The two brute Shifters tossed Elijah onto the hard dirt floor of the thatched hut. They didn't even spare him a second glance before turning to leave.

Kaylee stood by the door, her face an emotionless mask, and waved them away dismissively.

The second the heavy wooden door clicked shut, the strength vanished from Kaylee's legs. She collapsed onto her knees in the dirt, gasping for air as if she had been holding her breath for an hour.

"Quest Complete," Alex's voice chimed in her head. "Soul-detonation successfully prevented. Reward: 100 Essence Points."

Kaylee stared at Elijah's ash-gray face. His chest was barely moving.

"What good are points? !" she screamed in her mind. "He's bleeding to death!"

"Host has unlocked the Nexus Dimensional Store," Alex replied, completely unbothered by her panic.

A virtual storefront, glowing with soft blue light, expanded in the air before her.

Kaylee's eyes darted across the holographic shelves. She saw broad-spectrum antibiotics, sterile surgical kits, and even modern firearms. But the prices were astronomical-thousands of Essence Points each.

She looked at her pathetic balance of 100 points. Despair clawed at her throat.

She frantically swiped down to the clearance section at the very bottom.

Quickly, she spent 50 points on a bottle of "Basic Hemostatic and Anti-inflammatory Powder," 40 points on a bundle of two clean, woven linen robes," and 10 points on a bar of "Lavender Essential Oil Soap.

The three items materialized out of thin air, dropping onto the rough stone table in the corner of the hut.

Kaylee grabbed the bottle of hemostatic powder and crawled over to Elijah. She reached out to pour it on his chest, but stopped.

His wounds were completely packed with black mud, dried blood, and filth from being dragged across the plaza. If she applied the medicine directly over the dirt, she would seal the bacteria inside. It would cause a massive, lethal infection.

Kaylee looked down at her own hands. Her fingernails were caked with black grime. The animal skin she wore smelled like rancid meat and old sweat.

If she touched his open wounds now, she would be the one to give him sepsis. In this primitive world, basic hygiene was the difference between life and death.

She had to decontaminate herself first.

Kaylee grabbed the lavender soap and walked over to a large stone vat in the corner of the room, which was filled with freezing, murky water.

She stripped off the foul-smelling animal skin, shivering as the cold air hit her bare skin.

She looked down into the water. Reflected on the surface was a face covered in soot and dirt, but beneath the grime, the bone structure was breathtakingly stunning.

Kaylee cupped the freezing water in her hands and splashed it onto her face, gasping at the shock of the cold. She rubbed the soap between her palms.

Thick, white lather formed instantly. The sharp, clean scent of lavender exploded into the air, aggressively pushing back the stench of rot and blood that filled the hut.

She scrubbed her skin raw, washing away the filth of the original owner. She washed her long black hair until the water ran clear.

When she finally pulled the soft, clean linen robe over her head, Kaylee felt like a human being again. The fabric was rough by modern standards, but compared to the rotting furs, it was heaven.

She ran her fingers through her wet hair, taking a deep, grounding breath.

"Elijah's vital signs are dropping," Alex warned.

Kaylee snapped back to reality. She looked at the stone vat. The water inside was now gray and soapy. She couldn't use it to clean his wounds.

She grabbed a chipped clay pot from the table. She had to go to the stream outside the settlement to get clean water.

Taking a deep breath to brace herself, Kaylee pushed open the wooden door and stepped outside.

It was late afternoon. The tribal Shifters were gathering in the open spaces, preparing to distribute the day's hunted meat.

Kaylee kept her head down, trying to make herself as small as possible as she walked quickly toward the sound of rushing water.

But she couldn't hide.

The powerful scent of lavender cut through the smell of raw meat and unwashed bodies like a knife. Every male Shifter in the vicinity stopped what they were doing.

Heads turned. Eyes widened.

Kaylee, scrubbed clean and wearing a strange, pristine white fabric, looked like a glowing goddess walking through a slum.

The low hum of male voices instantly died, replaced by a heavy, predatory silence.

Kaylee gripped the edges of the water-filled clay pot, her knuckles turning white. She turned away from the stream, desperate to get back to the safety of her hut.

A massive shadow suddenly fell over her, blocking the sunlight.

Kaylee stopped. She slowly tilted her head up, her eyes meeting a pair of bright, amber-colored slitted pupils.

It was Gus Novak, a young Tiger Shifter warrior from the tribe. He was shirtless, his torso a landscape of thick, corded muscle covered in faint orange stripes.

Gus stared down at Kaylee's pale, clean face and the damp black hair clinging to her collarbones. His Adam's apple bobbed violently in his throat.

