Welcome To Hell, Dear Wife-Chapter 71: Library Secrets

Chapter 71: Library Secrets
Mira’s fingers were still trembling from the dinner confrontation as they traced the gold letters on the book’s cover.
She took it in her hands and was immediately surprised by how heavy it was. "What’s in here, bricks?"
The cover felt strangely smooth and cold, like it was made from some kind of hide she couldn’t identify, not like any leather she’d ever touched.
Something that made her skin crawl just from touching it.
When she opened it, the spine cracked so loudly she jumped.
"Great," she whispered to herself. "Now everyone in a five-mile radius knows I’m snooping."
The pages released a smell of ancient paper and dried herbs and it all smelled musty and strange to Mira.
The first pages were written in flowing, elegant handwriting that looked like it came from centuries ago such that she even had to squint to read it.
The text detailed the arrival of some founding ancestor named
Alistair Atkins, who was blessed by the moon’s gaze and granted the strength of the wolf to protect these lands.
Mira rolled her eyes so hard they nearly fell out of her head. "Dramatic much? Blessed by the moon? Did he start glittering in sunlight too?"
She imagined some historical romance novelist being paid by the word to make the Atkins sound important.
She scoffed at the flowery, over-the-top language.
Rich people and their weird family histories. This was probably just aristocratic nonsense, making their boring ancestors sound more important than they were.
She flipped further into the book, scanning through pages of family trees and old-timey writing.
An entry from 1743 caught her attention. It described something called
a Great Hunt
that
cleansed the woods of rival predators.
But the description of these predators sounded weird.
Really weird.
It sounded suspiciously like they were talking about a neighboring human village that had tried to expand onto Atkins land.
So t
hey called
other
people predators? What the hell?
"I mean, let me get this straight," she said to the empty room. "Regular people trying to feed their families are predators, but the guys writing dramatic fan fiction about themselves are the good guys? Yea, Sure."
She kept flipping and her amusement faded when she found a hand-drawn map labeled
Traditional Pack Territories.
The boundaries drawn on the old map looked shockingly familiar. She stared at them, her brain making connections she didn’t want to make.
They lined up perfectly with the modern districts of the city.
"No way," she breathed. The old map lines matched exactly where Lucas’s company buildings stood today.
Every single one.
A note in the margin, written in different ink that looked much more modern, read:
Atkins Corp HQ sits on the old Howling Crag. Prime strategic position.
Her blood ran cold.
This wasn’t just some dusty family history. This was a blueprint. Their entire corporate empire was literally built on top of old hunting grounds.
What kind of family keeps maps of hunting territories like this?
She slammed the book shut, sending dust motes dancing in the library’s light. Her mind was spinning, trying to make sense of what she’d just read.
"What the hell is this?" she muttered to the empty room.
Her eyes went back to the shelf she’d pulled it from. Now that she was looking, really looking, the other titles were insane.
Lunar Cycles and Instinctual Behavior.
A History of the Lycan Packs of Europe.
Silver: Myth and Metallurgy.
One thick volume sitting right at eye level was simply titled
"Werewolf."
A disbelieving laugh escaped her throat. "Okay, this is insane. It’s either this is the world’s most elaborate role-playing game, or I’ve married into a family of furry enthusiasts."
No, cos this just had to be a joke. Like some kind of rich person’s bizarre hobby. Or just those kinda weirdos who thought they were vampires or whatever.
Then she spotted a modern binder wedged between the ancient texts. The label read
Metamorphic Physiology
and it looked completely out of place, like a medical textbook that had wandered into a fantasy convention.
Her curiosity overpowered her common sense so she opened it.
Inside were stark, clinical diagrams that made the flowery chronicle look like a children’s fairy tale.
One diagram showed the human leg bones in detail. The femur and tibia. But then it showed them changing, restructuring during something called
a shift
. The bones shortened, thickened, realigned into what was clearly labeled as wolf hind leg structure.
It was drawn with medical precision. Measurements, angles and even scientific labels.
Mira’s hands started shaking as she turned the page.
Another section detailed something called
The Hormonal Cascade
. It listed specific chemicals and hormones that got triggered by
lunar radiation and extreme emotional states (rage, terror, protective instinct)
that supposedly started the transformation process.
They wrote it all like this was real science and not some stupid myth.
