“I’ve decided to return home and take a mate,” I told Jace through the mindlink, keeping my voice steady even though my wolf stirred uneasily beneath my skin.

There was a brief pause before his relief flowed through the bond like a softened current. “That is good news,” he answered at last. “You have been in the western territories for three years now. Mother and Father had begun to believe you intended to remain there indefinitely. It is time you came back to your own pack.”

Three years.

The words settled heavily in my chest as my gaze drifted to the window, where the pale light of the moon filtered through the foreign skies of Paris. I had left my homeland under the blessing of my parents, sent to study the craft of weaving and design for our family’s lineage of moon-thread garments. I was the eldest daughter of a respected house, raised with the expectation of duty, heritage, and eventually, a chosen mate who would strengthen our bloodline.

But I had not truly left for studies alone.

I had followed Lucan.

Jace’s closest companion. His trusted ally in business and war-training alike. The golden warrior of our generation, admired by many within the pack. No one, not even Jace, knew that beneath the guise of friendship, Lucan and I had been bound in secrecy for years. Stolen moments beneath the moonstone grove, whispered vows carried only through the mindlink, and a bond that was never spoken aloud in daylight.

He had insisted on secrecy, saying the timing was not yet right, that revealing us would fracture alliances within Jace’s circle and disturb the fragile balance between our houses. And I, foolish in my devotion, had believed him. I had convinced myself that hidden love was still love, that what we shared in silence would one day be honored before the Moon Goddess herself.

Jace spoke again, drawing me back. “Do not trouble yourself. The mate chosen by Mother and Father is of strong blood and honorable standing. You will not lack for anything in his care.”

He hesitated only briefly before continuing, almost casually, “You should also call upon Lucan before you return. He is still within Paris’ western grounds. He used to treat you as a younger sister; it would be fitting for him to attend your joining ceremony. Though I have not felt his presence clearly through the mindlink these past days. He has been difficult to reach.”

A faint unease tightened around my heart at those words.

Difficult to reach.

Of course he had been.

It began when Ellie returned to the territory.

Ellie, his first bond. The one the elders once believed the Moon Goddess had marked for him before fate shifted its path.

My fingers tightened slightly around the edge of the table as I forced the words out. “He may not be present for the ceremony…”

“What ceremony?”

The voice came not from the mindlink, but from the doorway.

Lucan.

I severed the connection with Jace at once, my pulse spiking as I turned. He entered as though nothing in the world had changed, as though the sight I had witnessed yesterday beneath the silver-lit trees had never carved itself into my memory. Ellie standing close to him in the sacred park, her hands on his face, his lips meeting hers as if the rest of the world had ceased to exist.

As if I had never been there at all.

“Who is being joined in union?” he asked again, his tone light, his arm slipping around my shoulders with practiced ease, as though I were still something certain in his life.

I leaned into him just enough to hide the fracture inside me. “A friend,” I said quietly, forcing a small smile. “It is nothing important.”

He exhaled a soft laugh, brushing his lips against my temple in a gesture that once made my heart quicken. “You should wear the indigo gown,” he murmured. “The one you wore beneath the moonstone altar last winter. You looked as though the Goddess herself had chosen you.”

A hollow sound almost escaped me, but I swallowed it down.

“Perhaps,” I replied instead.

He released me and settled into the chamber as though he belonged there without question, as though the world outside our shared illusion did not exist. His attention drifted to the small carved stone beside the hearth, his fingers already reaching for the cup I had been holding moments before, stealing from it with familiar ease, as if my space was still his to occupy.

“I am famished,” he said after a while, looking at me with that effortless smile that once softened every doubt I had ever held.

Without thinking, I moved to prepare food for him. Habit guided my hands more than thought ever could.

He followed as he always did, leaning against the stone counter, watching, taking what he pleased—sips from my cup, pieces of bread before I had finished arranging them, small touches that once felt like affection and now felt like something far more distant.

I placed a full plate before him. He smiled as though nothing in the world had ever weighed on him, as though I had not already begun to unravel beneath the surface.

“You spoil me,” he said between bites. “How did I earn such fortune?”

I did not answer.

I only stood there, offering him a smile I no longer felt.

But inside me, something had already made its decision beneath the watch of the Moon Goddess.

Eat well, Lucan.

For soon, you will no longer find me where you expect.

While he was eating, my thoughts drifted far from the quiet crackle of the hearth and the familiar comfort of his presence.

It had all begun a week ago, beneath the pale blessing of the moonstone altar when I still believed the Moon Goddess had woven something gentle for me. I had just returned from the healer’s hut when she confirmed what my senses had already begun to whisper through the bond—I was carrying his child. Not one, but twins, their presence small but undeniable, like two faint pulses beneath my own heartbeat.

I remember standing there for a long while, one hand resting over my abdomen, feeling something I had never allowed myself to hope for settle into place. I had imagined telling Lucan beneath the sacred willow where we once swore, through trembling mindlink, that whatever storms came, we would face them as one. I even carried the crystal vial of the healer’s confirmation, wrapped carefully in cloth, as though it were a blessing too fragile for the world to see.

