The Villainous Matriarch's Secretly Pampered Wolf Consorts

Pain tore through Ella's skull, sharp and blinding.

It felt as though someone had driven a steel spike directly between her eyes. She gasped, her lungs burning as they fought for air. Her vision swam, slowly focusing on a heavy, dark-wood canopy bed above her. This wasn't her clean, sterile veterinary clinic in New York.

Before her brain could process the vintage ceiling, a violent chill washed over her skin. It was the pure, suffocating instinct of a predator closing in.

Ella rolled hard to the inside of the mattress.

A sharp thud echoed in the quiet room. A jagged bone dagger sank deep into the silk pillow, exactly where her head had rested a second ago. White feathers exploded into the air, drifting down like morbid snow.

Ella's heart hammered against her ribs so violently it hurt. She whipped her head around.

A pair of amber eyes glared down at her. They were bloodshot, feral, and burning with a hatred so intense it made Ella's stomach twist into a tight knot. The boy holding the dagger gripped the hilt with white knuckles. He let out a low, guttural growl that vibrated in his chest.

Atop his head, a pair of silver-gray, furry wolf ears streaked with jagged dark fur twitched aggressively.

In this world, males possessed two forms: a human form for complex social interactions, and a beast form for brutal combat. Even in human form, they retained highly sensitive animal traits, like those ears. They were born warriors, existing only to hunt magic beasts and absorb energy cores. But they could never evolve without a female. Females were the ultimate catalysts, using their unique biological energy fields to unlock a male's power.

Because of this biological absolute, females held supreme power. Males were mere accessories.

But right now, this "accessory" was trying to murder her.

Daulton ripped the bone dagger from the mattress. He bared his teeth, his canines elongated and sharp, and lunged at her throat again.

Ella's mind went entirely blank. Her modern human body, trained to heal sick puppies and kittens, had zero muscle memory for dodging a lethal strike. She froze, her breath trapped in her throat.

Just as the jagged bone edge hovered inches from her jugular, a thin shadow threw itself through the half-open bedroom door.

"Stop!"

A man crashed into Daulton. Kevan, another of her consorts, grabbed the sharp blade of the dagger with his bare hands.

Warm, metallic-smelling blood instantly dripped from Kevan's sliced palms, splashing onto Ella's pale cheek.

The heat of that blood was a trigger. A massive tidal wave of memories crashed into Ella's brain. She clutched her head, letting out a raw scream as her body curled into a tight ball on the silk sheets.

She wasn't just Ella the vet anymore. She was Ella Ortiz, the tyrannical matriarch of this estate. She was a monster who tortured her bound consorts for sport-she had already broken the others, leaving a blinded leopard beastman to rot in