Alpha Damon and his brother, Malric, in all their arrogance, didn’t give up easily. Not after watching the photographs, the memories, and the false promises go up in smoke right before their eyes. They returned like wounded dogs who still believed they owned the leash wrapped around my neck—two broken boys clinging to the illusion of a future they’d already set on fire.

“Come on, Lyra,” Damon murmured, his voice rough with unspoken guilt as he rubbed the back of his neck, like a child caught after a cruel prank. “Let’s go out to dinner. Our treat.”

Malric, for once, didn’t have his usual bite. He nodded, his voice gentler than I had ever heard it, trying to sound like he still had a place in my world. “Yeah. Our favorite restaurant. Let us make it right. Just one dinner. Please.”

I didn’t speak. I didn’t forgive. But I nodded anyway—because I already knew the truth. This wouldn’t be a reunion. This wouldn’t be an apology. This was the last supper, and they were too blind to realize they were already seated at their own funeral feast.

We rode in Alpha Damon’s sleek black car, that predator of a machine that used to feel like power at my fingertips. But tonight, it felt like a hearse. The silence inside the vehicle was thick and unnatural, like the moment before a storm or a shift, like the breath the forest takes before the wolves begin to howl.

Malric’s phone buzzed. I watched him glance down at the glowing screen and saw his face change.

“It’s Nina,” he said, and I could already hear it—the panic in his breath, the leash tightening around his throat.

He answered quickly, his voice a tangled whisper. “Nina? What’s wrong?”

Her shrill voice cracked through the car’s quiet like a whip. “The power’s out! Someone broke into the house. I’m alone, I think it’s a thief—I’m scared. Please! Come quick!”

As expected, Alpha Damon’s jaw quickly tightened like stone, his eyes darting to me and then to his brother, his voice clipped and cold. “Lyra, get out.”

I blinked, stunned. “What?”

“We have to check on her,” he snapped. “You can’t come.”

Before I could demand an explanation, before I could shift and bare my teeth, the passenger door swung open, and they pushed me out into the night without ceremony or care. Rain crashed down in icy sheets, drenching my hair and clothes in seconds, my mascara running in thin black trails down my cheeks like ink bleeding from old wounds.

They didn’t wait. Didn’t look back. The car peeled off into the storm, red taillights smearing across the darkness like blood from a fresh kill.

I stood there on the slick pavement, trembling with cold, but not from the rain. I stood soaked to the soul, mascara bleeding like betrayal, lips curled in something that almost resembled a smile.

A funeral smile.

Because now I understood—this wasn’t reconciliation. This wasn’t forgiveness. This was the end, and they had just buried themselves in the grave they had dug for me.

I kicked off my satin heels three blocks in. They were too slippery, too delicate, not made for rain or rage. I walked barefoot, each step leaving behind a wet imprint on the pavement like a ghost was moving through the storm. My dress clung to my body like a second skin—one I was ready to shed.

No cabs stopped. Not one.

Drivers slowed. Their headlights illuminated the drenched, limping girl with blood-red eyes and tangled hair, and then they sped away, like I was some spirit of vengeance clawing her way out of the underworld.

I didn’t cry. Not yet.

I turned into an alleyway that I thought might lead to the main road—a shortcut I used to take in daylight, before I knew what shadows were really made of. But that shortcut had teeth.

He stepped out from behind a dumpster, face hidden beneath the dripping hood of a soaked sweatshirt, eyes dark, breath sharp with hunger. I saw the glint of metal too late.

A knife.

His words were garbled—something about a wallet, my bag, my phone—but I didn’t care. I fought. I fought like a wolf who hadn’t yet earned her fangs.

I punched. I clawed. I screamed until my throat felt like it was tearing itself apart. But I was still human, still weak, still slow. The blade sank into me with terrifying precision—once, then again, and a third time when I tried to crawl.

The pain was blinding. Then numbing. Then nothing at all.

I fell, my cheek pressing into the cold pavement like a final kiss goodbye. The sky spun above me, blurry with rain and streetlight. And just as the darkness began to pull me under, I saw it—

Headlights.

A car door slammed. Someone shouted my name.