A chorus of low, encouraging whistles erupted from the other male Shifters watching from the tree line.

In this world, the biological rules were absolute. Females were the only beings capable of soothing a male's volatile energy. Because they were so rare, males were driven by a desperate, instinctual need to court them.

Kaylee cursed internally. She didn't have time for this primitive mating ritual. She kept her face blank and stepped to the side, trying to walk around him.

Gus immediately stepped into her path, his massive frame an immovable wall.

"Kaylee..." Gus stammered, his cheeks flushing a deep red. "You... you smell really good today."

He wiped his large, calloused hands nervously on his leather skirt. Then, with the eager expression of a dog presenting a bone, he reached into a pouch at his waist and pulled out a bright yellow, perfectly round fruit.

"This is a Sweet Pomelo," Gus said, holding it out to her. "I found it deep in the forest today. For you."

Kaylee knew the lore. Offering a rare, sweet fruit was the ultimate, formal declaration of courtship from a male Shifter.

She stared at the fruit, her stomach twisting with anxiety. She just wanted to save the dying man in her hut.

She opened her mouth to reject him.

"Recommendation: Accept the offering," Alex's voice chimed in her head. "Rejecting a tribal warrior's courtship in public will provoke hostility. Given your current lack of physical power, making enemies is highly illogical."

Kaylee snapped her mouth shut. The system was right.

She forced the corners of her mouth up into a stiff, fake smile.

She reached out her clean, pale hand and took the heavy fruit from his palm. "Thank you, Gus."

Gus's amber eyes lit up like fireworks. Behind him, a thick, striped tiger tail materialized out of thin air, wagging frantically from side to side in uncontrollable joy.

"Let me carry the water for you!" Gus offered eagerly, reaching for the clay pot.

Kaylee took a sharp step back, dodging his hands. "No need. I have to get back and... discipline my slave."

The word 'slave' made the joy instantly vanish from Gus's face. His lips curled back in a sneer of disgust.

"That feral monster is dangerous, Kaylee," Gus warned, his voice dropping to a serious growl. "You shouldn't keep him alive. He'll turn on you."

"I know how to break a beast," Kaylee said coldly, leaning into her villainous persona. "I don't need your advice."

Without waiting for his response, she pushed past him, clutching the pot and the pomelo to her chest. She practically ran the rest of the way back to her hut.

She slammed the heavy wooden door shut, dropping the heavy wooden bar into place.

Kaylee leaned against the door, exhaling a long, shaky breath. She tossed the pomelo onto the stone table and hurried over to Elijah.

She couldn't just use the raw water to clean him. She placed the heavy clay pot over the smoldering fire pit in the center of the room, adding a few dry logs to stoke the flames. It took agonizing minutes for the water to reach a rolling boil, but she refused to compromise. It wasn't completely sterile, but boiled water was infinitely safer than rubbing raw, bacteria-laden stream filth into his open wounds. Once it had cooled to a lukewarm temperature, she knelt in the dirt beside him. Tearing a strip of clean linen from the hem of her new robe, she dipped it into the cooled water.

With agonizing care, she began to wipe away the black mud and dried blood from Elijah's face.

As the grime washed away, his true features were slowly revealed.

He had a high, aristocratic nose, a razor-sharp jawline, and thick, dark lashes. Even unconscious and battered, his face possessed a suffocating, aggressive beauty and an undeniable aura of nobility.

Kaylee's breath hitched. Her heart skipped a beat.

Kaylee stared at the glowing blue text hovering above the unconscious man's chest.

[Identity: Locked - High-Level Bloodline Detected]

Her brain short-circuited. She sat back on her heels, her mouth falling open.

"A dormant bloodline?" Kaylee's thoughts stuttered. "So the royal bloodline from the novel—it's real. And it's still sleeping inside him right now."

She stared at the locked identity tag hovering above his chest. A cold tendril of unease coiled in her stomach. The novel had mentioned his royal awakening, but the system was treating this like classified data—something even the book hadn't fully revealed.

"What exactly is locked behind that clearance wall?" she demanded.

"Insufficient clearance," Alex replied with maddening indifference. "Furthermore, his hidden status is irrelevant to your primary objective of basic survival."

Kaylee clenched the damp linen strip in her fist. She knew who he was supposed to be. But if the system was hiding something even from someone who had read the book, then the story she thought she understood was only the surface layer.

