The watch box felt heavier than it should have as I climbed the stairs to our bedroom, my heart hammering with anticipation. Five years. Five years of marriage deserved something special, something that would make Derek's eyes light up the way they used to when we first met.

I'd spent weeks planning this surprise, sneaking out during lunch breaks to visit the jeweler, carefully selecting the inscription: "To my forever - D&H, June 15th." Our wedding date, etched in silver on the back of the vintage Omega he'd admired in that shop window months ago.

The bedroom door was ajar, and I could hear voices inside—Derek's low murmur and someone else. Someone familiar.

"Sign the papers, Harper. Sienna's carrying my real family now."

The words hit me like a physical blow. I stood frozen in the doorway, the gift box slipping from suddenly nerveless fingers and hitting the hardwood floor with a sharp crack.

Derek was sitting up in our bed—our bed—completely naked, not even bothering to cover himself. Beside him, equally undressed, was Sienna. My best friend since college. My maid of honor. The woman who'd helped me pick out the lingerie I'd planned to wear tonight.

She was wearing my silk robe, the one Derek had given me last Christmas. The pale blue fabric looked obscene against her flushed skin.

"Harper." Derek's voice was flat, businesslike, as if he were addressing a subordinate at his law firm. "Perfect timing. I was just explaining to Sienna how this is going to work."

My eyes found the papers scattered across the nightstand—divorce documents, already filled out, waiting only for my signature. Next to them sat a pregnancy test, the digital display showing a clear positive result. Three months, according to the small print.

Three months.

My legs felt like water. "Derek, what—"

"Don't make this harder than it needs to be." He gestured dismissively at the papers. "Everything's already divided fairly. The apartment stays with me, obviously—my name's on the mortgage. The BMW too. And your father's life insurance money will go toward setting up the nursery."

The insurance money. Dad's final gift to me after the cancer took him two years ago. The money I'd been saving for the house we'd talked about buying, the family we'd planned to start.

"You can't—that money is mine."

Derek's laugh was cold. "We're married, sweetheart. Community property. Besides, your dad's money should go toward building this family's future, don't you think?"

Sienna rose from the bed with fluid grace, completely comfortable in her nakedness, in my space. She padded over to my vanity—my vanity—and began applying my expensive face cream, the one I splurged on every few months.

"Don't blame me, Harper," she said, meeting my eyes in the mirror's reflection. "You couldn't keep him interested. A man like Derek needs... stimulation."

I watched, numb, as she opened my jewelry box and selected my grandmother's pearl earrings, the ones I'd worn on my wedding day. She put them on with casual ownership.

That's when I saw it—taped to the corner of the mirror, a black and white ultrasound image. The date stamp made my blood freeze: July 20th. The middle of our Hawaii trip. The romantic getaway Derek had planned to "reconnect" after a difficult year.

Except Derek had left three days early.

"Emergency at the firm," he'd said, kissing my forehead as he packed his suitcase. "You know how it is, babe. Duty calls."

I'd spent those three days alone on the beach, sending him pictures of sunsets, texting about how much I missed him. He'd responded with photos of himself at his desk, looking exhausted under the familiar glow of his office lamp.

But that lamp—I stared at it now, sitting on our nightstand. The same brass base, the same cream shade. He'd been here. In our bed. With her.

My phone was still in my hand, and with trembling fingers, I scrolled back through our text history from that week. There they were—his "working late" selfies, all timestamped during those three days I was alone in paradise. The background of each photo showed our bedroom, our sheets, our life.

While I was watching sunsets and missing my husband, he was creating a new family with my best friend.

"The timing works out perfectly," Derek was saying, pulling on his boxer shorts with casual efficiency. "Sienna's due in March. We can have the wedding in May, once everything's finalized."

Wedding. They were planning a wedding.

"I already have the dress picked out," Sienna added, now rifling through my jewelry box like it was a clearance bin. "Something simple, elegant. Beach ceremony, maybe. More intimate than that circus you put Derek through."

Our wedding had been beautiful. Small, yes, because we couldn't afford more, but filled with love and hope and promises that apparently meant nothing.

I walked to the nightstand on unsteady legs. The pen felt foreign in my hand, too heavy and too light at the same time. The divorce papers swam before my eyes—legal jargon that translated to the dissolution of everything I'd thought was real.