I went to his dwelling that evening with a heart too full to contain itself, but as I reached the carved wooden door, I heard voices within, the heavy timbre of laughter spilling through the narrow opening that had been left ajar.

Lucan’s voice came first, light, careless, as though speaking of something trivial rather than a life shared beneath the Goddess’s gaze.

“She is easy enough to deceive,” he said, and I remember how the sound of it unsettled something deep within me, though I could not yet understand why. “I only needed to show her what she wanted to see. All of this,” he added with a low chuckle, “is nothing more than repayment for what her bloodline took from Ellie.”

There was another laugh inside, rough and approving. “You have truly committed yourself to it then.”

Lucan did not hesitate. “She believes we are bound by fate, as though the Moon Goddess herself placed her in my path. It is almost laughable. She clings so desperately to the idea of being chosen. And Ellie—Ellie understands me in ways she never could. She is fire where Elowen is nothing but quiet obedience.”

The words struck through me like iron dipped in frost, but I remained where I stood, unmoving, as though the earth itself had anchored me in place.

Ellie.

The name was not unfamiliar. It belonged to a girl whose life had always seemed to echo my own in ways I never understood, as though the threads of our existence had been tangled long before either of us could speak our names.

I had been born beneath the blessing of a powerful bloodline, the only daughter of a house the elders once said was favored by the Moon Goddess. But beneath that same roof had lived Marga, a servant whose silence concealed a truth no one suspected. She carried a child of her own, born only hours apart from me, and in her desperation, she committed a sin that altered every path that followed.

She stole me away and left her own daughter in my place.

For years, I grew up in a world that was not mine, until fate—or perhaps punishment—unraveled the lie. When truth returned like a storm across the pack lands, I was taken back to the life that had always been meant for me, while Ellie was cast out of it, stripped of everything she had believed was hers.

And she never forgave it.

Now, standing outside Lucan’s dwelling while his voice spoke of me as though I were nothing more than a tool in another’s vengeance, I understood that the past had never truly remained buried. It had only been waiting.

I do not remember how long I stood there before I finally turned away, but I remember the hollow feeling that followed me like a second shadow.

Even as I sat across from Lucan now, watching him eat as though nothing within him had ever been false, I could no longer see the man I had loved. I could only see the shape of what had been used.

That night, when sleep finally claimed the silence between us, he held me as though I were something precious, his arms heavy around my waist beneath the furs, his breath steady against my neck. For a moment, I almost wanted to believe it was still real, that warmth could still mean safety. But the bond no longer answered the way it once did, and something in me had already begun to wake.

When he rose carefully from the bed and left without sound, I did not move.

I waited until the door closed fully behind him, until the night itself seemed to swallow his footsteps, before I followed.

Barefoot beneath the cold breath of the earth, I moved through the shadows of the path that led beyond the dwelling, my pulse striking hard against my ribs as though warning me to turn back. But I did not.

I saw them beneath the old iron gate where the boundary stones marked the edge of the pack lands.

Lucan did not hesitate when he reached her.

Ellie stepped into his arms as though she had been waiting there all along, and then they kissed with a hunger that was not gentle, not restrained, but something raw and consuming, like wolves no longer bound by reason. The sight of it tore through me more cleanly than any blade ever could.

And still I did not look away.

Even when their bodies pressed against one another with a familiarity that made my stomach twist, even when his hands—hands that had once rested so carefully over the life growing within me—gripped her as though I had never existed at all.

Their voices came between breaths and fractured movements, low and unguarded, carried by the night wind as though the Moon Goddess herself had chosen to reveal what I was never meant to hear.

“She has already accepted everything I showed her,” Lucan said, his tone unsteady but satisfied, as though speaking of a victory already secured. “Her trust, her name, her place within her house. It will all open itself to me soon enough.”

“And after she breaks?” Ellie’s voice followed, sharp with something like satisfaction.

“Then there will be nothing left for her to protect,” he answered without hesitation, a quiet laugh slipping through his words. “Everything she is will belong to us.”

The world around me did not move after that. Even the wind seemed to forget how to breathe.

I understood then that I had never been part of their story in the way I believed. I had only been the path they walked upon.

But something within me, something deeper than grief and sharper than betrayal, began to harden in the silence that followed.

If they had written me into their tragedy, then I would learn how to rewrite the will of fate itself.

I was already lying upon the healer’s stone bed when the scent of crushed herbs and burning moonleaf grew too heavy for my senses, the chamber dimly lit by pale moonstones set into the walls. The decision had been spoken of in hushed tones by the healer and the attending nurses of the pack, as though my will no longer held weight within my own body.

An abortion, they called it gently, as if gentleness could soften the meaning of what was to be done.

Twin lives. Two small sparks of existence beneath my womb. And yet my thoughts had become a storm of confusion and fear, whispering that perhaps ending it would be easier than surviving what came after. Lucan, Ellie, the lies tangled around my fate like poisoned vines—I told myself I could not bring children into such ruin.

