The heavy wet wool of the tunic slipped from my numb fingers, splashing back into the soapy basin, but I didn't care. My ears roared with a sound far more terrifying than Martha's shrill scolding: the heavy, rhythmic thud of warhorses' hooves against the packed dirt of the Silver Moon courtyard.

He's early.

In my past life or my first life, whichever cursed timeline this was Ronan hadn't visited the Willow Creek borderlands until the winter solstice, months after this random October afternoon. But history wasn't a rigid track; it was a fragile glass spiderweb, and my very presence here had already started to crack it, threatening to shatter everything I thought I knew about the future.

"Quiet down, you lazy lot! Stand straight!" Martha hissed, shoving past me with frantic energy, frantically smoothing her apron and patting down her graying hair. "The future Alpha is inspecting the border guards today. 

Show some respect, or you'll find yourselves scrubbing the stables with your bare teeth!"

"Do you think he'll actually inspect the laundry shed?" Bess muttered under her breath, her hands freezing over her washboard as she cast a nervous glance toward the double doors. "He usually stays up at the main garrison house. Why is he riding all the way out to the border quarters?"

"Who cares?" I whispered back, my throat tightening as the sound of the approaching cavalry grew louder. "Just keep your head down and stay out of his line of sight. Don't give anyone a reason to look twice at us."

Future Alpha.

The title tasted like ash on my tongue, bitter and dry. Only five years from now, that same title would be etched onto the gallows where he stood watching my final breath without a single flicker of remorse in his cold eyes.

I kept my head bowed, my chin pressed hard against my collarbone, retreating into the deepest, darkest shadow of the laundry shed's wooden overhang. If I stayed small, if I stayed invisible, maybe his eyes would slide right past me. Wolves like Ronan didn't look at omegas unless they wanted something broken or discarded.

Through the gaps in the rough-hewn pine slats, I watched them ride in.

First came the elite vanguard, their polished steel armor gleaming in the pale autumn sun, bearing the silver crescent insignia of the central pack on their chests. And then, riding at the center, was him.

Alpha Ronan.

Even at twenty-four years younger than the cold, hardened executioner who had signed my death warrant he was an absolute force of nature. He sat astride a massive black stallion with an effortless, lethal grace, his posture straight and commanding. His hair was the color of a midnight storm, blowing slightly across a sharp, unforgiving jawline. But it was his eyes that made my blood run instantly cold: a striking, pale silver-gray, sharp enough to cut glass and entirely empty of mercy.

He looked devastatingly powerful, smelling of crushed pine, frost, and the dark, intoxicating authority of a born ruler that made every lesser wolf cower.

My wolf usually dormant, beaten down by years of low-ranking misery suddenly stirred deep within my chest. It didn't whimper in fear. Instead, it gave a violent, warning snarl, pressing hard against my ribs like a caged animal trying to break free.

He's here. Run.

"Look at the discipline on those guards," Bess whispered, her eyes wide as she peeked through a slat near mine, completely unaware of the terror gripping my chest. "I heard Alpha Ronan single-handedly crushed a rogue rebellion up north before he was even twenty. They say he doesn't feel pain, that he's made of pure ice."

"They're right," I muttered, my fingers digging into the edge of the wash table until my nails ached. "He doesn't feel a thing."

I took a slow, silent step backward, my heel catching against the edge of a wooden bucket left carelessly on the floor.

Clatter.

It wasn't even a loud sound, but in the tense, hushed silence of the courtyard where everyone had frozen in absolute reverence, it rang out like a gunshot.

Instantly, the procession halted.

The heavy thud of hooves ceased. A dozen elite warriors stiffened in unison, their hands dropping instinctively to the hilts of their silver-plated swords, their golden-hued eyes scanning the perimeter for threats with predatory precision.

"Idiot," Martha hissed from across the room, her face draining completely of color as she cast a terrified look toward the doorway. "If one of those guards draws a blade because of your clumsiness, I'll throw you to the wolves myself."

And Ronan?

Ronan pulled his stallion to a sudden, jarring stop. His head snapped toward the laundry shed with the terrifying speed of an apex predator locking onto a stray deer.

Those storm-gray eyes pierced straight through the wooden slats, cutting through the shadows, and locked directly onto mine.

For a fraction of a second, the mask of cold, regal indifference slipped from his face. His breath hitched. A profound, unreadable flash of shock so deep and heavy it bordered on agony crossed his striking features. His nostrils flared as if he had just caught something impossible on the wind.

My heart stopped beating.

The air between us thickened, turning heavy and electric, vibrating with a strange, magnetic pull that defied every ounce of hatred I held for him.

No, I thought, sheer panic flooding my veins. Not yet. He shouldn't be able to smell me through the soap and sweat. He shouldn't recognize me.

Ronan slowly dismounted from his horse, his boots hitting the dirt with a heavy, deliberate sound, never breaking eye contact with me as he started walking straight toward the dark doorway of the shed.

The distance between the courtyard and the dark threshold shrank with every agonizing step Ronan took. Each heavy strike of his boots against the packed earth felt like a drumbeat counting down my doom.

Closer.

I pressed my back so hard against the damp wooden wall that the rough splinters bit through my thin tunic. My fingers clawed at the ledge behind me, searching for anything: a heavy iron poker, a wooden stake, a weapon, anything to keep him away. But there was nothing. I was just an omega with soapy water dripping from her apron, facing the most lethal Alpha in the region.

"Alpha Ronan," Martha stammered, scrambling forward from the corner like a flustered hen, bowing low so her forehead nearly touched the dirt. "Forgive the noise, My Lord. The girl is clumsy just a foolish omega, pay her no mind-"

"Get up, Martha," Bess muttered under her breath from the far tub, her hands white-knuckled around her paddle. "You're embarrassing us worse than she is."

