My Most Precious Human
Chapter 43

From that night, Ezra became my family, the only family I had. I was glad to have him. He not only taught me how to fight, but he also taught me how to cope with the situation I was in and how to act in the best possible way to survive. I learned to pretend that I cared about the teachings the nuns gave the children living at St. Anna's, and that started to work to my advantage. I was given more freedom and lesser labor. The price for that was to accept the tag I was given as the "demon's child healed by God's grace". My clothes were still worn-out and the food I was given disgusting, but I wasn't being watched as carefully as before and that gave me more time to practice with Ezra.

Ezra said that I had a talent for martial arts. Although my body was small, he found my agility unique. He taught me certain techniques to use my body wisely, and at the age of ten, I was able to take down a grown, medium-skilled human. At the same time, Ezra discovered that my fighting abilities weren't the only talent I possessed. I was a quick learner, and I was always the first to understand everything in my classes. It felt extremely easy, but there were no advanced classes at the orphanage's school, so I was getting bored each day. Luckily, Ezra provided me with all sorts of books so I could learn everything I liked. Thanks to him, my life became better, more careless. I could even say that it was the time when I was happy.

Thanks to Ezra's teachings about how to deal with people I came up with a plan to trick the nuns to let me study in a form of an individual curse. That was how I managed to graduate from St. Anna's High School in less than two years, and I even managed to plead out to leave the orphanage and live on my own while working part-time at the bakery shop. When I heard that Mother Superior gave me her approval I almost burst into tears of happiness. I knew that I would still be watched by someone from the pack, but it seemed like the days of my nightmare were finally ending. I couldn't be more wrong... "I wonder why D'Apolito keeps you alive..." Ezra wondered aloud while helping me move into a shabby room, which was supposed to be my new place to live.

Ezra had never referred to my father as "Alpha". He lived among the pack, but he stayed loyal to my mother and despised Randall D'Apolito. He tried to live quietly so that his allegiance wouldn't be questioned but I knew that he lived that way to be able to help me.

"Gee... thanks, Ezra. Such uplifting words on the first day of my new life? Should I welcome each day thanking my father for letting me live?" I frowned and clicked my tongue.

"Don't tell me you have never been curious. You are useless to the pack, and he wouldn't care if he found out that you are in fact a genius, so why he didn't kill you yet?" Ezra's cruel words carried dreadfully reasonable concerns.

"I always thought that it was because of my mother. After all, she used to be an Alpha of her own pack, so father has to take her opinion into account," I stated my argument, hesitantly glancing at Ezra's serious stare.

"He put you at the orphanage because she would openly stand against him if he killed her child, but that was when the pack was far less powerful than it is now. Now, there has to be some other reason..." A worried expression painted all over his face.

"I doubt that it would be safe for you to sneak within the pack and ask about the reasons that I'm alive. Besides, you are not exactly on good terms with those around my father." I sighed.

"Are you worried about me, Princess?" He chuckled, "You underestimate the old man. I still am one of the strongest warriors the Southern Wood Pack has ever had."

I forced myself to smile, but I feared that I might lose him because of something that I initially thought as of stupid concern. No matter how strong he was, he was no match to my father, the most bloodthirsty creature in the whole southern area. Unfortunately, I knew that he would investigate it anyway. Certainly, Ezra wouldn't listen to a sixteen-year-old, no matter how smart he thought she was. It took him three months to find the first clues.

"The blood of the kids from the orphanage has always been tested... Has anyone tested yours?" he asked one day, his voice trembling in anxiety.

"Of course!" I called out, angrily clenching my teeth at the mere memory of it, "My blood has been taken at least twice a week for about five years." I shrugged.

He heaved a heavy sigh. That only made me more scared of what I was about to hear from him.

"So?" I nervously tapped the table top with my fingertips, "What did you find out?"

"Not much." He pursed his lips.

"But?" I anticipated any news from him.

"It seems that they found something valuable in your blood. I don't know what it is, but for some reason, they are waiting for you to come of age," he said while clenching his fist.

I nearly collapsed listening to his words. When I heard that I could leave the orphanage, I thought they had decided to let me live my own life, but they did it only because it was too early for me to become useful. My freedom turned out to be an illusion. I felt like an animal bred for slaughter.

"Lilith... whatever their plans are, I will not let them harm you." Ezra looked deep into my eyes, grabbing both of my hands.

I was hoping to taste a bit of college life. I graduated from high school two years earlier, and I wanted to treasure my time studying every faculty I could at St. Anna's College. I didn't know what my father was planning for me, but I knew that the little freedom that I had would end in less than two years, and Ezra wanted to make sure I would be well prepared when that day came.

From that moment, I slept three hours a day, had morning training with Ezra, and later went to college. After school activities, I worked at the bakery while carrying books to study. After work, I had another training session and additional lessons from teachers that Ezra brought for me. My knowledge expanded far beyond what I could learn at St. Anna's, but I still had to keep up appearances and earn my degree there. I had chosen philosophy and sociology, not that I had many faculties to choose from. I managed to graduate from college a month before my eighteenth birthday, and that was the day when Ezra found out what my father's plans were.

We met, as usual, on the rooftop of the building where I was renting my ramshackle apartment, but that day he acted differently. He didn't use the fire escape stairs like he always did, but he jumped from the nearby rooftop instead and immediately hid behind the storage shed.

"What's going on?" I muttered, nervously.

"The wolves are guarding the place from today. You graduated, so technically there is nothing that keeps you in this town. They will watch you closely until your birthday." He gritted his teeth.

I locked my eyes on him, my whole body trembling. "Ezra, do you know what they will do to me?"

"They are going to sell you to one of the Alphas of the northern packs," he squeezed out through his teeth.

"Sell me... as a what? A servant?" I asked, my voice shaking.

"You will become a slave," he voiced out painfully.

While his words sounded bad already, I left that he didn't tell me everything.

"So what...? Am I supposed to do laundry there, wash this Alpha's clothes or something?" I stretched my mimic muscles into a faint smile, trying to make his words less terrifying.

"Lilith," Ezra grabbed my hands and cleared his throat, "Except for the fact that your DNA doesn't have a wolf gene, the rest of your genes are close to perfect for wolves, and they are all dominant genes. It means that you will pass all those perfect genes onto a child, and your child with an Alpha will become the most powerful wolf ever known."

My body became flooded with cold sweat. I knew well how genetics worked. The wolf gene is dominant, so if a pure-blooded wolf had a child, that child would have had at least a 75% chance of becoming a werewolf as well. In the case of a child of an Alpha, the chances were close to 100%. Of course, I was the well-known exception to that rule. Apparently, my wolf gene decided to mutate during the fertilization process and turn into an anti-wolf gene. As it turned out, it was the only mutation in my DNA that had gone bad.

"What does it mean...? Will they use my egg cells or something?" I inquired, panicking.

"I wouldn't count on it... The northern packs are mostly savage and cruel." Ezra tried to remain calm, but I could feel the blood boiling in his veins as he was preparing to say those next words, "You will be raped, night after night, until you will bear as many children as the Alpha wants. Then you will most likely be killed."

"W-what?" I mumbled and collapsed onto my knees.

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