Lyra POV

The pawn shop in the supernatural black market smelled of dust and desperation.

I placed a small velvet box on the grimy glass counter. Inside were a few pieces of jewelry—not the full collection, just enough to fund my escape. I had left the rest behind, buried in the back of my closet like the relics of a life I no longer wanted.

The old human proprietor examined them with a knowing sneer.

"Clearing out, are we?" he rasped.

"All of it. For currency," I replied.

He slid a thick envelope across the counter. I took it without counting.

Outside, the autumn air bit at my cheeks. I checked my phone. Five hours had passed since I sent the message to Silas. The screen remained blank. No reply. No missed calls.

He didn't even care enough to ask why.

I walked to the bus station and bought a ticket to the neutral zone—a small town at the edge of a dense forest, where humans and unaffiliated wolves lived in quiet truce. With the funds, I rented a small storefront and an apartment above it.

I named the bakery "Late Sweet."

The days that followed were filled with flour and sugar instead of poison. I stopped handling Wolfsbane. The welts on my hands slowly faded into white scars. My inner wolf, long suppressed by the toxins, remained in a deep, traumatized slumber—but for the first time in years, my body felt light.

I was free.

But freedom, as I would learn, was a fragile thing. It could shatter the moment your past decided to walk back through the door.

I thought I'd finally escaped the shadow of the Blood Moon Pack. I had no idea my past would walk through my bakery door exactly one year later.

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Lyra POV

One year passed.

The seasons turned, and the quiet town gave me a peace I had never known. I kneaded dough, served coffee, and smiled at customers who didn't know I was a wolf. It was simple. It was safe.

Then Serena walked through my door.

She was clad in a designer coat, her hair arranged in perfect curls. She radiated the particular glow of a woman who possessed everything she desired.

"I was told the proprietress here has a talent for werewolf-specific pastries," she announced.

I kept my face blank. "How may I help you?"

"I require instruction on how to bake a Wolfsbane-infused cake," she said, strolling to the counter. "It is for my Alpha's birthday tomorrow. He has a fixation on the taste."

She knew who I was. I could see the cruel amusement in her eyes—she had tracked me down to display her victory.

I led her to the kitchen and handed her thick gloves. "Wolfsbane will burn your skin. Wear these."

Serena laughed, waving them away. "Oh, I have no need for those. Silas would never permit me to handle raw plant. He has his elite Warriors extract the safe essence for me. He is terribly overprotective."

I felt the words like a knife twisting in my gut. For eight years, I had burned my hands raw because he demanded the fresh plant. For her, he bent every rule.

As she carelessly dumped flour into a bowl, she chattered on about Silas's devotion—how he contravened Pack laws for her, how he used his Alpha's Command to silence the Elders.

"I met him at the border, you know," she sighed dramatically. "He claimed it was love at first sight—that my voice reminded him of some angelic creature who saved him long ago."

I remembered the truth. I was thirteen. He was fifteen, his eyes ruined, bleeding in the mud. I had dragged him to a cave and spoken to him through the night to keep him conscious. Love at first sight. What a beautiful lie.

An hour later, she finished her lopsided cake and called Silas to pick her up.

He walked through the door, and the air grew heavy with his presence. His golden eyes swept across the room—slid over my face for a fraction of a second without recognition—and landed on Serena. He wiped flour from her nose and smiled.

He didn't even see me.

Not as a person, not as the girl from the cave. But the way his eyes flickered back toward me for half a heartbeat before he turned away—something told me his wolf had sensed a ghost it couldn't yet name.

I had no idea that same night, he would seek me out a second time.

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