The Tyrannical Wolf King's Contract Bride-Chapter 71: Common Enemy

Lila’s POV

Sunlight crept in, inch by inch. First, it illuminated the freshly cut lilies on the windowsill, the edges of their white petals shimmering with a faint, mother-of-pearl-like glow. Then, the halo of light flowed slowly, washing over the mahogany desk, over the tablet that had just finished playing the video, and finally, came to rest on my hands, which were folded in my lap.

My fingertips still tingled with the memory of the brutal force from last night’s surveillance footage—of Richard grabbing Martha’s hair. It wasn’t a real touch, but an unshakable tremor left behind in my nerve endings by the memory.

I looked down at my hands.

These hands had painted countless watercolor sketches as my mother taught me, and mixed her favorite cobalt blue and titanium white more times than I could count. These hands had written my own name on the concrete floors of the orphanage and clutched a thin university acceptance letter bearing the name "Lila Bennett" on the marble steps of the Goodrich family’s home. These hands had also been held tightly in Jasper’s scorching palms, tracing the fresh bullet wound on his arm again and again in the dead of night at Moon Hidden Villa.

But now, it felt as if these hands didn’t even know who they belonged to anymore.

Ever since I got married, it felt like a new layer of fog was lifted every single day.

Layer after layer of fog, like a silent, creeping tide, had completely submerged me.

I lifted my head and looked out the window.

In the distance, the city skyline was gradually coming into focus in the crisp air. The glass curtain walls reflected the light of the rising sun—glaring, sharp, and possessing an undeniable sense of reality.

But this reality only made me feel a deeper sense of emptiness.

I’ve lived for twenty-five years, and the world I thought I knew turned out to be nothing more than an elaborately crafted mask, riddled with cracks. All my memories, my entire understanding of the world, all my definitions of "home," "family," and "the past"—all of it had been utterly overturned, shattered, and then pieced back together overnight into a truth I didn’t recognize, one filled with blood and lies.

"Lila?"

Zoe’s voice brought me back to the present.

She brought over a glass of warm milk, its sides fogged with a faint white steam, and placed it on the small table beside me.

Outside, a sparrow landed on the windowsill. It tilted its head, its beady black eyes studying us with curiosity. It flapped its wings and flew away again, leaving only a few tiny feathers to twirl and drift slowly down in the morning light.

"That’s just how life is," Zoe said suddenly. Her voice was soft, but it was like a pebble dropped into the silent lake of my heart. "You think you’re standing on the shore, seeing the whole ocean. But in reality, the sand beneath your feet might just be a speck of dust floating on its surface."

I turned my head to look at her.

She was leaning against the back of her chair, her hands crossed over her stomach. Her face lacked its usual bold, slightly provocative smile, replaced by an almost transparent calm. The morning light fell on her light brown irises, making them look like two pieces of amber pierced by the sun—clear, serene, and holding an understanding that far surpassed her age, an understanding that bordered on compassion.

"Ordinary people could never imagine that a world of Werewolves exists," she continued, her voice as steady as if she were stating a simple law of physics. "And just like that, we Werewolves might also be unaware of many other beings. I was born in a wilderness tribe in Africa. Beyond North America, there are the snow wolf packs of Siberia. And above the Wolf Clan, there might be even older, more silent Watchers."

She paused, her gaze landing on my face, her eyes gentle but firm.

"It’s like your human technology." A faint smile touched her lips, and it held a strange, intelligent light. "You explore the Earth and discover continental drift. You explore the moon and discover it’s not a dead world. You explore the solar system and discover an ocean under the ice of Europa. You explore the galaxy and discover black holes devouring stars. You explore the universe and discover that dark matter is what truly reigns..."

She reached out a hand, her fingertip tracing a gentle arc in the air as if sketching an invisible star chart.

"Every ’discovery’ is accompanied by a ’shattering’ of old ideas. Every ’shattering’ means a ’new understanding.’ Lila, your past life wasn’t filled with deception. Rather, the world was waiting for you to discover more of it."

I looked at her.

I looked at the bright, unquenchable flame in her eyes, at the quiet wisdom on her face that belied her age.

"I’ve only ever joked around with you before," I said, feeling her words break through some stubborn wall in my mind. "I never realized you had such profound insights."

Zoe smiled. Her expression finally regained its usual playful vitality, tinged with a bit of cunning, like the sun at last breaking through the clouds.

"Because I’m a prodigy," she said, her tone filled with a matter-of-fact pride. But then, that pride quietly settled, transforming into a deeper, almost gentle honesty. "My entire clan was wiped out, leaving only me. Maybe all their wisdom was left to me."

She didn’t avoid my gaze, just met it openly, as if she were talking about the most ordinary thing in the world.

My heart clenched painfully.

"Your clan..." I began, my voice soft but heavy with an irrepressible weight. "Why were they all killed?"

The smile on Zoe’s face slowly vanished.

She didn’t answer right away. She just lowered her head, looking at the hands folded over her stomach. They were slender and clean, her nails neatly trimmed, but across one knuckle was a faint, almost invisible old scar—from where a collapsing, burnt beam had grazed her as a child, in the ruins of a torched tribe in Africa.

She was silent for a long time.

So long that the sparrow from before flew back to the windowsill, tilted its head, and resumed studying us.

Then, she looked up.

Her gaze was calm. There were no tears, no hatred, only a bottomless exhaustion that comes after weathering a great storm, and an almost cruel clarity.

"It was also over a treasure," she said. Her voice was quiet but piercingly clear, like a stone dropped into the darkest corner of my soul. "It’s like with your mother’s death, and the way you and your uncle are being watched. They are always pursuing the location of this so-called treasure."

My whole body went rigid.

"Then your enemy is...?" I heard myself ask, my voice dry, hoarse, and trembling.

Zoe nodded, confirming my unspoken suspicion.

"It’s Derek," she said. "The thing he wanted, the thing we were protecting—in the end, they both became his excuse to slaughter us."

"And what he wants most of all is to steal what belongs to Jasper—the revered crown of the Werewolf King."