Chapter 1 Becoming A Macguffin Character

• If someone asked Diana why she was single at the age of twenty-seven, she would pin the blame on men that did not even exist. Yes, the fault was solely on the hands of fictional men who raised her standards so high that no real man could ever meet them, let alone surpass them.
• Such was the price of being a reader.
• Another price Diana had to pay as a voracious reader was losing hours and hours of sleep.
• That was why she woke up with a throbbing headache that was unlike any other and with eyes that stung so badly with the need for a few more hours of sleep.
• Diana had once again read until the ungodly wee hours of the day, knowing she would have to wake up at around seven for her shift at work. While she lacked the self-discipline to follow through her promises of reading just one more chapter, a part of her thought that a book’s riveting tale was partially responsible, and the current culprit of her headache was a book titled An Alpha’s Vengeance.
• Objectively, she found An Alpha’s Vengeance to be quite cliché. It was swamped with common themes and tropes that are exceedingly popular among the ladies. The plotline was already given from the title too. The male main character, Alistair Blackwell, sought vengeance for the sudden death of his mate, while the female main character who narrated the story, Serena Wenlock, helped him not only in achieving his goal, but also in healing from the grief and despair he had fallen into after losing his mate.
• Still, despite the predictability and banality of the story, the wordsmithing of the author was phenomenal to the point that Diana found it impossible to stop reading. So she finished the book in one sitting at around four in the morning earlier. And with the frustrating cliffhanger it ended with, Diana had every intention to start the second book, The Alpha’s Last Chance, right after her shift in the library.
• But it seemed like the consequence of her lack of sleep was biting her a lot harder than usual.
• A strong wave of dizziness came down on her harshly while she was crossing a street on her way to work. The throbbing pain in her head had grown to an excruciating degree, and the sunlight was making it a thousandfold worse. Her legs immediately ceased to move, and the need to hurl flared uncomfortably in her stomach and throat. She pressed her clammy palm against her sweaty forehead, her eyes falling shut from the pain.
• 'This headache is going to kill me,' Diana thought.
• “Hey! Watch out!”
• The frantic voice of a woman was drowned out by the sharp and wild honking of a vehicle. Diana didn’t even have the chance to fully see and register the incoming bus that was careening towards her before the harsh and hard impact came in an instant and everything around her turned black.
• The excruciating agony that would logically occur after getting hit by a bus didn’t come at all. Diana didn’t even lose her consciousness for one second.
• ‘That’s quite odd…’ Diana thought.
• What was even more bizarre was how the ache in her head, which had tormented her since the moment she woke up, vanished completely. It was as if the life-threatening accident was the cure to the pain.
• ‘What the hell? Shouldn’t there be people calling for an ambulance right now or something? Shouldn’t they be fussing over witnessing someone getting hit by a bus? Why is it so quiet? Did I lose my sense of hearing?’
• Diana dared to open her eyes, expecting to be lying on the asphalt road with bystanders worriedly looking at her and murmuring fearfully about the amount of blood she had lost or the bones she had broken.
• For a couple of heartbeats, her vision was swimming with blurry haze before it was able to gain clarity and focus. But then the sight that welcomed her was an elaborate vaulted ceiling that lavish castles and manors usually had. She would know because she had daydreamed of living in one since she was a kid. After all, it was only through daydreaming and reading that one could experience the great things in life when someone was born poor.
• “What…” Diana mumbled, her voice sounding so foreign to her own ears. It was light and slightly airy, so unlike her usual voice that was full and bright. It was quite unnerving, an addition to the strangeness of her situation.
• Diana rose from the softness of the bed she was on, using her right elbow as a leverage to prop her up into a sitting position. Her confusion that stemmed from seeing an unfamiliar ceiling and from hearing the odd sound of her own voice wrote itself clearly on the lines between her furrowed brows. She looked down on herself and found her body to be generally unharmed. But she was now dressed in a baby blue satin chemise with lace trimming.
• ‘What the hell? Who changed my clothes?’