Arms lifted me from the ground—strong, warm, impossible.

I tried to speak. Tried to say I was sorry, tried to say I couldn’t bring the cookies after all. But my lips wouldn’t obey.

And then I saw him.

Him.

The stranger from the sea. The one who had pulled me from the ocean when Damon tried to drown me beneath the moonlight. The one I thought I had imagined—woven from seafoam and delirium.

But he was real.

He was soaked through, rain sliding down his jaw, blood staining his white shirt. His arms cradled me like I was something precious. Like, I was still alive.

“Stay with me, Lyra,” he said, his voice low, rich, and filled with command. “You’re not dying tonight. Not like this.”

I think I whispered, “Who… are you?”

He gave me the ghost of a smile, more wolf than man.

“Ronan.”

And then he vanished again—not in smoke or light, but in the way creatures like him always do. When the nurse called his name, he slipped from the hospital without looking back. No thanks. No trace. Just silence.

**

I stayed there for a week. Tubes in my veins. Stitches in my stomach. Silence in my soul. I told the nurses not to inform my family, not to call my mother. There was no point. I wasn’t ready to face the world above when I still hadn’t emerged from the one beneath.

I needed to lie there and feel it.

The death of the girl they tried to destroy.

And then, on the day of my discharge, when my wounds were closed but not healed, when my name had faded from memory… they arrived.

Nina Frost was wheeled in on a stretcher, wrists wrapped in gauze, blood seeping through white bandages like flowers blooming in the wrong season. Her makeup was smeared, her face contorted into a perfect scream.

Alpha Damon held her hand, whispering sweet, pathetic nothings.

Malric followed like a guard dog, carrying her designer bag like she was royalty.

They passed me in the corridor.

And they froze.

Alpha Damon stared like he’d seen a ghost. Malric’s jaw dropped, his breath catching.

“Lyra?” Damon croaked.

I looked at him. Then at Malric. Then down at the hospital, the bracelet was still tight around my wrist.

“You were here?” Malric asked, hollow.

“You were in the hospital?” Alpha Damon stepped forward, a hand half-raised, but I stepped back.

I laughed. Soft. Shattered. “I was here for a week,” I said, my voice flat, dead. “Bleeding. Stitched. Alone. And none of you even noticed I was gone.”

Their mouths moved, lips parting as if to form apologies or explanations or maybe just hollow echoes of disbelief—but no sound emerged, no syllables were brave enough to fill the widening silence that stretched between us like a chasm carved by every betrayal they had ever handed me.

And then—behind them—she screamed again.

Nina’s voice sliced through the sterile white corridor like a siren meant to summon all attention, all sympathy, all power back to her bleeding wrists and mascara-streaked lies. The sound rose to a pitch so shrill, so practiced, that even the walls seemed to tremble, as though the building itself recognized her manipulation and still cowered before it.

And of course… of course, they turned.

Like they always did.

Drawn to her pain—manufactured or not—like moths to a flame, like hounds to the call of a false Alpha. They turned without hesitation, without a second glance in my direction, as if I were nothing more than a phantom lingering in their peripheral vision, a shadow they had long since chosen to forget.

And once again, I walked away.

But this time, my steps were slower, heavier, not with sorrow, but with resolve, my bare feet padding softly against the cold tiled floor like the quiet approach of something wild—something no longer willing to beg for scraps of love at a table where loyalty had never been served.

This time, there were no tears trailing down my cheeks, only the burn of salt from wounds that had begun to seal themselves shut with something stronger than stitches—vengeance, perhaps, or the first stirrings of the beast I had kept chained too long inside me.

This time, though I bled on the inside, it wasn’t the kind of bleeding that begged for help—it was the kind that promised war.

This time, I wasn’t just walking away.

This time, I was reclaiming everything they tried to strip from me.

And I was doing it barefoot.

This time bleeding inside. This time, free.

The apartment was still steeped in shadow when I arrived, its silence stretched so thin it felt brittle, like it might crack under the weight of one more memory. No lights had been left on. No warmth lingered in the walls. Only the staleness of undisturbed air and the faint, sour scent of something decaying in the kitchen sink—like even the home had started to rot from within in my absence.

