chosen Tyler and the werewolves. It's time you know that you and your Hearteaters only have a few moons to live."

Instead of anger and pursed lips, Eliane instead let my hands went still with her shivering smile. "Rowena is right. You're such a smart, brave girl compared to what I was before. But as I have said, choice is an illusion. I made you believe that you have one, as if the world and your fate have not yet been decided even before you were born."

But they already are. I can read it in her eyes, those emerald green eyes that somehow remind me of who I am. I am basically talking to myself-my old, real self. Not the self that I have made the residents of Stella's Soul come to love and smile at.

"You're carrying the heir of an Alpha," she touched my belly. I was not able to smack her hand away due to some force that made me utterly frozen to where I am. "Just as I did to Rowan's."

  I saw it. The flash of sadness, pure and not fake, gilded her appearance for a heartbeat.  

he?"

"I died even before I managed to hear him cry."

"That baby..." my voice has gone soft, and I don't know why. "He's my ancestor, isn't

The widening of her smile tells me that it's a yes. That my life has already been planned and spelled out even before I was born in this merciless world.

I am just a pig raised for slaughter, nothing more but a pawn in this game I never asked

to play. Although I am technically the Forest Queen, my body is just the vessel for Eliane, waiting

for the right time and right moment to ripe and ready to be harvested.

"Well, now that you know a little more about us. Aren't you curious about Rowena's past? Aren't you curious about the life of the former Alpha's wife that you once saw as the mother that you never had?" Eliane reached for my hand and placed it atop hers. "I, for one, grew up without a mother to call me daughter as well."

; How many more comparisons will she slap in my face just to convince me that I am not different compared to her?

"I am curious. It's just that you don't have to tell me every damn minute why the hell I

am no different from you."

She huffed, her amusement echoed in this dark-colored wall.

  I stared at her, biting my lip as if those words in my mind would never come out.

But it did. And it didn't turn out to be kind towards Eliane.