"That's my girl," Derek said as I signed my name. His voice held the same patronizing warmth he used with difficult clients. "I knew you'd be reasonable about this."

Reasonable. As if five years of marriage, of building a life together, of loving him with everything I had, was something to be reasonable about.

I set the pen down and walked toward the door, my bare feet silent on the hardwood.

"Harper." Derek's voice stopped me at the threshold. "Don't forget—I need your personal things out by this weekend. Sienna's going to need the closet space, and we want to start fresh."

Start fresh. In the home I'd helped create, with the furniture I'd helped choose, surrounded by the life I'd helped build.

I walked out of the bedroom, down the hallway lined with photos of our life together, and out the front door. The night air bit through my thin pajamas, but I kept walking. My phone buzzed in my pocket—a text from Derek.

"Don't forget to pack your things by weekend. Sienna needs the closet space."

I turned off the phone and kept walking, my slippers slapping against the empty sidewalk. The city was quiet at this hour, just the distant hum of traffic and the whisper of wind through the trees.

I walked for hours, block after block, until my feet were numb and my legs ached. When I finally looked up, I was standing at the edge of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the water stretching out below like a black mirror.

The wind was fierce here, whipping my hair across my face and cutting through my pajamas like ice. I climbed over the railing, my hands shaking as I gripped the cold metal.

The water was so far down. So dark. So quiet.

I let go.

The water hit like a fist made of winter—and then there was nothing.

Not the gentle descent into darkness I'd imagined. This was violence, pure and brutal. The surface shattered against my body with the force of concrete, driving every molecule of air from my lungs in a single, crushing blow. Ice-cold fingers clawed through my pajamas, through my skin, straight into my bones.

Water flooded my nose, my mouth, my throat—salt and rust and something metallic that made me gag even as I drowned. My limbs flailed instinctively, a pathetic dance against the inevitable. The cold was so complete it felt like burning. Every nerve ending screamed.

Then the fight drained out of me. My arms grew heavy, my legs stopped kicking. The darkness crept in from the edges of my vision, soft and welcoming after the violence of impact. In those final seconds, as consciousness slipped away like sand through my fingers, I felt something strange.

Warmth.

A spreading heat that began at my left wrist and radiated outward, as if someone had lit a match beneath my skin. It pulsed once, twice, and then—

Nothing.

***

Consciousness returned in fragments, like pieces of a shattered mirror slowly reassembling.

Cold. Hard. Stone.

I was lying on my back, but not on the muddy riverbed I'd expected. This surface was smooth, polished, carved. Ancient. My fingers traced the edges of what felt like intricate symbols etched into the stone beneath me.

My body convulsed violently, water streaming from my lungs in painful, retching coughs. But even as the river water left me, the shaking continued. This wasn't just cold or shock—every cell in my body was vibrating, as if my very molecular structure was being rearranged.

The air tasted wrong. Instead of the urban pollution and car exhaust of Tacoma, I breathed in pine and snow and something wild, something that made my nostrils flare with primitive recognition. The scent was thick, musky, predatory.

I forced my eyes open and immediately wished I hadn't.

The sky above me was impossible. Too many stars scattered across the black canvas, constellations I'd never seen despite years of camping with my father as a child. They pulsed with an otherworldly light, casting everything in silver and shadow.

The trees surrounding me were giants—ancient pines and oaks that stretched so high their tops disappeared into the star-drunk sky. Their trunks were massive, wide as city buses, their bark silver-touched in the moonlight. This wasn't Washington. This wasn't anywhere on Earth I knew.

Then I heard the breathing.

Low, rhythmic, coming from all directions. The sound of large lungs expanding and contracting in perfect synchronization. My heart hammered against my ribs as I slowly, carefully, turned my head.

They were everywhere.

Wolves. But not the wolves I'd seen in documentaries or zoos. These creatures were the size of small horses, their shoulders reaching at least four feet high. Twenty or more of them formed a perfect semicircle around the stone platform where I lay, their massive bodies motionless as statues.

Their eyes caught the moonlight and threw it back—amber, silver, blood red. Intelligent eyes. Patient eyes. Eyes that watched me with an awareness that made my skin crawl.

