Born of a Nightmare - 1 Red Velvet

Synopsis

Neshelle Van Keel has always had a dark side. Its not only in her blood, it's her nature. It started as something seemingly innocent, defending someone important to her, when she was only a little girl. Some thought that it was a curse that turned a once smiling little girl into a monster with pure white fur, glowing red eyes and jagged bloodstained fangs. Some of "those men" thought her the carnation of Karma, come to punish their comrades for their crimes — that was until they too were ripped limb from limb.

After her first change, she thought she was a werewolf, but it soon turned out that that wasn't the case. There were werewolves who lived not far from her village, but she was not like them. The only person who could answer her questions, was her mother, but she had abandoned Shell to her grandmother's care when she was no more than a baby, and her father... who knew who he was?

Despite her dangerous nature and blood thirst, Shell had learned to suppress her wild urges and death glare, some of it anyway. And she spends her days providing a good life for both herself and her grandmother. As well as apprenticing as a Crimson Priestess. Or at least that is what her mentor calls the occupation, "blood witch in disguise" might be more accurate though.

Shell also catches the eye of every man who sees her, with her agility, and mysterious beauty, though most are too intimidated to approach her. That is all accept her best friend, Ryder, the son of a lumberjack and hunter. No amount of snapping and snarling can scare Ryder and he gets away with poking the white wolf in the nose, even if she sets him on his ass for it.

Despite her relatively functional and content life in the village though, trouble is brewing, and that trouble is a prince with dirty blonde hair and dreamy blue eyes. Any girl in the kingdom would swoon over this man, but Shell prefers to call him a perfumed fool, but despite her outright disrespect and disinterest, she has caught his eye. A rich man always wants what money can't buy.

Though after some young men turn up dead, slaughtered by some animal, and a little girl who had seen the attack, says that she saw a white wolf with red eyes. Shell makes a public display of revealing her wolf form to the village, taking the blame of the murdered men on her, and then disappearing into the woods. The prince's bride to be, becomes the hunted.

But why, after so many years of carefully protecting her secret from the world, would she make a public exhibition of it?

Has she gone mad, or has the relatively peaceful medieval village bored her so much that a target on her head is the only way to make life more interesting?

Or is she protecting someone?

Someone thought to be dead years ago?

Might this not be the first time Shell has taken drastic measures to protect this person?