Saige’s POV

The door closes behind Eike with a final, echoing thud.

Silence stretches between us, thick and heavy, like the air before a storm breaks. He stands a few steps inside the room, shoulders tense, eyes sharp — not angry, not gentle either. Watching. Measuring.

I feel it immediately.

That pull.

That invisible thread tightening around my ribs, drawing me toward him whether I want it or not. My wolf stirs, restless and wary, reacting to his presence like it recognizes something my mind refuses to accept.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

His voice is controlled, but there’s something under it — urgency, maybe even fear. Not for me alone. For himself.

“I’m fine,” even though I lie.

The bond hums in protest, hot and insistent. It hates dishonesty. Especially with him.

Eike studies my face like he’s trying to memorize it, or solve it. Then his gaze flicks briefly to the door, to the hallway beyond, as if he senses what I heard earlier.

“You shouldn’t be pacing this late,” he says. “The pack is unsettled tonight.”

I swallow.

So he does feel it.

“I couldn’t sleep,” I reply. “Too many… thoughts.”

His jaw tightens at that. Something unreadable flashes in his eyes — guilt, maybe, or memory. He nods once, as if he understands far more than he lets on.

Before either of us can say anything else, footsteps approach.

Measured, confident and deliberate.

My wolf bristles instantly.

Eike turns just as the door opens again — this time without a knock.

Avice steps inside.

She’s beautiful in a sharp, deliberate way. Pale hair perfectly arranged, posture regal, eyes cold and bright like cut glass. She’s dressed in a flowing robe the color of moonlight — the kind meant to remind everyone exactly who she is.

The Luna.

Her gaze locks onto me.

And the temperature in the room drops.

“So,” she says smoothly, lips curving into something that looks like a smile but isn’t. “This is where you’ve been hiding.”

Eike stiffens. “Avice.”

She doesn’t look at him. Not at first.

Her eyes rake over me slowly, clinically, like she’s assessing damage to something she already owns.

“I wanted to meet her properly,” Avice continues. “After all, she’s been quite… disruptive.”

I force myself to stand straighter.

“I didn’t mean to cause trouble,” I say. “I didn’t even plan to stay.”

That finally gets her attention.

Her eyes sharpen. “Oh, but you are staying.”

The way she says it makes my skin crawl.

Eike steps forward. “Enough. This isn’t—”

“I’m the Luna,” Avice cuts in coolly. “It is my concern.”

She turns fully toward me now, closing the distance between us with unhurried steps. I don’t move. I refuse to show weakness, even as my heart pounds.

“You look very comfortable,” she says softly. “Almost as if you belong here.”

A dangerous edge slips into her tone.

“I don’t,” I answered. “And I won’t.”

Her smile falters — just for a second.

Fear flashes behind her eyes.

Real fear.

It’s gone quickly, masked by arrogance, but I saw it. I felt it.

Interesting.

“You should be careful, Saige,” Avice says, lowering her voice. “Strange things happen to women who get too close to what isn’t theirs.”

Something inside me snaps.

“I didn’t choose this,” I say. “Whatever you think I am, whatever you’re afraid of — it wasn’t my decision.”

That does it.

Avice’s composure cracks.

Her breath sharpens. Her eyes darken. And suddenly, the calm Luna façade slips, revealing something raw and desperate underneath.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she hisses. “You don’t know what it took to survive after her.”

Her.

The word lands like a dropped blade.

The former Luna.

Eike’s head snaps up. “Avice—”

But she’s already stepped back, visibly shaken, her control fraying.

“You should rest,” she says abruptly, regaining her mask. “We’ll speak again.”

She turns on her heel and leaves, the door slamming behind her.

The silence that follows is deafening.

Eike exhales slowly. “I’m sorry.”

I look at him, really look at him.

At the weight he carries.

At the guilt carved into his bones.

At the truth circling us both, unspoken but alive.

“She’s afraid,” I say quietly.

He doesn’t deny it.

