I didn’t speak up and just listened quietly with rapt attention.
“My mother wanted to keep me, but the elders of the pack threatened her with their lives. They all claimed that if I didn’t die, the whole pack would certainly descend into chaos. At that time, my father was also in a quandary. This issue was directly linked to the future of the pack after all. He didn’t have the guts to take a risk, so he instructed my mother to drown me.”
Tears welled up in Joanna’s eyes and her voice began to shake. Her beautiful face was lined with a sadness I’d never witnessed before.
I had always got the impression that Joanna was brave but a loner, and nothing affected her. Emotions or desires translated to burdens for her, so she had always led a solitary life.
Fortunately, an exception in the form of Harry appeared in her life.
Once a person had a weakness, he or she would no longer be indifferent to the whole world.
“How did you survive later?” I looked at her with furrowed eyebrows, conflicting emotions roiling inside me. Although I hadn’t spent much time with her in the past, I still felt sorry for her miserable situation. No matter what, I believed that I should help her when I knew she was innocent.
Not only for Harry’s sake, but also for the friendship between us as former classmates.
“My mother didn’t have the heart to kill me herself, so she took off all my clothes and tossed me in the barren snowy mountain, leaving me to fend for myself.” Joanna took a deep breath, trying to restrain her raging emotions. “I should have died, but I was lucky enough to be rescued by someone.”
Sylvia’s POV
“Did Noreen save you?” My mind instinctively jumped to that woman. She was the only person I could think of. She had a knack for always appearing at the right time. It almost seemed like she was in control of everyone’s fate, and she could do whatever she wanted with them.
No matter how angry we were, there was nothing we could do about it. Noreen was like a gust of wind. She always appeared out of the blue and then vanished without a trace. She was the one who always took the initiative to come to us and we wouldn’t even know where to find her.
As I considered this, my determination to become stronger increased. I would only be able to defeat Noreen when I became a powerful black witch myself.
Joanna didn’t respond. She continued, “My adoptive mother has a serious nature. Even though she is cold, I wouldn’t have lived till now without her support. I felt that I should do something to return the favor.”
“So is this why you obey Noreen?”
I could finally comprehend Joanna’s difficulties. Regardless of the reason Noreen rescued her, she was still her savior and adoptive mother who had raised her since she was a baby.
Joanna didn’t really have any choice.
From the moment she was born, she was in a disadvantageous position. Fate had favored her twin brother from the very beginning.
Noreen had saved her and brought her up. She had traded her life for Noreen’s favor of raising her for so many years. To Joanna, it seemed quite fair.
Joanna smiled with a desolate expression. “Since childhood, my adoptive mother has constantly reminded me that I should not forget what she has done for me and I should repay this debt of gratitude someday. This is why I have always been grateful to my adoptive mother, even if she just takes advantage of me. I have been trained as a killer since I was very young. My end goal has always been to assassinate the lycan king. I often wonder if my adoptive mother has any kind of maternal feelings for me. I once believed that she must have cared about me, even just a little, since she has kept me by her side for so many years. But I was very disappointed at the moment she cursed me so cruelly. I even wanted to leave this world and end my life. But in the dead of the night, I always remember how kind she is to me. The first time she taught me how to read. The first time she took me to the market to buy something of my liking. When I was sick, she cooked me a bowl of chicken soup…”
Joanna’s voice choked with sobs as she gave her explanation. “It’s a lot more difficult to hate someone than to love them. I know I can’t escape my fate. Even if my adoptive mother only looks at me as a tool to achieve her ultimate plan, I already consider her my family. The only warmth in my life came from her.”
My heart clenched painfully. I held her hand and whispered, “But you have Harry now. He has given you the same affection as Noreen did. Noreen is an expert at manipulating people’s minds. All she did was use you for her own means.”
Joanna sniffled and her eyes turned red. “I know she is just using me. She showed me how my pack abandoned me in the crystal ball. I want to get away from her after I manage to remove the curse.”
