1 Prologue

It was cold.

There was not a single bit of warmth where she was.

Exhaling a shaky breath that created puffs of white clouds, she tried to ignore the current numbing sensation that threatened to tear her apart.

Her vision was blurry, blotches of black appeared all over the place. Head throbbing like someone had been constantly hammering her head that also had her ears ringing.

It took a while for her lagging brain to realize she was laying face down on a hard and cold concrete.

It was dark. The place stung of chlorine, burning fumes, a hint of nicotine, but the smell of coppery blood overpowered all of those. Her lungs were burning, scorched.

There were blurry movements, black silhouettes dressed in white moving in and out of her vision, talking in low voices, pointing at something on the chart in their hands.

Sui Yan wondered if it was her they were discussing.

'Of course, they are,' Her subsconscious sneered. 'Such a rare commodity, why not tear and poke around?'

Sui Yan gritted her teeth which only resulted in her pricking the inside of her cheeks, copper immediately flooded inside her mouth. Fuck. What did they do? What else did they do to her?!

When she first found she couldn't retract her claws like she normally does, it didn't alarm her as much. Thinking it was probably just because of the anxiousness she was feeling. But she knew her limit, she knew how to shift at her own will, her control was superb.

However, when she couldn't retract her fangs, it was starting to get worrisome, especially when they grew— no, they actually lengthened one or two centimeters— the sense of trepidation almost swallowed her whole.

She shifted a bit, the sound of the chain rattled as she moved. Her shoulders brushed against the tightly wrapped leather collar on her throat and Sui Yan cursed inwardly. She hated feeling the weight of the collar around her neck.

She despised how her once blunt fingertips curled into permanent claws. She hated how they had prepared a snout-like muzzle for her like she was some wild beast.

She hated everything that was happening to her at this moment, because every moment of it had hurt.

She didn't know how much time had passed since she was dragged away from the alley. She just knew that it hurt so much. So much that she wasn't sure if she would survive this hellhole or even managed to escape.

If she ever did, she promised she would tear every one of these fucking lunatics with her newly developed fangs that their corpses were beyond recognizable like the wolf she was.

Yes.

A wolf.

Sui Yan was what the humans called 'hybrid.'

And Sui Yan betted that the situation she was in was an exact replica of what happened towards the first hybrid found. Chained and experimented. The nightmares of all hybrids.

The first time their kind were exposed was due to the trust a hybrid held towards his human friends. This tale was told from generations to generations.

This crustacean hybrid was sold by his human friends to a laboratorium as an experiment. The clueless hybrid didn't even realize his human friends had just made a profit out of him.

A dog hybrid who worked in the investigation as a detective was the one who found his remains. The dog hybrid said that he was ripped apart, the shells had been torn completely from the crustacean's skin, and even the antenna was chopped off.

All in all, the crustacean was nothing more than a mass of flesh left near the trash.

It happened a hundred years ago. Whether it was true or not, this tale had become a horror story told to the young hybrids. 'Never trust a human' soon became every hybrid's life motto. Her deceased mom had followed the trend and warned her about humans as well.

Sui Yan wanted to believe that that crustacean hybrid had the worst luck of life, encountering such human friends. She wanted to believe that not every human was like that. She really hoped she didn't run into one of those kinds.

Fuck.

Who would have thought she would find herself in the same position as that pitiful crustacean? Never in her life had she thought her luck would be that miserable. Well, at least, she should be glad that her friends hadn't sold her, right?

But then, her mind often trailed off to Lu Xun, which made her snort instantly with how absurd it was. Out of all the humans Sui Yan formed a bond with, it just had to be her.

Not even Kaia or that man she had fallen in love with.

Her relationship with Lu Xun wasn't close or anything. They just bonded over being in the same desperate situations and Lu Xun was the only one who had the nerve to constantly bother her for money, no matter when and where.

Sui Yan wondered who she might be bothering right now, whose household was she tearing apart at the moment, whose money was she wasting currently.

The captured wolf's lips curled up slightly as she twitched, her coping mechanism was just as insane. She would expect it to supply her with happy memories, yet here she was, being reminded of that gold-digger.

Somehow thinking about how low a person could become because of money lightened the suffering she was experiencing. Which reminded her, that bitch hadn't even paid her back at all. Shouldn't she be happy that Sui Yan was missing?

How fortunate.

Sui Yan was pulled out of her thoughts when gloved fingers carded through her silky black hair and her consciousness was yanked back into the hell she was currently in.

She had instantly gone for the scientist's throat. How dare this human pet her like some house dog? Muzzled or not, Sui Yan intended to rip his throat and gnawed on it in front of him. However, the shock that ripped through her body reminded her of her position.

A test subject.

The straps on the bridge of her nose and the back of her head seemed to tighten as she was sent into a full blown seizure. In the end, she was reduced into a twitching mass, curled up in a fetal position, and trembled through the aftershocks.

There were murmurs and Sui Yan caught something akin to 'not yet' alongside with 'trained' before her world completely blackened.