The silence of my chambers pressed in like a living thing, thick and suffocating. Outside, the pack house hummed faintly guards changing shifts, servants moving about, the rhythm of duty never faltering. But none of it touched me here.

Here, I was alone.

And yet… not.

Her scent still lingered in the back of my throat. That delicate, maddening blend of honey and wild earth. Eli. Even saying her name in my mind felt dangerous, like feeding a fire I’d sworn to starve. I closed my fists until my knuckles turned white, until pain anchored me back in this cursed flesh.

I had rejected her. I had done what was necessary.

So why did the bond still pulse between us like an unhealed wound? Why, when I closed my eyes, did I still feel the heat of her lips under mine though it had only been a dream?

I forced myself to breathe, deep and ragged. My wolf clawed at me from within, furious, restless. He had never accepted the rejection. He wanted her. He would always want her.

But he didn’t understand. He couldn’t.

If she stayed by my side, Eli would die. Just like the first one. Just like the moon decreed.

I rose and moved to the balcony, the forest stretching out in an endless green ocean under the midday sun. Somewhere down there, she was breathing, walking, alive. The mate I could never claim. The mate I would destroy if I let her close.

My hands gripped the cold stone railing, and memory dragged me under.

The past was never merciful.

I told myself I could endure it. That with enough discipline, with enough iron will, the bond would quiet. It was only a dream, I lied. Only the mind playing tricks, weaving illusions from longing.

But the taste of her was too real. The fire of her mouth against mine, the way her body had fit against me like it had always belonged there. That hadn’t been invention. That had been truth.

The bond laughed at my rejection. The moon laughed louder.

My wolf prowled beneath my skin, his growl vibrating through my bones. You are weak, he sneered. You send her away, yet you crave her. You push her from your arms, yet you burn when she is not there. Coward.

“Enough.” My voice cracked in the empty room.

The wolf didn’t obey. He never obeyed when it came to her.

I pressed both palms against my face, dragging them down until they covered my mouth. How many nights had I done this? How many mornings had I sworn I would not let her haunt me again, only to feel her in my dreams, in the marrow of me?

The rejection was supposed to sever us. Final. Clean. That was what the elders claimed. That was what I needed.

But the curse doesn’t allow clean endings. It never has.

I turned back into the room, pacing like a caged beast. I could still see the look on Eli’s face the night I’d rejected her confusion first, then a hurt she had tried to bury beneath steel. She hadn’t understood. She wasn’t meant to.

If she knew why I had done it… if she knew the truth about the curse… she would never stop fighting for us. And the curse feeds on defiance.

No. It was better this way.

I forced my breathing into steady rhythms, but it did nothing to quiet the hollow ache that gnawed at me. The same ache that had followed me since the night the moon itself turned its face from me.

My chest tightened. The old wound tore open, spilling memory I had buried again and again.

The night of fire.

The night of her death.

The night the curse was born.

And before I could stop it, the past dragged me down, demanding to be remembered.

The pull to her was unbearable.

It started as a whisper, a thread tugging at the back of my mind. Her scent sweet, wild, threaded with warmth slipped through the cracks of my restraint. Even here, locked behind stone and silence, it reached me.

I clenched my fists until my claws cut into my palms. Pain grounded me. Blood dripped, sharp and metallic, spattering the floor. I welcomed it. Anything was better than the way she unmade me with nothing more than existing.

Go to her. My wolf’s voice was low, almost coaxing now. She needs you. You need her. One step, and it ends. One step, and we are whole.

I staggered to the door before I realized I had moved. My hand hovered over the handle, shaking. My chest heaved, every breath dragging her deeper into me.

“No.” The word tore from my throat.

I slammed my fist against the wood, rattling it in its frame. “No!”

My voice echoed, but it sounded small against the truth. Because I wanted to. Moon help me, I wanted nothing more than to go to her, to bury my face in the wild tangle of her curls, to taste the mouth I had already tasted in dreams.

But that path was ruin.

If I claimed her, she would die.

If I held her, she would suffer.

If I loved her, the curse would take her like it took…..

I stopped the thought. My body trembled, breath tearing through my lungs as if I’d run for miles.

Her face filled my mind anyway. Eli. Alive. Breathing. Waiting.

I sank into the chair by the fire, burying my head in my hands. My wolf prowled, restless, his hunger scraping against my ribs. I couldn’t keep this war going much longer.

The past pressed closer, unrelenting. I had locked it away for years, but it seeped through the cracks, demanding.

I saw her smile.

I smelled the blood.

I felt the weight of the moon turning cold.

And this time, I didn’t have the strength to fight it back.

The curse always wins.

The fire snapped in the hearth, but its warmth didn’t touch me. My body was burning from something deeper, something no flame could soothe.

Her laugh slipped across my mind. Not Eli’s no, older, softer, touched with the lilt of someone long gone. I jerked upright, snarling, refusing to hear it.

“Not now,” I ground out, my voice gravel. “Not her.”

But memory is cruel. It doesn’t ask permission.

The scent of wildflowers pressed against my nose, sharp and sudden. I coughed, choking on the ghost of it. My hands clawed into the armrests of the chair, wood splintering under the force.

I could almost feel fingers twining with mine. Small. Warm. Too real.

“No.”

I shoved back, stumbling to my feet. My vision blurred firelight bending into moonlight, my cabin walls melting into the open stretch of forest. I squeezed my eyes shut, but it didn’t stop.

The scrape of her voice my first mate’s voice slid through the cracks in my skull like water through stone.

“Lucien, you worry too much.”