A chart titled
Sensory Enhancement Post-Shift
even listed hearing ranges that went into frequencies humans couldn’t detect. Smell capabilities that could track a single individual across a city by scent trail alone.
More stupid things that made no sense.
The phrase
Pheromonal Dominance Hierarchie
s
was underlined heavily. A footnote explained how
Alpha-level emissions
can suppress the shift in lower-ranking pack members through chemical signaling.
She ended up throwing the binder back onto the shelf like it had burned her hands.
"This is crazy. This is some kind of sick, elaborate joke."
But her heart was hammering in her chest. Her breathing was coming too fast.
She grabbed another binder with shaking hands. This one was labeled
Metamorphic Physiology & Biological Readiness.
She shouldn’t look. She knew she shouldn’t look but she of course opened it anyway.
This one had full-color anatomical images. Not drawings. These looked like actual medical scans. High-resolution MRI or CT images.
One sequence of images froze her completely in place.
It showed a human skull. Normal at first. Then the jaw started dislocating, elongating. The cranium reshaping. Fur erupting from the pores in slow-motion stages.
The next image showed a perfect side-by-side comparison. A fully transformed wolf’s muscle structure next to a human’s. Arrows pointed to enhanced shoulders and a powerful lower back that allowed for
bipedal stability in hybrid form.
Hybrid form
?
The binder slipped from her numb fingers such that it hit the floor with a loud slap that echoed through the silent library.
The image from the woods flashed in her mind immediately.
The massive wolf with dark fur. Those glowing eyes and the way its form had seemed to melt and reform into Lucas’s naked body right in front of her.
"It wasn’t a dream," she whispered, her voice choked with terror. "Oh my god, it wasn’t a dream."
Her legs felt weak and the room started spinning slightly.
A soft rustling sound came from somewhere behind a tall bookcase in a shadowy corner causing Mira’s head to snap up.
"Hello?" Her voice came out shaky and too loud. "Is someone there?"
But what met her was nothing but silence.
Then the rustling seemed to stop but only to be replaced by a faint, rhythmic scraping sound. Like something being dragged across stone.
She took a cautious step toward the sound. All her earlier bravery was now completely gone and replaced by the kind of primal fear that made animals freeze.
"Hello?" she called again, louder this time.
A low and pained whimper was what answered and she could instantly and obviously tell that it was definitely human. Just one filled with despair and pain.
What the hell?
She followed the sound on shaking legs. The sound led her to a secluded reading nook tucked behind the shelves.
There, almost completely hidden by a large leather armchair, was a trapdoor set right into the floor.
It was made of heavy, dark wood that blended almost perfectly with the dark wooden panels of the floor. You’d never see it unless you were looking for it.
A heavy steel padlock secured it. Modern-looking and industrial, completely out of place in the antique library.
She knelt down, pressing her ear close to the wood. "Hello? Is someone down there?"
Frantic scrabbling answered her. Like claws scraping on stone. Then a man’s voice, hoarse and desperate and broken:
"Help me. Please, for God’s sake, help me get out."
Mira’s blood turned to ice in her veins.
There was someone imprisoned under the library.
"Who are you?" she asked, her voice coming out as a frantic whisper.
"Please... just... the key... he has the key..." The voice dissolved into a coughing fit that sounded wet and painful.
She looked around wildly, searching for anything she could use to break the lock. A fire poker or heavy bookend.
Anything
.
The thrashing from below grew more frantic. Desperate banging against the wood.
"He’s coming back! You have to hurry!"
"Who’s coming back?" Mira demanded as her fingers grabbed at the lock and pulled at it uselessly. It didn’t budge though.
A deep, calm voice suddenly spoke directly behind her. "What are you looking for, Lorena?"
She jumped so violently she hit her head on a bookshelf. Pain shot through her skull as she whirled around, stumbling backward until she was pressed against the wood.
Aurelian stood there, hands clasped behind his back. His expression was one of mild, almost amused curiosity. Like he’d just found her doing something naughty instead of discovering a prisoner.
He looked completely at home in this bizarre library full of werewolf books and hidden dungeons.
His eyes moved slowly from her terrified face, down to the fallen binder with its shocking anatomical images splayed open on the floor, then to the locked trapdoor at her feet.
A slow, knowing smile spread across his face. The kind of smile that made her stomach drop.
"It seems you’ve been... snooping into what isn’t your business..."