Bella's POV

I can't sleep.

Every time I close my eyes, I see Giovanni's cold smile and hear Margaret's threats echoing in my head. The silk sheets that felt luxurious this morning now feel like chains around my body, and the massive bed might as well be a cage.

After hours of tossing and turning, I give up. Maybe a walk will help clear my head, even if I can only pace around this room like a trapped animal.

But as I slip on the simple dress Grace left for me, I remember something she said earlier: "Watch, listen, and trust no one completely." Maybe it's time I started exploring this fortress, learning its secrets before they're used against me.

The hallways are dimly lit by torches that cast dancing shadows on the stone walls. Everything feels different at night, dangerous, and alive. My enhanced hearing picks up sounds I never would have noticed before: the soft breathing of sleeping guards, mice scurrying between the walls, and something else...

Singing.

It's so faint I almost miss it, but there's definitely someone singing somewhere in the depths of the fortress. The voice is hauntingly beautiful, filled with a sadness that makes my chest ache. Without really deciding to, I find myself following the sound.

The singing leads me down stairs I didn't know existed, through passages that grow narrower and damper the deeper I go. The air smells of moisture and old stone, and I realize I must be in the dungeon levels, not where I was held, but somewhere even deeper.

The singing gets clearer as I approach, and I can make out words now, though they're in a language I don't recognize. The voice is definitely female, young-sounding, and so full of grief it makes my eyes water.

I follow the sound to a heavy wooden door reinforced with iron bands. Light seeps through a small barred window at eye level, and when I peer inside, my breath catches.

The cell is tiny, barely large enough for the simple cot and washbasin it contains. But it's not the cramped space that shocks me, it's the woman sitting on the cot.

She's beautiful in an otherworldly way, with silver hair that seems to glow in the candlelight and skin so pale it's almost translucent. But her eyes are what hold my attention. They're completely white, no pupils or irises visible, and yet somehow I know she's looking directly at me.

The singing stops.

"You can come in, child," she says, and her voice carries that same haunting quality as her song. "I've been waiting for you."

My hand finds the door handle before I consciously decide to turn it. The door isn't locked, which surprises me, but maybe there's no need to lock up someone who's clearly not human.

"You're not afraid," she observes as I step inside. "That's interesting. Most humans flee from my kind."

"What are you?" I ask, settling carefully on the edge of the cot.

"I am Mira," she says with a sad smile. "Last of the Irish banshees, or so I'm told. I've been a guest of Alpha Blackwood for... oh, three years now? Time moves strangely in captivity."

A banshee. I've read about them in Papa's old books… spirits who can see death coming, who sing lamentations for the dying. But the books always described them as ancient hags, not beautiful young women.

"Why are you here?" I ask.

"Because I saw something I shouldn't have," Mira replies cryptically. "I sang a death song for someone the Alpha preferred to keep alive. He decided my gift needed... supervision."

She reaches out and touches my hand, and her skin is cold as winter morning. But it's her next words that make my blood freeze.

"But you, dear one, you're here for an entirely different reason. The wheel turns, the prophecy unfolds, and the shadow bloodline awakens once more."

"I don't understand," I whisper.

Mira's white eyes seem to peer directly into my soul. "Don't you? Haven't you felt it stirring in your veins? The power that doesn't belong to hunters or humans?"

I think about the enhanced senses, the strange strength I felt when Giovanni threatened me, the way Rowan's touch affects me in ways I can't explain.

"What's happening to me?" I ask.

"You are remembering what you were born to be," Mira says softly. "The Ryder bloodline carries more than hunter heritage, child. Your mother's line reaches back to the Shadowmoon pack, thought extinct these hundred years."

Shadowmoon. The name sends an inexplicable shiver down my spine, like hearing a half-remembered lullaby.

"That's impossible," I say. "My family are hunters. We've always been hunters."

"Surface truth hiding deeper secrets," Mira murmurs. "Your parents hid your nature well, suppressed the wolf blood with hunter training and human routine. But suppression is not erasure. The bond with your mate is breaking down the walls they built in your mind."

She stands and moves to the small window, gazing out at something I can't see.

"The Alpha's curse is older and more complex than anyone knows," she continues. "He was not simply trapped in that portrait… he was bound there, waiting for the one whose blood could free him and whose power could complete him."

"You're talking about me," I realize.

"The last daughter of Shadowmoon, mated to the cursed Alpha of Northwood. Two bloodlines that were sundered by war, now joined by fate." Her voice takes on a prophetic quality. "Great changes come, child. The old balance shifts, and you stand at the center of it all."

My head is spinning with all this information. Shadowmoon bloodline? Suppressed wolf heritage? It sounds like madness, but it also explains so much about why I've felt different my whole life, why my parents were so protective, why I survived Rowan's bonding when others died.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" I ask desperately.

Mira turns back to me, and for a moment her white eyes seem to swirl with visions only she can see.

"Learn who you truly are," she says. "The dreams will come soon… memories of lives lived and lost, prophecies written in blood and starlight. Do not fight them. They will show you the path."

"What dreams?"

But before Mira can answer, heavy footsteps echo in the corridor outside. We both freeze, listening as they approach the cell.

"Go," Mira whispers urgently. "There's another way out, behind the loose stone by the washbasin. And child..." She grabs my wrist with surprising strength. "Trust the banshee's warning. Your greatest enemy wears the face of a friend, and your salvation lies in embracing the darkness you've been taught to fear."

The footsteps are almost at the door now. I quickly locate the loose stone Mira mentioned and slip through the narrow opening behind it, emerging into another corridor just as I hear voices in the cell.

I make my way back through the twisting passages, my mind reeling from everything Mira told me. Shadowmoon bloodline. Suppressed wolf heritage. Prophetic dreams.

By the time I reach Rowan's chambers, exhaustion has finally caught up with me. I slip into the massive bed and close my eyes, expecting to lie awake for hours processing what I've learned.

Instead, sleep takes me almost immediately.

And with sleep come the dreams.

I'm running through a moonlit forest, but I'm not human. Four legs carry me swiftly over fallen logs and through streams, and my vision is sharp enough to see every detail in the darkness. This body is powerful, graceful, wild.

The scene shifts, and I'm standing in a great hall filled with wolves in human form. But these aren't Rowan's people, everything about them is different. More elegant, more mystical. Ancient power radiates from every surface.

A woman who looks like an older version of myself stands before a throne made of silver and obsidian. She's addressing an assembly, her voice carrying authority and sorrow.

"The curse is cast," she says. "The northern Alpha will sleep until our bloodline awakens him. Only then can the old wounds heal and the sundered packs unite once more."

I try to move closer, to hear more, but the dream fragments and reforms.

Now I'm in a tower room, watching as the same woman mixes herbs and blood by candlelight. Her movements are ritualistic, purposeful, and I know somehow that this is the moment that changed everything.

"Blood of my blood," she whispers, "power of my power. Let this binding hold until love conquers hate, until shadow embraces light."

The dream shifts one final time, and I'm standing before a massive portrait of a wolf. But this time, I'm not ten years old. I'm exactly as I am now, and when I reach out to touch the painted surface, golden eyes blink back at me.

I wake with a gasp, my heart pounding and the taste of wild magic on my tongue.

The dreams weren't dreams at all.

They were memories.