The pain wasn’t just in my body.
It came from somewhere deeper—from bone, from blood, from memory.
I stood in a dream made of moonlight and ash.
All around me, silver wolf bones jutted from the earth, buried in fields of broken collars and rusted wedding rings. In the wind, I heard voices—echoing, whispering, overlapping.
“Emily.”
“Alpha Evelyn.”
“Mine.”
“Mistake.”
“Weapon.”
“Wife.”
I looked down at my hands. In one, a red thread. In the other, a silver flame.
Then the memories came.
The orphanage. I was ten, peeking through the bushes as a boy with dirt on his face crouched beside a tree. He folded a note and slipped it into a hollow, whispering, “Emily, when I become an Alpha… I’ll come back and marry you.”
And another memory—darker.
Lucien, strapped inside a cry