And somehow, I know — whatever Avice is hiding, it’s tied to the night I died… and the night he lost his Luna.

—--

Avice’s POV

I do not run.

I never run.

But my steps are faster than they should be as I leave that room, my pulse a traitor beating too loud in my ears. The corridor lights blur past me, torches bending and stretching as if the walls themselves are watching. I keep my chin high. I keep my back straight. I keep the mask in place.

Luna.

I am the Luna.

Yet my hands are cold.

Too cold.

I turn a corner and stop, pressing my palm against the stone wall, breathing once—just once—until the tremor fades. The scent of her still clings to the air. Not floral. Not sweet. Something older, sharper, like moonlight on steel.

She felt it.

I know she did.

That moment—when I slipped, when fear showed its teeth—her eyes changed. Not triumph, not confusion but recognition.

As if she had remembered me.

No.

I won’t allow that.

I straighten and continue down the corridor, each step measured now. Servants bow as I pass. Guards avert their eyes. They should. They all should. This pack breathes because I permit it.

Because I endured.

Five years ago, I was nothing more than a daughter with ambition and a heart full of hunger. Then the Luna died, and the world cracked open just enough for me to slip through. Grief makes men weak. Guilt makes Alphas blind.

Eike was no exception.

I gave him comfort. I gave him loyalty. I gave him silence when the pack whispered and questioned and doubted. I stood beside him while the ashes cooled and the blood was scrubbed from the floor.

I earned my place.

And now she stands in my den, wearing another woman’s face, carrying another woman’s scent, waking things that should have stayed buried.

I reach my chambers and shut the door with a sharp twist of my wrist. The room answers me with familiar luxury—silks, furs, polished stone—but it does nothing to calm the heat rising under my skin.

I pace.

“She shouldn’t exist,” I mutter.

Reincarnation is a myth we tell pups. A comfort story. A lie dressed in faith. The Moon Goddess does not return what she takes.

And yet…

The bond stirred tonight. I saw it in Eike’s eyes. I felt it snap and stretch like a chain pulled too tight. His wolf recognized her and mine felt threatened in a way it never has before.

I stop pacing.

No.

This isn’t fear. This is survival.

I move to the bell rope near my window and pull it once. Then again. The sound is soft, controlled—coded.

Moments later, the door opens just enough for a man to slip inside. He doesn’t bow. He doesn’t look at me longer than necessary. Good.

“You summoned me, Luna.”

“Yes,” I say. “Close the door.”

He does.

I turn, studying him. He’s not pack-born. His scent is neutral, his eyes dull in the way only killers’ eyes are—trained not to linger, not to question.

“Do you remember the agreement?” I ask.

He nods once. “Payment upon completion.”

“Double it,” I say. “And safe passage through the eastern borders.”

That gets his attention.

“What’s the task?”

I walk closer, lowering my voice even though no one could possibly hear us. “There’s a girl, dark hair. Quiet. She’s being housed near the Alpha’s quarters.”

He hesitates. “The Alpha…”

“I will handle the Alpha,” I cut in. “Your concern is that she does not wake after tonight.”

A pause. Then, carefully asked, “An accident?”

I smile.

“Of course.”

Fire.

Poison.

Claws.

History doesn’t need to repeat itself exactly. It only needs to end the same way.

“She heals fast,” I add. “Unnaturally fast.”

His lips thin. “Then we’ll make it thorough.”

Good.

He turns to leave, but I stop him with a single word. “Quietly.”

He inclines his head and disappears.

I am alone again.

For a moment, doubt creeps in like a whisper. The Moon Goddess does not forgive easily. If the girl truly is what my fear suggests…

I crush the thought.

The Goddess already chose. She chose me as she allowed the old Luna to die. She allowed Eike to move on. The balance was paid in blood, grief and silence.

I go to the mirror and study my reflection. Perfect, unbroken and worthy.

“I will not lose this,” I tell the woman staring back.