• Her heart thudded wildly in its confinement as she forced her legs to work for her. The utter coldness of the smooth polished floor against her bare feet didn’t even take her by surprise as her mind was already hyper-focused on the goal of finding out where on earth she was. Because it was as clear as crystal that she wasn’t brought to a hospital after her accident.
• All four sides of the room were stone walls with sconces of unlit thick white candles scattered evenly at a certain height. Every piece of furniture was quartersawn white oak, carved to have a Jacobean style of design. There were two oriel glass windows with white muslin curtains that were swept to the sides, giving way for the sunlight to bleed into the room.
• Diana took cautious but firm steps around the room, trying to look for anything that could give her a hint about her whereabouts. Her feet brought her to the window, her eyes immediately drinking in the view.
• The sky was in the perfect shade of blue, sparsely lined with cirrus clouds. Lush green grass spread out vastly for yards and yards, and well-kept bushes bordered each side. Out in the distance, an astounding thicket of trees consumed the remaining stretch of land within Diana’s field of vision.
• The pretty view didn’t really give much information except for how clear and good the day was outside.
• Diana tore her gaze away from the vista and turned around. The simple movement allowed her to catch a glimpse of an insignia carved on the wooden box that was innocently sitting on top of the writing desk pushed against the portion of the wall just beside the window.
• “No way,” Diana gasped out as her shaking hands picked up the box.
• Chiseled intricately on the lid were two back-to-back crescent moons and a clean line of flame slashing through them horizontally. The carving immediately clicked into place in Diana’s mind. It was the insignia of the Moonfyre pack, the second most powerful werewolf pack in the entire continent of Gaea.
• “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Diana rasped out as her innards churned and coiled. “It can’t be...”
• Moonfyre was the pack of Alistair Blackwell, the male protagonist of An Alpha’s Revenge, which Diana just finished reading.
• “What the hell is going on?” Diana asked the thin air, slamming the box down on the desk. “Why am I suddenly here? What am I doing here? Oh god… I think I’m going crazy.”
• Hysteria was slowly creeping into her voice. Her strength felt like it had been just sucked out of her entire body, leaving her legs to feel like ice-cold jelly.
• Nothing was making sense to her. Why was she suddenly in a fictional world of a story she just read? The world of the story she lost sleep over and caused her a tremendous headache that led to a life-ending accident.
• Diana stilled like an ice sculpture. Rigid and cold.
• ‘Life-ending… Wait… Did I die and transmigrate to freaking Moonfyre?’
• With her mind reeling with the absurdity of her realization and her legs feeling utterly weak, Diana slowly plopped down on the chair by the writing desk. She knew if she stayed on her feet for another moment, her knees would just buckle under her weight and leave her on a heap of messy emotions on the floor.
• Diana harshly rubbed her shaking hands up and down her face, as if doing so could wake her up from the insanity of it all. She groaned loudly against her palms before finally pulling her hands away from her face.
• It was then that her eyes landed on the mini cheval mirror standing at the right corner of the desk. Her mouth hung inelegantly wide open as she stared at the unbelievable reflection she was seeing.
• She had a thick and long mop of fiery red hair in a loose ponytail, while her eyes were upturned and blazing bright green. A dark brown mole right next to the outer corner of her right eye was unmistakable in the canvas of her fair and smooth skin. Then her pale pink upper lip boasted a very defined cupid’s bow.
• “Oh no. No, no, no, no. No way. I…”
• A long shuddering breath escaped Diana as she continued to stare in disbelief at the mirror.
• If Diana didn’t know anything about this world, she would’ve been ecstatic to have been given such a beautiful face.
• But she knew. The story was still so fresh in her mind, so she knew who owned the face she was wearing at the moment. And it was exactly because she knew the owner of the face that she couldn’t even appreciate the beauty that the mirror was showing her.
• Diana Claremont-Blackwell, the beloved mate of Alistair Blackwell and a MacGuffin character who was destined to die so that the protagonists, Alistair and Serena, could meet and fall in love with each other.
• ‘Great! Just fucking great… I just got here, and I am already about to die. Again.’