But even in that moment of trembling surrender, something within me resisted. I had not spoken of the pregnancy to anyone. Not to the pack elders, not to Jace, not even to Lucan. These lives were still mine alone, untouched by the cruelty of the world outside my skin.

When the healer prepared the silver instruments blessed beneath the moon, I felt something inside me snap awake, sharp and instinctive like a wolf recognizing danger to its young. My breath stilled as I looked up at the carved stone ceiling, and suddenly I could not bear it.

I was not a murderer. Not of my own blood.

Before the ritual could begin, I tore the binding threads from my arm where the sleeping draught had been set, pain flaring through me like lightning. I rose so abruptly that the healer called after me in alarm, but I did not hear her properly over the pounding of my own heart. I ran barefoot through the corridors of the healer’s hall, the cold stone biting at my feet, the echoes of pursuit fading behind me as instinct overtook reason.

I did not stop until I burst beyond the archway into the open grounds of the pack, where the air was colder and heavier beneath the watch of the moon.

That was where I saw her.

Ellie stood near the waiting carriage of polished dark wood, her cloak wrapped neatly around her frame, the faint curve of her abdomen visible even beneath fine woven fabric. Her presence alone was enough to make the air feel sharp, as though the land itself recognized the fracture between us.

Her eyes lifted to me, and whatever calm she had worn shattered instantly into something venomous.

“So even the healer’s hall cannot hold you,” she said, her voice edged with scorn as she stepped closer. “Tell me, Elowen, are you so desperate now that you follow me into every place I go?”

I froze, breath uneven. “What are you doing here?”

Her lips curled faintly. “The Moon Healer summoned me for my lunar blessing. Eight weeks now,” she added, one hand brushing lightly over her stomach as though claiming something sacred. “The child of my mate.”

My chest tightened so violently it felt as though the bond itself had been struck. “You are carrying Lucan’s child?”

Her smile deepened, slow and deliberate. “Did you truly believe you were the only one the Moon Goddess favored?”

Something in her tone shifted, sharpened by old resentment that had never truly healed. She stepped closer until there was barely space between us, her voice lowering into something far more dangerous.

“You took my place once already,” she whispered. “Do not pretend you do not understand what comes after that.”

I tried to move past her, but she shifted with me, her hand already reaching for the carved latch of her waiting carriage. “Go on then,” she murmured coldly. “Run as you always do. It seems to be your only talent.”

I had taken no more than a step forward when the sound of hooves striking stone shattered the silence.

The carriage moved without warning, sudden and violent, as though guided by something far more deliberate than chance. The world tilted in a blur of motion and light, and before I could call upon instinct or mindlink, impact struck me with a force that stole breath and thought alike.

I fell beneath the weight of it, the earth rushing up to meet me as pain bloomed through bone and flesh in waves too overwhelming to comprehend. The taste of iron filled my mouth, and beneath me the ground warmed with spreading blood.

My hands moved on their own, instinctively seeking the life within me.

My pups.

Ellie stepped down from her carriage as though nothing of consequence had occurred, her movements calm, almost elegant, the sound of her footsteps measured against the stone path. She crouched beside me, studying me with a gaze devoid of mercy, then slowly removed her veil before spitting upon the ground near my face.

“Look at you,” she said softly, almost amused. “Even now, you cannot carry yourself with dignity. How easily you break.”

I tried to speak, but my voice faltered beneath the weight of pain and disbelief.

She leaned closer, her scent overwhelming in its closeness, her words sliding into me like poison beneath the skin. “Did you truly think you were chosen? That your blood made you untouchable? You were never anything more than a replacement placed where I should have stood.”

Tears blurred my vision as the world began to fade at its edges.

“And do not weep as though you are wronged,” she added with quiet cruelty. “You should have thought of that before you laid claim to what was never yours. Lucan only ever returned to me. He told me himself that you were dull, lifeless… something he endured rather than desired.”

My breath broke at the edges, shallow and fading.

She laughed, low and unrestrained. “He said you were like still water left too long beneath the sun. And I—” she paused, smiling faintly, “—I am the storm he always comes back to.”

My lips parted in a broken plea, but she only watched as though I were already gone.

Her hand lifted then, as if to silence whatever remained of me, but before she could speak again, another presence cut through the air like a blade drawn in the dark.

“Elowen.”

The voice was distant at first, then closer, urgent, carrying through the bond like something long forgotten but never truly lost. Strong arms lifted me from the ground, cradling me with desperate care as the world threatened to slip entirely from my grasp.

“Stay with me,” he said, his voice breaking through the haze. “Do not close your eyes. I will not let you fall.”

And as my vision dimmed beneath the weight of blood and loss, I saw him clearly for the first time in what felt like a lifetime.

The boy who had once stood beneath the silver moon with me when we were younger, the only one who had ever looked at me as though I mattered.

But even as I clung to that fading recognition, I understood the truth settling over me like winter.

It was already too late.