I didn’t bother flipping the switch.

I dropped my bag just inside the doorway, the echo of it hitting the floor louder than it should’ve been, and kicked the door shut behind me with more force than necessary, as if slamming it might keep the past from crawling in behind me. The only sound was the quiet thud of my soaked hoodie dripping onto the tile.

I didn’t change out of the hospital gown—not because I forgot, but because I didn’t care. The thin, papery fabric scratched beneath my hoodie, clung to my bandages, and chilled my skin. Still, I collapsed onto the couch, face-first, arms dangling like dead weight, my body folding like something boneless and broken. The fabric burned where it pressed against fresh stitches, but exhaustion was stronger than pain.

Sleep came, but it was not merciful.

Not when your dreams know the truth before your mouth ever dares to speak it aloud.

It was hours before I stirred again, groggy and sore and disoriented, blinking into the thick dark that clung to the corners of the apartment like a predator watching from just out of reach. I shifted, every muscle in my body aching from something deeper than the wounds. That was when I heard it.

Clattering.

A sharp, rhythmic noise from the kitchen—metal against metal, the soft hum of the stove, the scrape of movement where no one should’ve been.

I moved slowly, my breath shallow, my feet bare against the cold floor, each step slow and deliberate as if I were stalking something or being stalked myself. I thought maybe it was a thief. Maybe a ghost. Maybe the echo of some half-formed nightmare still bleeding into the waking world.

But when I turned the corner, I saw them.

Alpha Damon. Beta Malric.

Standing side by side, just like they always did when pretending to be something they weren’t.

Damon was at the stove, flipping a slab of meat in a cast iron pan, the scent of searing flesh filling the room—a scent that made something in my chest twist, something ancient and hungry that didn’t understand betrayal, only instinct. Malric stood at the counter with a knife in hand, slicing vegetables with too much precision, like each cut was a ritual, a preparation for something neither of them dared name.

The table was already set.

Plates. Cutlery. Water glasses. Cloth napkins folded like offerings. A strange echo of a family that never truly existed.

They both looked up when I entered, their gazes cautious, calculating.

Alpha Damon spoke first, his voice carefully casual. “We thought you were at your aunt’s. Didn’t want to disturb you.”

Malric, always quieter, always following his lead, glanced at the knife in his hand and then down to the floor before meeting my eyes. “We didn’t know you were in the hospital,” he murmured, the words hollow in the air between us.

I said nothing.

Instead, I walked forward and sat at the table, the chair legs creaking beneath me. I didn’t touch the food. I just sat there, letting the heat from the cooked meat curl around me like a lie I refused to swallow.

Alpha Damon frowned, reaching to turn off the burner. “You have to eat,” he said, as if that made everything better. “You just got discharged.”

I looked at him, long and cold and clear. “You didn’t check on me for a week.”

The silence that followed was so dense it felt like the air itself had frozen. The room seemed to shrink inward, thick with the scent of cooked meat, scorched trust, and unspoken apologies that would never come. No one moved. No one breathed.

Then the doorbell rang.

A sharp, deliberate chime.

Damon and Malric both turned, as if pulled by the same invisible string, and without speaking, Malric moved to open it.

And of course—there she was.

Nina Frost.

Fragile. Pale. Porcelain in pastel silk.

Her wrists were wrapped in fresh white bandages, barely visible beneath the lacy sleeves of her blouse. Her lips were tinted pink, but her eyes were ringed with the kind of sorrow that performed well in candlelight. She looked like a doll that had been shattered once, glued back together, and now pretended not to remember the fall.

The moment they saw her, they moved.

Alpha Damon rushed to her like she was made of glass and flame, scooping her into his arms without hesitation. He laid her gently onto the couch like she might vanish if she hit the cushions too hard.

“You shouldn’t be out,” he murmured, brushing her hair back, his voice full of concern that had never once been directed at me. “What if something happened to you?”

“I was alone,” she whispered, looking up at him with eyes wide as moons. “I kept thinking… what if I never woke up again? What if no one was there when I did? I didn’t want to be alone tonight.”

He melted instantly.

