I fell asleep like a dumbass.

  Worse, I fell asleep next to Elowen, who, as my luck would have it, was currently using my chest as a pillow.

  If she woke up right now, I would be, for lack of better words, fucked.

  I knew she’d had plans last night. When she insisted we share the bed, it wasn’t because she suddenly trusted me. If I didn’t already know how Valen died in the novel, I might have even been tempted to believe otherwise.

  She was gorgeous. Even more so when she was like this. Peaceful. Asleep. With no desire to kill me.

  But that was the trap of manhood. If something, or in this case, someone, looked too good to be true, it almost certainly was. And right now, I was being used as a pillow by the same woman who wanted me dead.

  Quite the off-putting thought, don’t you think?

  Alright. New objective.

  Get out of bed. Slowly. Quietly. Preferably without dying.

  “Mm,” Elowen murmured, her fingers tightening in the fabric of my shirt.

  Not good.

  If she woke up now, she’d invent the telephone just to call the Arch-bishop and doom my ass.

  Think. Think. Think.

  …Yep. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  Her eyes fluttered open. “Mmm… huh?”

  I improvised instantly, closing my eyes the moment she focused on me, steadying my breathing, letting out a low groan as if her weight was disturbing my sleep.

  I felt her jolt upright, breath hitching. What I felt even more clearly was her stare, studying my face and my breathing, trying to decide whether I was truly asleep.

  But panic and lingering sleep won out.

  She scrambled quickly out of bed.

  “Oh no…” she whispered, voice barely audible. “What have I done?”

  Relax, lady. You just slept on me. That’s all.

  Still, I stayed perfectly still, feigning sleep for several more minutes, until the sound of hurried footsteps confirmed she’d left the tent.

  Only then did I open my eyes.

  She barely said more than "Good morning" during breakfast, which worked entirely in my favor. It gave me time to focus inward, sorting through Valen’s memories like a librarian cataloguing a whole archive.

  But soon after breakfast, once the guards dismantled the tent, we boarded the carriage and resumed our journey.

  From what the coachman told me once we were underway, we would arrive at our destination by late afternoon, which was perfect.

  I had no intention of sleeping next to this woman again. Not until I managed to change her opinion of Valen Ashmoor… and, by extension, me.

  That would require patience. But patience alone wasn’t enough. I couldn’t afford to ignore reality for much longer.

  Elowen wasn’t the only fiancée or enemy I’d inherited along with this body, and she certainly wouldn’t be the last. Which meant that if I wanted to survive, I needed strength. Real strength to at least deter the annoying ones from attempting to harm me.

  And in this world, strength came from bonding with a Feralium beast, and, through that bond, inheriting its magic.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  The problem was that I couldn’t remember what beast Valen had bonded with in the novel.

  All I remembered was that he, in the final battle against the MC, had used lightning and was able to conjure storms.

  But the beast itself? Nowhere to be seen.

  Oh well. If I had to bet my former body’s left elbow, I’d say that Valen killed it off-screen, hoping to, somehow, grab the beast's entire arsenal of powers for himself.

  Yep. I know. Trash, right?

  Still, that left me wondering whether things could change now, whether I, or Elowen, might end up bonded to beasts different from what the story originally dictated.

  And let me tell you, I prayed that was the case.

  Because otherwise, Elowen was destined to receive the Feralium beast that would set in motion the chain of events leading to Valen’s downfall.

  How did I know that? Great question.

  Because I had finally figured out the timeline.

  We were two years before the events of the first volume of the novel. It had taken combining everything I remembered with everything I had already witnessed in this world to reach that conclusion, but now that I had, I finally had something invaluable.

  A timeframe.

  A timeframe I was about to wager everything on.

  Two years in which I had to ensure that all of Valen’s fiancées, at the very least, stopped wishing for his death.

  What came after that… I didn’t know. Just like I hadn’t known, when I got into my car that day, that I would die in a crash.