I tried to scream, but only a strangled whimper escaped my throat.

The wolf pack shifted as one, a fluid movement that parted them down the middle like a living curtain. Through the gap they created, a figure emerged from the shadows.

A man. At least, I thought it was a man.

He stood at least six and a half feet tall, his bare chest and shoulders broad enough to block out the stars. His skin was dark, bronze in the moonlight, but it was marked with intricate patterns that caught the light—silver lines that looked like scars, or tattoos, or something in between. They spiraled across his chest, down his arms, complex geometric designs that seemed to pulse with their own inner light.

But it was his eyes that made my breath catch. Liquid silver, like mercury, with pupils that weren't round but vertical slits. Predator's eyes.

He approached the stone platform with the fluid grace of something that had never known fear, never doubted its place at the top of the food chain. Each step was deliberate, purposeful. He wasn't surprised to find me here. If anything, his expression held a satisfaction that chilled me more than the night air.

He stopped at the edge of the platform, towering over me. This close, I could see the sharp angles of his face, the way his canine teeth were just a little too long, too pointed. When he smiled—and it was definitely a smile—those teeth gleamed.

"Finally," he said, his voice a low rumble that seemed to vibrate through the stone beneath me.

He reached out, and I flinched, but I was too weak, too disoriented to move away. His fingers were warm as they touched my left wrist—the same spot where I'd felt that strange burning sensation as I drowned.

The moment his skin made contact with mine, the world exploded.

Silver light erupted from the point where he touched me, racing up my arm, across my chest, through my entire body. I arched off the stone platform, my back bowing as energy I didn't understand coursed through me. It wasn't painful—it was overwhelming, like being struck by lightning made of pure sensation.

When the light faded, I looked down at my wrist. Where his fingers had touched, an intricate design now marked my skin. The same silver-bright pattern that decorated his body, but smaller, more delicate. It looked like it had always been there, like it was part of me.

He lifted his hand, and the mark continued to glow softly, pulsing in rhythm with my heartbeat.

His smile widened, revealing more of those predatory teeth.

"My Luna," he said, his voice carrying a possessive satisfaction that made something deep in my chest respond despite my terror. "You've finally come home."

I jerked upright on the stone platform, my arms crossing defensively over my chest. The wet fabric of my pajamas clung to my skin like ice, and I could feel twenty pairs of predatory eyes tracking my every movement. The silver-eyed man—this Kael—hadn't stepped back. If anything, he seemed more interested now, his gaze moving from my face to the glowing mark on my wrist like he was appraising merchandise.

My fingers closed around the only thing within reach—a bone-handled dagger that had been lying beside me on the stone. The blade was ceremonial, ornate, but sharp enough. I pointed it at his chest, my hand shaking.

He didn't even flinch. Instead, he turned to address an elderly woman in flowing robes who had emerged from behind the wolf pack. "She has spirit," he said, his voice carrying that same satisfied rumble. "You were right, Elder Maren. This one is different."

I scrambled backward, my bare feet hitting the freezing stone floor. Only then did I realize where I was—standing in the center of a massive outdoor temple, ancient pillars stretching toward that impossible star-filled sky. Stone altars surrounded the platform where I'd awakened, their surfaces stained dark with substances I didn't want to identify.

"Stay away from me," I managed, though my voice came out as barely more than a whisper.

Elder Maren stepped forward, her weathered hands clasped before her. Her eyes were kind, but there was something terrible in her expression—pity mixed with resignation.

"Child," she said gently, "you need to understand what has happened to you. What you are now."

"I don't need to understand anything. I need to go home."

"There is no home to return to." Her words hit me like a physical blow. "The ancient bloodline prophecy of the Bloodmoon Pack speaks of an Alpha's soul mate who will be reborn in our world only after she has been completely destroyed in her own. You weren't summoned here, Harper. Your death—your bridge—was the trigger."

The dagger slipped from my nerveless fingers, clattering against the stone. "That's impossible. I'm not dead. I'm standing right here."

"In your world, yes. You are gone." Elder Maren's voice was infinitely gentle, infinitely final. "Your body lies at the bottom of your river. But your soul... your soul belongs here now. With him."