I staggered. The room tilted. My wolf whined, ears flat, pacing in circles inside me.

The curse was dragging me under again, drowning me in what I couldn’t bury.

My jaw ached with the grind of my teeth. I wanted to run, to claw at the walls, to do anything but let her in. But resistance only tightened the vice. Every heartbeat pulled me deeper into the past, into her, into the night where everything shattered.

I braced a hand against the mantel, breath sawing through me. “Don’t make me see it,” I begged, voice raw. “Not again.”

The fire cracked loud, like laughter, like bone breaking.

And I knew.

It was already too late.

The world around me tore like paper. Firelight bled into moonlight, the scent of smoke drowned beneath wildflowers, and the cabin floor vanished beneath my feet.

I was back there.

The night of her death.

The clearing was bright under the full moon, silver spilling across her dark hair as she stood with her back to me, bare feet sinking into grass wet with dew. My chest squeezed so hard it felt like something had sunk claws into me. Even now…years, a lifetime later…I could still see the curve of her smile when she turned toward me.

“Lucien,” she breathed, like my name was enough to steady the world.

I should have known better. Should have felt it. The weight of the curse pressing down on us. But I was young. Arrogant. Certain I could keep her safe.

Her hand slid into mine, warm, alive, and my wolf stretched with contentment. The bond had just begun to bloom, raw and fierce, a tether burning between our souls.

And then it happened.

The forest shifted an unnatural silence. Not even the crickets dared to sing. The moon glared white, merciless, and my wolf growled, hackles lifting.

She frowned, tilting her head. “What is it?”

I didn’t have time to answer.

Shadows moved. Not rogues not wolves at all. Something darker. They slipped between the trees, not flesh, not spirit, but both. The kind of thing born from curses and blood-debts.

The air thickened, sulfur burning in my throat.

“Behind me,” I barked, shoving her back. My claws tore through my skin as I shifted halfway, my body breaking, reshaping, my vision sharpening into violent clarity.

But the curse didn’t come for me.

It came for her.

The first strike wasn’t physical it was in the bond. A lash of pain that screamed through the tether and dropped her to her knees. I felt it like my own soul had been slashed. She gasped, clutching her chest, eyes wide with terror.

“No—” My roar cracked the clearing open. I lunged at the shadows, but every strike went through them, tearing only smoke. My wolf howled, desperate, useless.

She was screaming now, not from fear but from the bond unraveling inside her. Blood trickled from her nose, staining her lips. She tried to reach for me, shaking hands stretching through the air.

“Lucien—”

Her voice broke. Her body convulsed. And the bond the beautiful, fragile thing we had just begun to build snapped.

The sound it made wasn’t sound at all. It was silence, vast and final.

And she went still.

Her eyes locked on mine, wide and glassy, even as her chest fell silent.

I tore at the shadows until my claws broke, until my throat was shredded from howling her name. But they only melted into the trees, leaving nothing but her body and the echo of my failure.

I dropped beside her, pulling her into my arms, rocking, begging, cursing the gods, the moon, the blood that bound me to a line too cursed to keep love.

And then I heard it…the whisper through the trees. Cold. Malevolent. The mark of the curse sealing itself tighter.

“No alpha of your blood will ever keep his mate.”

I clutched her tighter, fury shaking me apart, and howled into the night.

But no one answered.

Only the curse.

Only silence.

I don’t know how long I sat there, clutching her lifeless body. Time had no meaning in the clearing. The moon hung frozen above me, pitiless, casting her skin in silver so pale she looked carved from ice.

I pressed my forehead to hers, willing warmth back into her, whispering promises through clenched teeth.

“Breathe. Please, just breathe. You’re stronger than this. You’re mine.”

But the bond was gone. Severed so completely it felt like a hollow space in my chest had been scooped out and left to rot.

Her fingers, once curled around mine, slipped loose.

I couldn’t let go.

Not when the stink of the curse still lingered in the air, like sulfur and rotting flowers. My wolf was a beast caged inside me, ramming against my ribs, howling until my skull rattled. His grief was my grief, magnified, endless.

I carried her deeper into the woods, past the clearing, past the river where we used to meet as children, past the broken stones of the old altar. My legs moved on instinct, numb and burning at once.

There, beneath the oldest oak the one that had seen centuries of blood and vows I laid her down. The ground was soft from rain, damp and smelling of moss. My claws dug into the earth until blood slicked my palms.

I buried her with my bare hands.

Every handful of soil was a punishment, every shovelful a reminder that I had failed her, failed myself, failed whatever gods had dared to give me a mate only to rip her away.

By the time her face disappeared beneath the dirt, my vision blurred so badly I couldn’t tell mud from tears. My body shook, not from weakness but from rage so vast it threatened to tear me apart.

When the grave was filled, I dropped to my knees. The oak loomed above, branches stretching like arms to shield her, or maybe cage me.

“I swear,” I rasped, my voice torn raw. “Never again. You hear me?” My hands fisted, nails cutting skin. “You will not take another. I will not let you.”

The curse whispered back, its voice threading through the leaves. Mocking. Certain.

“No alpha of your blood will ever keep his mate.”

I slammed my fists into the ground, once, twice, until my bones cracked. My wolf howled in my skull, feral, broken.

“Then I’ll fight you,” I growled into the dirt. “I’ll fight you until the last breath leaves my body. But I will not cannot lose like this again.”

That was the night I swore never to let anyone close enough. Never to give the curse another chance to tear my heart from my chest.

The night Lucien Veyra died, and the cursed alpha was born.