Malric stood behind him like a sentinel, like the Beta trailing after his Alpha’s chosen Luna. “We’ll take you back to the hospital later,” he said gently. “After we check on Lyra.”

I didn’t speak.

I picked up my fork.

The steak was dry—burned at the edges, still pink in the middle, and tasted like dust and memory. I chewed it anyway, like it was penance, like it was a lie I needed to swallow just to stay upright.

He made steak.

My least favorite.

He didn’t even remember.

I let out a laugh—sharp and bitter, quiet enough to pass for a cough—and washed it down with water that tasted like steel. Across the table, Damon and Malric were already helping her into a chair, already encouraging her to eat, already tending to her every movement like she was royalty wrapped in gauze.

She ate daintily. Delicately. Every now and then, her eyes flicked to mine, and when they did, she smiled faintly.

A smile that said you lost.

That was when my phone buzzed.

I glanced down and saw the name: Mom.

She had sent over a dozen images of wedding dresses—lace and satin and beadwork that looked like frost spun into cloth. Each gown was more extravagant than the last. I paused on the third one: off-shoulder, structured bodice, silk cascading like a river of ivory.

I tapped the call button before I could stop myself.

She answered on the third ring, her voice warm with the kind of excitement that didn’t know pain. “Lyra! Did you get the dresses? I think the third one’s best. Classic, timeless. But if your fiancé prefers white—”

“I love the third,” I interrupted quickly, my voice light, almost too light. “It’s perfect. I can already see it. I’m really… excited.”

There was a pause, brief, but enough to suggest she heard something strange in my tone. “Oh, sweetheart, I knew you’d love it. You’ve always had an eye for the classics.”

I nodded even though she couldn’t see it. “Yeah. I think it’s going to be beautiful. I’m really looking forward to the wedding.”

Across the room, something shifted.

Something subtle. Instinctual.

I didn’t look up—but I felt it.

“How much longer do you need over there?” she asked. “Just a week. I’ll finish up and be home.” “Good. Everything here’s almost ready.”

I hung up and set the phone down on the table, and that’s when I felt it—that silence that isn’t empty, but heavy. Like breath being held.

The energy twisted.

Alpha Damon stepped forward first, slow, cautious, voice low and clipped. “Wedding?”

Beta Malric followed, his jaw tense, brows furrowed like storm clouds gathering behind his eyes. “What wedding?”

And even Nina—Nina, with her trembling fork and her angel’s mouth, froze with it suspended midair.

The room smelled different now. Not just of steak and rain.

But of jealousy. Of a challenge. Of blood waiting to be spilled.

The pack was shifting.

They just didn’t know it yet.

I rose slowly from the armchair, the frayed hem of my hoodie catching on the curve of my wrist as I smoothed it down, not because it was wrinkled, but because I needed the ritual—needed to feel in control of something, anything. My eyes found Alpha Damon’s across the room. The corners of my mouth lifted in a smile—not friendly, not forgiving. It was precise. Polished. Razor-sharp beneath the silk.

“Oh… The wedding…” I said, my voice calm, rich with purpose. “It’s the one you’re not invited to.”

At first, Alpha Damon let out a short, startled laugh, like he thought he’d misheard me, like the very idea of my banishing him from anything that used to be ours was some kind of elaborate joke.

Beta Malric followed with that low, patronizing chuckle he always used when he thought I was being dramatic, when he assumed I was biting off more than I could chew. “Nice one,” he muttered, shaking his head with a smirk. “You almost had us.”

I said nothing. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. I simply stood there, watching as their amusement echoed through the room like something infected.

Nina, still draped over my couch like a porcelain martyr from a tragic poem, tilted her head with delicate cruelty. Her smile, sly and sugary, twisted like the scent of spoiled fruit. “Oh, please. No one’s actually trying to steal Lyra,” she purred. “Have you seen how she dresses? Baggy hoodies, shapeless jeans—like she’s afraid of her own body. Like she’s hiding something under all that fabric.”

Alpha Damon snorted, amused by her pettiness, and nudged Malric with a smug grin. “She really does dress like she’s in hiding,” he said, without a hint of shame. “You should take notes from Nina, Lyra.”