  I knew the events of the first two volumes. But I was about to do something the story had never accounted for, change the timeline itself.

  Which meant that, on the grand scale of things, almost nothing I knew would remain reliable.

  Almost.

  There were… rare exceptions. Exceptions I fully intended to take advantage of.

  Two hours later, we began the climb uphill at a steady pace to the top. It was a smooth ride with no incidents happening.

  Right? Nope. Of course not.

  The first issue was that the place where the Conclave Feralium was held was on the top of a mountain. The Feralma Peak.

  One of the most treacherous mountains to climb to get to the Beast’s Temple.

  Or at least that was for the poor people who somehow got lucky and picked up the materials themselves. We rode to the top on a separate road and paid the tax.

  It was enough to buy a house anywhere in the kingdom, but I had ten times that on me at the very moment.

  The issue lay in the horses that were having great difficulties walking up the steep road. A road terribly maintained for the cost of it all, to the point that the guards had to get off their own beasts and push the cart whenever we got stuck.

  The second issue… You already know.

  Elowen was in a terrible mood ever since waking up, for obvious reasons, which meant that I was walking a thinner line than before.

  Even breathing felt dangerous around her now. But… lunch was just as dangerous, if ignored.

  So I reached inside the bag by my side and pulled out a piece of salted cake.

  “Do you want some?” I asked, offering her the piece.

  She blinked at my hand, then at me, thinking I might have gone mad, but still, she accepted, leaning forward to pick up the piece of cake.

  But then… just as she was reaching for it, one of the wheels of the carriage hit a hole, making her lose her balance and fall.

  It was by instinct that I reached forward and caught her by the side of her waist, pulling her toward me and stopping her fall.

  I knew then that I should’ve let her fall. What was the worst that could happen?

  But since I didn’t, I now watched live, a few inches away from her face, how Elowen’s brain processed what happened, got embarrassed, angry, and then proceeded to yell.

  “What are you doing? Let go of me!”

  “Easy now,” I hushed her, panicking but sounding annoyed, “I just caught you.”

  But she didn’t stop. “I said let go,” with a groan, she pushed herself free of my hands, falling straight onto the carriage bench she was occupying.

  “Apologies!” yelled the coachman, “Everything alright back there?”

  “Be more careful next time,” I sighed, returning to my bench, but not before picking the piece of cake I dropped on the ground when I jumped to catch her.

  Once I was seated, I blew air onto the piece of cake and took a bite.

  “What are you doing?” she frowned, side-eyeing me.

  I only waved at her, “Let me be.”

  And so she did.

  Her earlier attitude was… much, even for me. I knew she hated my guts, but acting like I was smearing venom on her made the real me sad while making Valen and his body bloody furious.

  To the point I couldn’t figure out if the terrible headache I was fighting against was because of her or because I was eating the cake that fell to the ground.

  But I was at my limit with both this body and the front of my eyes, so I returned to my self-made ignorance, up until we stopped moving.

  “We’ve arrived,” said the coachman.

  Finally, it was here.

  So without waiting or acting like an ass-kissing gentleman, I picked the chest filled with materials and kicked the door of the carriage open, before walking off.

  And the temple before me stunned me for a few seconds as I stared in awe at it.

  I saw once that the author posted a fan art on their social media about the Temple arc in Volume One. But now, in reality, it was even more glorious. To the point that I didn’t even notice the multitude of people staring at me until the point I acknowledged them, making them turn their heads in the opposite direction.

  Reminding me that Elowen’s earlier reaction was as valid as all the rest of them, as much as I hated it. I was, after all, a villain.

  And villains were written to suffer.

  But enough about that, the Conclave Feralium was at hand.

  If you enjoy the story and wish to support it, feel free to leave a follow and a rating, as it would push the story further as I attempt to climb into Rising Stars!

  You can also find me on Patreon where you can read the entirety of Volume One and the beginning of Volume Two ahead of Schedule!

  -Wulibear