My legs gave out. The stone rushed up to meet me, but before I could hit the ground, strong arms caught me around the waist. Kael's skin was burning hot against mine, and the moment his hands touched me, that mark on my wrist exploded with silver light again.

This time, the sensation was different. Not just energy, but something deeper, more primal. It felt like recognition on a cellular level, like every atom in my body was singing in harmony with his. The feeling was so intense, so overwhelming, that I couldn't breathe. My chest felt tight, my heart hammering against my ribs.

But it wasn't fear making me tremble now. It was something else entirely—a pull so strong it terrified me more than any of the wolves surrounding us.

I shoved against his chest, forcing myself away from that intoxicating warmth. My body protested the separation, actually ached at the loss of contact, but I ignored it.

"Don't touch me," I gasped.

Kael's silver eyes flashed with something that might have been hurt, but his expression remained controlled. "As you wish, Luna."

"Stop calling me that. I don't care what your prophecy says—I didn't ask to be anyone's anything."

The words hung in the air between us, sharp and defiant. Around us, the wolf pack shifted restlessly, low growls rumbling from several throats. But Kael held up a hand, and they fell silent.

"You need clothing," he said finally, his voice carefully neutral. "Food. And privacy."

I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly aware of how exposed I was in the thin, wet pajamas. "Yes. And somewhere without twenty giant wolves staring at me."

Kael's mouth curved in what might have been a smile. "Of course." He turned to the pack and made a sharp gesture. As one, they melted back into the shadows between the pillars, disappearing so completely it was like they'd never been there.

He shrugged out of his leather jacket and held it toward me. The garment was massive, would probably hang to my knees, and it smelled like him—pine and ozone and something wild that made my nostrils flare.

"I can walk without—"

"You're shivering," he said simply.

I was. I took the jacket and pulled it on, immediately enveloped in his scent and residual body heat. The sensation was disturbingly comforting.

Kael led me through the temple complex toward a massive structure built into the cliff face—part castle, part fortress, all intimidating. The path was lit by torches that cast dancing shadows across the stone, and as we walked, I became aware of movement in the darkness around us.

More wolves. Some in human form, others in that unsettling half-transformed state I'd glimpsed earlier. They watched from doorways, from balconies, from the shadows between buildings. All of them stopped whatever they were doing when they saw me.

The reactions varied. Some faces showed awe, others fear. But a significant number looked at me with open hostility, their eyes tracking my movement like predators sizing up prey.

We were halfway to the castle when a figure stepped directly into our path.

She was stunning—tall and lean with golden hair that caught the torchlight and amber eyes that seemed to glow with their own inner fire. Her fingernails were longer than they should be, tapering to points that gleamed like claws in the flickering light.

"So this is the human," she said, her voice dripping with disdain. She looked me up and down, taking in my bedraggled appearance, Kael's oversized jacket hanging off my frame. "This is what the prophecy promised you?"

"Lydia," Kael's voice carried a warning.

"She couldn't survive one blow from me," Lydia continued, ignoring him. "Look at her. She's pathetic. Weak. This is supposed to be your Luna?"

The mockery in her voice sparked something hot and angry in my chest. I'd had enough of being dismissed, underestimated, cast aside. "You want to test that theory?"

Lydia's laugh was sharp as breaking glass. "Oh, I would love to—"

The temperature around us dropped twenty degrees in an instant.

Kael turned, and the change in him was terrifying. The controlled, almost civilized man who had been speaking to me was gone. In his place was something primal, something that made every instinct I had scream danger. Power radiated from him in waves—not just authority, but something deeper, more fundamental. The very air seemed to thicken with his presence.

"Question my Luna," he said, his voice dropping to barely above a growl, "and you question me."

Lydia's defiance crumbled instantly. She dropped to her knees so fast I heard her bones crack against the stone, her neck bending in submission without any conscious thought. Around us, every other wolf in sight had assumed the same position—heads down, necks bared, trembling.

But as Kael spoke those words, I noticed something that chilled me more than his display of dominance. His right hand was shaking. Just slightly, just enough to catch in the torchlight. And in the depths of those silver eyes, beneath all that power and control, I saw something that didn't belong there.

Fear.

What could possibly frighten someone like him?

And why did I have the sinking feeling that whatever he was afraid of had everything to do with me?