They laughed again, faithless, soulless sounds that rang like insults carved into bone.

But I didn’t crumble. I didn’t lower my eyes like the way I used to before.

This time, I didn’t pity myself.

Instead, I smiled again. Just barely. Cold and unreadable.

“You’re right,” I murmured. “It’s a joke. It’s my cousin’s wedding.”

The laughter stopped.

“I meant it,” I continued, eyes unwavering. “You’re all invited… to that.”

Damon scratched his neck and avoided my gaze for the first time, suddenly aware of how close the air had gotten—how thin it felt.

“We’ll be busy,” he said, feigning regret. “Nina’s birthday trip. Switzerland. Doctors said she’s finally well enough to travel.”

Malric jumped to echo him. “It’s supposed to be good for her recovery. Clean mountain air. Wolf-friendly altitudes.”

Alpha Damon turned to look at Nina with something almost reverent in his expression. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and she leaned into him like the Luna she believed she already was.

She looked at me again, her gaze glinting with victory.

I smiled.

But I didn’t say another word.

I walked away. Slowly. Deliberately. My footsteps carried the weight of every betrayal that had built this moment. I ascended the stairs without urgency, as though I were already beyond the reach of their small, stupid lies.

When I reached the top floor, I stepped into the room. It still smelled faintly of sage and something metallic—faint echoes of everything that happened here.

I closed the door without locking it, because I knew none of them would dare follow me now.

I laid down on the bed and pulled the old blanket over my legs, staring up at the ceiling, listening to their laughter drifting up from below, curling through the air like smoke from a fire I no longer feared.

Damon’s voice. Nina’s cough. Malric’s fussing. Their false harmony settled into the walls like mildew.

And still, I didn’t cry.

Instead, I closed my eyes and let the weight of exhaustion press into me like teeth sinking into flesh. I was almost asleep when the door creaked open.

I turned my face toward the wall, not bothering to look.

The scent hit first, warm milk laced with lavender. And underneath it, her.

“I brought you something,” Nina Frost said, her voice soft and syrupy. Too sweet. Sweet like poison.

I didn’t move.

She crossed the room, her footsteps silent on the rug, and hovered beside the bed like a shadow pretending to be human. “Why did you come back?” she asked after a moment, her tone more curious than cruel. “Was it some misguided attempt to reclaim what’s already mine?”

I rolled over slowly, pushing myself upright, letting the blanket fall from my shoulder. “Why are you still in my house?” I countered, my voice flat as iron.

Her smile didn’t falter, but her eyes sharpened. “Don’t worry. I’m leaving. Alpha Damon and Beta Malric are taking me to the healer later. I just thought I’d say goodbye before I go.”

I didn’t thank her.

She approached the nightstand and set the glass down, her fingers lingering on it just a little too long.

“Is it painful?” she asked suddenly. “Watching your mate care for me like I’m the one he was meant to protect all along?”

Still, I gave her nothing.

“I mean, why were you in the hospital anyway? Trying to get attention? Did it hurt when no one came?”

The rage beneath my ribs flared. My wolf shifted under my skin, clawing to the surface. I gritted my teeth and lay back down.

“I don’t care,” I whispered, and this time, it wasn’t a lie.

Silence followed, thick and tense. I thought she might leave.

But then came the sound—shattering glass.

I bolted upright.

Milk and blood stained the rug, and Nina was on the floor, sobbing, curled into herself like a broken doll. Her wrist bled freely, and the air filled with the metallic scent of fresh blood, enough to trigger the wolf in anyone nearby.

They came running.

Alpha Damon burst through the door like a soldier on instinct, eyes already wide with panic. He didn’t even glance at me. He dropped to his knees and swept her into his arms like she was his moon and stars and every forgotten promise in between.

“Nina!” he breathed, over and over, like the word alone could stop the bleeding.

Malric hovered behind them, his jaw tight, face pale.

I sat still on the edge of the bed, watching it all unfold.

Watching them choose her. Again.

She sobbed harder, milking the moment, her body cradled against his chest. Her eyes flicked up to mine, glassy, victorious.

And I smiled.

But not kindly.

The wolf inside me was no longer sleeping.

She was waiting.