Kaylee dragged her hands down her face, letting out a frustrated groan. She had already learned his full history from Alex's briefing—the Moon Wolf Kingdom, the murdered parents, the traffickers, the decade of slavery. The dragon fragment lodged in his soul was the real problem, and it wouldn't matter what bloodline he carried if she couldn't stabilize his Chaos Index. Right now, he wasn't a prince or a curse-bearer. He was just a patient bleeding out on her dirt floor.

She grabbed the wet linen cloth and moved down to his chest, gently dabbing at the horrific, bone-deep whip marks.

Every time she wiped away the blood, Kaylee's own chest ached. The sheer brutality of the wounds was sickening. What kind of psychopath was the original Kaylee?

Once the wounds were clear of mud, Kaylee grabbed the bottle of hemostatic powder. She tilted it, letting the fine white dust fall onto the deepest laceration.

The moment the powder touched the raw flesh, it emitted a faint, sizzling sound.

Elijah's body violently arched off the floor. A guttural, animalistic roar of pure agony ripped from his throat.

His eyes remained squeezed shut, trapped in some hellish nightmare, but his right arm lashed out blindly.

As his hand swung through the air, the bones in his fingers cracked and elongated. Thick black fur erupted from his skin, and his fingernails morphed into razor-sharp, curved wolf claws.

Kaylee tried to throw herself backward, but she wasn't fast enough.

The tip of his black claw grazed her cheek.

Kaylee cried out, tumbling backward into the dirt. She clamped her hand over her cheek, feeling the warm, sticky slide of her own blood. Her heart hammered so violently she thought her ribs would crack.

Her cheek stung, raw fear screaming at her to run. The metallic scent of her own blood filled her nose. But as she watched him thrash, the system's blinding red warning of a soul-detonation echoed louder in her mind than her own terror. If he tore those wounds open and bled out, she would be erased from existence. Survival shoved the fear aside, replacing it with a cold, desperate adrenaline. She couldn't let him die. She just couldn't.

She scrambled forward on her hands and knees. Ignoring the terrifying black claws, she slammed both of her hands down onto his bare shoulders, using all her body weight to pin him to the floor.

"Shh... It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you," Kaylee whispered frantically, her native English slipping out in her panic.

She didn't know if it was the strange, foreign words, the soothing tone of her voice, or the medicine finally taking effect, but Elijah's violent spasms slowly began to subside.

His breathing remained ragged, but his body went limp. The black fur and claws melted away, returning his hand to a human shape.

"Chaos Index steadily declining," Alex reported, its robotic voice cutting through the silence. "Target is currently unconscious. His threat perception is dropping passively. Index now at 80% and still trending downward."

Kaylee was drenched in sweat. Her arms shook as she quickly sprinkled the powder over his remaining wounds. Less than half the bottle remained.

She grabbed a relatively clean fur from her bed and draped it over his shivering body.

Exhausted, Kaylee slumped against the wooden wall.

Night had fallen. The temperature inside the hut plummeted, the cold seeping into her bones.

Drawing on her memories of camping trips, Kaylee grabbed two flint stones and some dry moss from a corner. After several frustrating, skin-scraping minutes, she finally managed to spark a small fire in the center fire pit.

The orange flames pushed back the darkness, casting long, dancing shadows against the walls.

Kaylee's throat was parched. She looked at the pomelo on the table. She tore off the thick rind and ate half the sweet, juicy flesh, groaning at the burst of sugar.

She glanced at the remaining half of the pomelo. It was a gift from Gus, a literal political hot potato in this tribal society. Rejecting it to his face was bad, but feeding his ultimate declaration of courtship to a lowly slave was an extreme insult that could get her killed if discovered. She hesitated, her fingers hovering over the fruit. But right now, the dying man needed the sugar and hydration more than she needed to manage a tiger warrior's fragile ego. Survival first, diplomacy later. She squeezed the juice from the remaining half into a clean wooden bowl, mixing it with a little warm water from the clay pot.

She crawled back to Elijah. Slipping her hand beneath his neck, she gently lifted his head. She pressed the rim of the wooden bowl to his cracked, bleeding lips, tipping it slowly.

Elijah's throat worked instinctively, swallowing the sweet, life-saving liquid.

Kaylee watched his face soften in his sleep. Without thinking, she reached out her free hand to brush a damp lock of black hair away from his forehead.

The absolute second her fingertips brushed his skin, Elijah's eyes snapped open.

They were not human eyes. They were the glowing, predatory gold of a wolf in the dead of night.

There was no confusion in his gaze. No grogginess. There was only absolute, freezing, murderous intent.

Kaylee's hand froze in mid-air. The golden eyes locked onto hers, and it felt like she was staring down the throat of a loaded shotgun. The blood in her veins turned to ice.