"Shut your trap, Bess," Martha hissed through gritted teeth without breaking her posture, her forehead still pressed to the floorboards. "Do you want the executioner's attention on both of us?"

Ronan didn't even look at either of them.

His massive frame filled the doorway, blocking out the pale autumn sunlight and plunging the small shed into deep shadow. The scent of frost, pine, and dark, smoldering wood rushed over me in a suffocating wave. It was an intoxicating, ancient pull the agonizing signature of the mating bond trying to stitch together two souls that were already stained with blood.

"Is this the whole crew for the outer sector?" Kael asked, stepping up behind Ronan, his golden eyes sweeping over the damp room with clinical detachment.

"Just the laundresses, Beta," Martha squeaked, still bowing. "Only low-ranking help. Nothing worth your time."

"Then why did the perimeter alarms stutter when we crossed the ridge?" Kael pressed, his gaze flicking directly toward me where I stood pinned against the timber wall. "A surge like that doesn't come from an ordinary field hand."

"It was nothing, My Lord," Martha babbled frantically. "A dropped bucket. Pure butterfingers."

My wolf thrashed inside me, screaming to yield, to bow, to submit.

Fight it, I snarled back at my own beast, biting the inside of my cheek until I tasted the sharp, metallic tang of copper. We died because of him. We do not bow.

Ronan stopped inches away from me, ignoring his second-in-command entirely.

At this close range, I could see every sharp angle of his face, the faint scar cutting through his left eyebrow, and the violent, swirling storm inside his silver-gray eyes. He looked down at me, and for a terrifying second, the arrogant, untouchable future Alpha vanished.

Instead, he looked like a man who had just been struck by lightning.

His chest heaved with a ragged breath. His hand twitched at his side, as if fighting an overwhelming, agonizing urge to reach out and touch my cheek, to verify that I was real, that I was breathing, that I wasn't just a hallucination born from a guilty conscience.

"You..." Ronan's voice came out rough, a low, fractured rumble that barely sounded human. It scraped against the quiet walls of the shed. "You're... alive."

My breath hitched. The words were a knife twisted in an old wound.

Alive? Did he already know? Did the haunting echoes of the previous timeline bleed into his mind too? Did he remember the gallows? Did he remember the cold, cruel way he watched the flames lick my skin?

"My Lord?" Kael stepped closer, frowning at Ronan's uncharacteristic hesitation. "Do you know this girl?"

"No," Ronan answered, though his eyes never left my face, refusing to acknowledge his beta. "No, I've never seen her. And yet..." He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. "And yet it feels like I've spent years burying her."

Panic clawed at my throat, superseding the terror. I couldn't let him figure it out. If he knew I was from the future, if he knew what he was going to do to me, he would eliminate me before I could even take another breath.

"You're staring, Alpha," I said, my voice cutting through the heavy air like broken glass.

Bess let out a sharp, audible gasp beside her tub, her eyes darting between us in sheer horror. "Selena, shut your mouth! Have you lost your mind?"

"Let her speak," Ronan commanded quietly, his gaze narrowing as a dangerous, magnetic intensity settled over his features. "What did you say?"

I forced my chin up. I refused to cower. I looked straight into those terrifying, mesmerizing eyes, letting every ounce of the cold, bitter hatred I had harbored in my dying moments flood my gaze.

"I said you're staring," I answered, my voice steady despite the violent trembling of my hands. "Unless the Royal Capital's delegation has orders to inspect laundry maids by staring holes through them?"

"Selena, please!" Martha wailed, pressing her hands harder against the dirty floor. "She's feverish, Alpha! She doesn't know protocol! I'll lock her in the root cellar for a week, just don't listen to her-"

"Quiet, Martha," Ronan ordered without raising his voice, yet the authority in it forced the head laundress to snap her mouth shut instantly.

He took another half-step forward, closing the remaining distance until the heat radiating off his broad chest warmed my cold skin. "You aren't shaking from fear," Ronan observed, his tone dangerously low, almost curious. "Most omegas drop to their knees when I enter a room. You're bracing for a blow."

"I'm bracing for nothing," I snapped back, hating how my own pulse betrayed me by racing faster. "I have work to finish, and your guards are blocking the light."

"Selena, stop it, stop it, stop it," Bess muttered under her breath, wringing her hands so hard her knuckles turned white. "You're going to get us all executed before lunch."

"Executed," Ronan repeated, tasting the word on his tongue like it was foreign and bitter. His eyes flashed with a sudden, dark intelligence. "That's the second time today someone near this border has mentioned executions. Care to explain what you mean by that?"

"I mean nothing," I whispered, pulling my shoulders back and glaring past his shoulder toward the open doorway where the pale sky offered a mockery of freedom. "Words slip out when strangers in expensive armor kick my door in. Pardon me if I'm not weeping with gratitude."

Kael's hand drifted toward his sword hilt, his golden eyes flashing with warning. "Alpha, give the word. Insolence like this from an omega warrants immediate disciplinary action."

"No," Ronan said softly, his gaze locked onto mine, searching every micro-expression, every tight line around my mouth.

A profound, shuddering shock rippled through his massive frame. The hostility in his posture evaporated, replaced by a devastating, hollow confusion. He stared at the open hostility in my eyes, and for the first time in his life, the apex predator looked utterly defenseless.

"Hatred," Ronan whispered, the word tasting like poison as his gaze locked onto mine. "You look at me... like you already know how I'm going to break you."