Outside, the night deepens. Wolves howl in the distance, unaware that fate has shifted again. Somewhere in the pack, Saige breathes, sleeps, dreams…

Not for long.

I extinguish the candles one by one, plunging the room into darkness.

Whatever she is.

Whatever she remembers.

By dawn, she will be nothing more than another secret buried beneath this pack.

And Eike will never know how close he came to losing everything again.

—--

Saige’s POV

I wake to silence that feels wrong.

Not the peaceful kind. Not the deep, resting quiet of a sleeping pack. This silence presses against my ears, heavy and deliberate, as if the night itself is holding its breath.

My eyes open.

Darkness. Thick and close.

For a moment, I don’t move, I listen.

There…

A shift.

Fabric brushing stone.

A breath that isn’t mine.

My pulse snaps awake.

I sit up just as the door creaks open.

Moonlight spills across the floor in a thin blade, cutting the room in half. Three shadows slide inside, slow and practiced. They move like men who have done this before. Like men who expect no resistance.

My body reacts before my mind catches up.

I roll off the bed as something whistles through the air and slams into the wall where my head was a second ago. Wood splinters. The smell of poison hits my nose—sharp, bitter, wrong.

Assassins.

My heart hammers, but fear doesn’t paralyze me. It sharpens me.

I scramble to my feet, barefoot on cold stone. One of them lunges. I dodge, barely, feeling the wind of his blade graze my skin. Another comes from the side, faster, smarter.

I raise my arm on instinct.

Moonlight explodes.

It pours out of me like a scream I didn’t know I was holding, slamming into the men with brutal force. One crashes into the far wall, ribs crunching. Another is thrown backward, skidding across the floor in a heap.

The third hesitates.

His eyes widen.

“What are you?” he whispers.

I don’t know how to answer him.

I only know that something ancient has stretched awake inside my chest, something furious and protective and hungry. My wolf snarls in my blood, not with words but with feeling—mine, mine, mine.

The man recovers and charges anyway.

Pain blooms at my side as his blade slices me. I gasp, staggering—but the pain fades almost instantly. Heat replaces it. The wound seals under my fingers as if it never existed.

His terror is sudden and absolute.

I move without thinking. I grab him by the throat and slam him into the wall, stone cracking under the impact. His feet dangle. His weapon clatters uselessly to the floor.

“I didn’t invite you,” I say, my voice not entirely my own.

His eyes roll back. He goes limp.

I drop him.

The room is wrecked. My chest rises and falls too fast. Moonlight still leaks from my skin in faint silver veins, pulsing with my heartbeat.

Then I smell him.

Pine, smoke, power.

Eike.

The door bursts open behind him as guards flood the corridor, but I barely register them. My gaze locks on his face—shock, fury, fear—all of it colliding in his eyes as he takes in the bodies, the broken wall, me.

He crosses the room in seconds.

“Are you hurt?” he demands, hands hovering, afraid to touch.

I look down at myself. No blood. No wound. Only torn fabric and trembling fingers.

“They tried to kill me,” I say softly.

His jaw tightens. The air around him vibrates with Alpha rage. “Who sent them?”

I meet his eyes.

I don’t say the name—but we both know.

Avice.

Something passes between us then. Not words, not trust but a recognition that the danger isn’t coming anymore.

It’s already here.

Inside the pack.

Inside the den.

Eike’s hand finally closes around mine, firm and grounding, and the moment he touches me…

The bond reacts.

Pain flares sharp and bright, stealing my breath. My knees buckle. He catches me before I fall, pulling me against his chest.

His voice breaks through the ringing in my ears. “Saige…”

I freeze.

I didn’t tell him my name.

Slowly, I look up at him.

His eyes are glowing now, his wolf staring back at mine with raw certainty and dawning horror.

“I didn’t mean to say it,” he whispers. “It just—came to me.”

The room tilts. Memories claw at the edges of my mind—fire, claws, betrayal, blood on stone.

And beneath it all, a single, terrible truth pressing closer to the surface.

The wolves who tried to kill me were only the beginning.