“You hate your family? Have you been wanting revenge? So John’s death…”
When the topic of her family came up, the sadness on Joanna’s face melted away and she once again became indifferent. “I don’t give a fuck about them and I have no plans to waste my time chasing revenge. John’s death was his own fault. I have nothing to do with it. Since childhood, my only goal has always been to assassinate the lycan king. Once I accomplish this task, I will be free.”
I fell silent for a while before saying, “I don’t understand why Noreen is so intent on killing Ethan. She had cursed him before as well. I’ve heard that love begets hatred, and she hates him because she loves him but can’t have him. But now I don’t believe that people like Noreen would fall so obsessively in love with someone.”
Joanna pursed her lips and fell into deep thought. “I don’t know the exact reason. I only know that my adoptive mother set off on this path because she feels that the king had fooled her. She believed that Ethan had fallen head over heels in love with her, when he hadn’t. But even more importantly, she coveted the bloodline of the lycan king.”
Sylvia’s POV
“She is interested in the lycan bloodline?” I looked at Joanna and cocked my head in bewilderment. Did the lycan bloodline have influence on the black witch?
Joanna nodded and said, “Yes. She once told me when she was drunk. The black witch race has always highly regarded a pure bloodline while a hybrid is completely useless in their eyes.”
I pursed my lips and sneered. “Yes, the noble black witch race never allows the hybrid to stain their pure bloodline.”
Back then, my mother fled the black witch race after getting bullied by a coven of witches with pure bloodline because of her hybrid identity.
“My adoptive mother is powerful and arrogant. She wants to dismantle these boundaries among bloodlines. During her research, she discovered that a hybrid was more likely to have the potential to overcome the bloodline restriction and it would produce a stronger black witch,” Joanna spoke expressionlessly.
I found it a little funny. “She spends a great deal of time each day studying this nonsense? Seriously, what’s her problem?”
However, Joanna cast me a somber stare. “I don’t think her research is useless. This idea might be far-fetched, but had my adopted mother succeeded that year, the werewolves and the vampires would be no match for the black witches now, given her intelligence and power. A hybrid is only weak at their early stage because the different bloodlines suppress each other. Once the bloodlines are awakened, the hybrid will have a stronger power. What you need to know is that the lycan bloodline is exceptionally strong, powerful and rare. If it could merge with the black witch bloodline, no one knows what kind of power it could yield.”
My lips twisted as I looked down at my palm. I had both the said bloodlines, but I don’t have the kind of power Joanna described.
Aside from the rare occasions when my power suddenly lost control, I don’t feel anything strong within me.
I think both my bloodlines just existed independently and could never be channeled.
“So Noreen’s goal is to breed a lot of hybrids?”
“Yes, the reason why my adoptive mother seduced the lycan king is to verify her theory. She thought she had succeeded, but she was wrong. Ethan didn’t love her at all. For a black witch, they can never get pregnant unless a man has true feelings for her.” Joanna sighed. Noreen didn’t hate Ethan because she loved him too much and couldn’t be with him. She hated him because she felt ashamed and humiliated after her despicable plan failed. The fatal blow to Noreen came when she realized that Ethan’s back was devoid of the black thorns.
Noreen was inherently cunning and pretentious. With her powerful ability, she probably thought that she could do whatever she wanted. But much to her surprise, she couldn’t get the man to love her.
How pathetic and pitiful she was! She had lived for such a long time without anybody truly loving her.
Still, I couldn’t shake the lingering uncertainties in my mind. Time had passed since that incident. What made Noreen gamble by sending Joanna to murder Ethan? Noreen would not wait until now to do something like this if she truly despised Ethan.
As far as I knew, she was the type of person who would quickly snap out of sadness. She had cast a curse on Ethan so that he would never have any more children. Noreen should have moved on and there was no way she would still hold a grudge against him until now.
Even stranger, Noreen showed up at the same time I first awakened the black witch’s bloodline. Since then, she had been haunting me. Everything she had done seemed connected to me.
Sylvia’s POV
Noreen was too cunning. Until now, I still couldn’t figure out her true purpose.
If she didn’t hate Ethan, why did she insist on killing him?
My thoughts wandered to all the things that she had done. It didn’t seem like she had a clear purpose either.
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