The Luna they buried

Chapter5

Chapter 5: The Woman Who Died

"Are you feeling alright?"

Vivian's voice drifted through the room like a blade wrapped in silk, and I stared at her without moving, my pulse hammering so violently I could hear it in my own ears. She stood beside my bed wearing a concerned smile, her golden hair falling over one shoulder, her blue eyes filled with what appeared to be genuine worry — the kind of worry that had once comforted me completely, that I had once accepted without question as proof of her love.

Six years ago, that expression would have made me reach for her hand. Six years ago I would have smiled back and told her everything, every fear and uncertainty poured out freely because I had believed she was safe. Now all I could see was the woman who had stood beside Damon while I was condemned to die. The woman whose tears had helped bury me.

The woman whose lies had been the architecture of my destruction, built so carefully and patiently that I had never once seen the walls going up around me.

I dug my nails into my palms. The sharp sting helped ground me, helped remind me that this was real — I wasn't on the execution platform, I wasn't wearing chains, and I was not dead. At least not anymore.

"Selena?" She stepped closer, concern deepening across her features. "You look pale."

The irony nearly made me laugh. Pale. Most people didn't wake up after being executed. Most people didn't open their eyes to discover they had traveled six years into the past. Most people didn't have to look at the person who had destroyed them and arrange their face into something that resembled normalcy.

"I'm fine." My voice came out strange — too controlled, too cold, stripped of the warmth she would have expected.

Vivian blinked. Confusion crossed her features for just a moment, and good, I thought. Let her be confused. The woman she had spent years manipulating had died on that execution platform, and whoever sat before her now was someone else entirely. Someone who knew exactly what kind of monster moved beneath that beautiful, carefully arranged face.

"You don't seem fine." She sat beside me, the familiar gesture so practiced and natural that it made my stomach twist.

How many times had she done exactly that? How many times had she positioned herself close to me, warm and concerned and apparently devoted, while quietly collecting everything I gave her and sharpening it into weapons for later use?

I forced myself to breathe — slowly, steadily, with the discipline of someone who understood that mistakes here would cost everything. I couldn't afford to react. Not yet. Not when I had no idea how much of the timeline had already changed, not when I didn't know whether fate intended to repeat itself regardless of what I did. And especially not when I didn't know whether Vivian remembered anything at all.

That possibility sent a chill through me that I couldn't quite suppress. I studied her carefully — every expression, every movement, every blink. Nothing seemed unusual. Nothing suggested she carried the memory of watching me die. Yet the possibility lingered anyway, dangerous and unsettling, because if I had returned to this moment, what was stopping someone else from returning too?

A knock at the door made me flinch before I could stop myself. Old instincts. Vivian rose smoothly and moved toward the exit, pausing at the threshold with a small smile that tugged at her lips — brief, almost invisible, but something about it made my stomach tighten in a way I couldn't immediately explain.

"I'll see you later at the ceremony."

The ceremony. My breath caught as memory surged forward with sudden, sharp clarity. The Summer Moon Ceremony.

Six years ago. Three weeks before the first accusation appeared against me. Three weeks before my life began unraveling at the seams. Three weeks before Vivian started positioning herself closer to Damon in ways I had been too trusting to read correctly. This wasn't just the past. This was the beginning — the first domino, the first c***k, the first warning I had smiled through without understanding what it meant.

The door closed. Silence filled the room. I sat in it for several seconds, trying to think, trying to breathe, trying to slow the racing of my heart. Then I moved. Fast. I scrambled from the bed and crossed to the mirror above the vanity, and the woman staring back at me looked twenty-three years old. Healthy. Alive. No dark circles, no scars, no exhaustion carved into her features. Just the version of myself that had existed before betrayal hollowed me out from the inside.

Tears burned unexpectedly. I touched the reflection with trembling fingers and felt the reality of it settle over me for the first time with its full weight.

I was alive. I was actually, genuinely alive, and I hadn't realized until life had been taken from me how desperately I had wanted it back. I hadn't understood how much I wanted another chance until the chance had been denied. And now I had one — a second chance to protect myself, to save my child, to expose Vivian, to dismantle every trap that had been waiting for me in the dark.

My eyes hardened in the reflection. Not avoid. Destroy. I intended to find every snare and dismantle it before it could close around me again. The determination surprised even me, arriving fully formed and certain in a way the old Selena would never have recognized. The old Selena would have cried and searched for forgiveness and tried to understand why. But the woman who had died on that platform had learned something irreversible: some people didn't deserve understanding. They deserved consequences.

Lydia arrived carrying a breakfast tray, and my chest tightened the moment I saw her. She had been one of the very few people who remained kind to me during the trial, who had stayed loyal even when fear kept her silent, who had wept when I was sentenced in a room full of people who did not. Seeing her standing in the doorway, alive and unhurt and entirely unaware of what was coming, felt like an unexpected gift.

"Good morning, Luna." She set the tray down and paused, her smile fading slightly. "Is something wrong?"

I shook my head. Then stopped. "Actually — yes." Concern filled her eyes immediately, the genuine kind that had nothing calculated behind it. The difference between her worry and Vivian's felt enormous in a way it never had before.

I looked away before emotion could overwhelm me. "Tell me something." Lydia tilted her head, waiting. "Who do you trust most in this pack?"

The question surprised her — I could see it — but her answer came without hesitation. "You, Luna." No calculation. No hidden agenda. Just loyalty, simple and absolute. My chest tightened painfully, because six years from now that answer would be exactly the same. Lydia would still trust me when the rest of the pack had turned away.

Maybe I wasn't completely alone this time.

The thought offered brief comfort before memory pulled me back — the execution grounds, the accusations, the child I had carried and lost. My hand drifted instinctively toward my stomach. Empty. Not yet. The pregnancy hadn't happened here, not in this timeline, not now. Relief and grief arrived together and I couldn't separate them, couldn't grieve a child no one else remembered, a life that had ended before it truly began. I turned away from Lydia before she could see my face, because there were no words for what I was carrying.

Hours later I stood on the balcony overlooking the pack grounds, watching the Summer Moon Ceremony preparations unfold below. Warriors laughed. Children played. Families gathered in the warm afternoon light, peaceful and entirely unaware of the machinery already in motion beneath the surface of their ordinary lives. Everything looked exactly as it had looked six years ago — exactly as it had looked before disaster came.

I gripped the railing and let the cold metal anchor me. This time would be different. It had to be. I knew where the dangers were hidden. I knew who my enemies were. And I knew, with the particular certainty of someone who had already lived through the ending, exactly what happened if I failed.

A movement across the courtyard stopped my breath. Damon had just emerged from the pack house — tall, powerful, infuriatingly familiar, carrying himself with the effortless authority of someone who had never had reason to doubt his place in the world. The execution grounds flashed before me. The rain. The chains. His silence during my trial, which had been as damning as any accusation ever spoken aloud.

He looked up, and our eyes met across the distance, and the world seemed to pause around that single point of contact. Confusion crossed his features, followed by something else — recognition, curiosity, a slight narrowing of focus, as though he could sense that the woman staring back at him was not quite the Luna he remembered. As though something in him registered, even now, that something had fundamentally shifted.

My pulse quickened with a fear I hadn't expected. Because one thought had just entered my mind and refused to leave.

If I remembered the future, and if fate truly intended to change everything — then why did Damon look at me as though he was seeing me for the very first time?.