TOMORROW’S WIDOW

Chapter 1: The Date of My Death

LENA

On the morning of my wedding, someone slid my obituary under the door.

I heard the faint scrape of paper at exactly 6:17 a.m.

At first, I assumed it was another note from Julian. He had been sending them since midnight—small reminders of our six years together, each one ending with the same promise.

Tonight, you’ll finally be mine forever.

I smiled as I crossed the bridal suite, careful not to step on the silk robe trailing around my bare legs.

Then I saw the envelope.

It wasn’t cream-colored like Julian’s notes. It was gray, almost silver, and my maiden name had been written across it in black ink.

Lena Arden.

No one outside my family knew I was staying in this room.

I opened the door, but the hotel corridor was empty. There were no footsteps, no closing elevator doors. Only the white roses Julian’s mother had ordered, lining the hallway like silent witnesses.

A cold uneasiness settled beneath my skin.

I locked the door and tore open the envelope.

Inside was a newspaper clipping.

The paper trembled between my fingers as I read the headline.

LENA VALE, 30, FOUND DEAD AT HALCYON HOUSE

For several seconds, the words refused to make sense.

I was twenty-nine.

My name wasn’t Vale.

And I had never heard of Halcyon House.

I forced myself to keep reading.

Lena Vale, respected manuscript conservator and widow of the late Aras Vale, died under unexplained circumstances on October 14, 2027. She is survived by no immediate family. A private burial will take place at the request of her husband’s estate.

October 14, 2027.

Exactly one year from today.

The room seemed to tilt.

I sat on the edge of the bed before my knees could give way.

This had to be a joke. A vicious, carefully planned joke designed to frighten me before the ceremony. But the article included details that no stranger should have known—my profession, the name of the archive where I worked, even a reference to the fire that had killed my parents twelve years ago.

Still, one fact made the whole thing impossible.

Today I was marrying Julian Cross.

According to the obituary, I would die as another man’s widow.

A man named Aras Vale.

My phone vibrated on the dressing table, making me flinch.

A message from Julian appeared on the screen.

One hour. No running away, Miss Arden.

A second message followed.

I love you.

I stared at those three familiar words until my breathing steadied.

Julian was downstairs. In less than an hour, I would walk into the hotel’s glass garden wearing a dress that had taken nine months to make. Two hundred guests would watch us promise each other forever.

This ridiculous piece of paper couldn’t change that.

I carried it toward the fireplace.

“Don’t burn it.”

The voice came from behind me.

Deep. Male. Close enough that his breath seemed to brush the back of my neck.

I spun around.

A man stood beside the open balcony door.

I was certain I had locked it.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, and dressed entirely in black. Rain clung to his dark hair and traced the severe line of his jaw. A thin scar cut through one eyebrow, giving his face an unsettling asymmetry.

But it was his eyes that held me still.

They were fixed on me with the raw, disbelieving intensity of a man looking at someone returned from the dead.

His gaze moved over my face, my throat, and the bare length of my legs beneath the robe.

Something in his expression changed.

Not surprise.

Recognition.

Hunger.

It was gone so quickly that I wondered if I had imagined it.

“Who are you?” I demanded.

He stepped into the room and shut the balcony door behind him.

“Keep your voice down.”

I reached for my phone.

“If I scream, hotel security will be here in seconds.”

“Twenty-three seconds,” he corrected. “Julian replaced the hotel guards with his own men last night.”

My fingers stopped above the screen.

“How do you know that?”

“I know far too much about Julian.”

He moved closer.

My body reacted before my mind did. My pulse quickened, and a strange heat unfurled low in my stomach. There was something terrifyingly intimate about the way he watched me—as if he already knew every expression I might make.

His eyes dropped to my hand.

“You still wear your mother’s ring on your right hand,” he said quietly.

I curled my fingers into my palm.

“You know my name. You know about my family. That doesn’t make this impressive. It makes you a stalker.”

“Your first kiss was behind the old astronomy building when you were sixteen. You hated it because the boy tasted like peppermint.”

My mouth went dry.

“Anyone could have learned that.”

“You sleep on the left side of the bed, but only when you’re alone. When you’re frightened, you press your tongue against the back of your teeth so no one sees them chatter.”

He took another step.

“And when you want a man, you look at his hands before you look at his mouth.”

My gaze had already fallen to his fingers.

I hated him for noticing.

I hated myself more for wondering what those hands would feel like against my skin.

“Stop.”

He obeyed instantly.

The distance between us was barely an arm’s length, yet the sudden stillness felt more intimate than movement.

“Tell me your name,” I said.

Pain flickered across his face.

He looked at the obituary in my hand.

“You already know it.”

The room turned cold again.

I glanced at the printed name, although I didn’t need to.

“Aras Vale.”

His eyes closed for a moment, as if hearing me say it had wounded him.

When he opened them again, there was no doubt left in me.

This was the man whose widow I was supposed to become.

“That article says you’re dead,” I whispered.

“I was.”

A nervous laugh escaped me.

“That isn’t an answer.”

“It’s the only one I can give you until we leave this hotel.”

“We aren’t going anywhere.”

“If you marry Julian today, you will die one year from now.”

“You expect me to believe you came here to save me?”

“No.” His voice roughened. “I expect you to fight me at every step. You always do.”

Always.

The word pressed against something hidden inside me.

Aras reached into his coat and withdrew a folded piece of paper.

I immediately stepped back.

“What is that?”

“A letter.”

“From whom?”

“You.”

He offered it to me.

I didn’t take it.

“I’ve never written to you.”

“Not yet.”

A dull pressure began building behind my eyes.

“You’re insane.”

“Probably.” His mouth curved without humor. “Losing you twice tends to damage a man.”

My heart struck painfully against my ribs.

“You said I die next year.”

“You do.”

“Then how could you have lost me twice?”

“Because death wasn’t the first thing that took you from me.”

He placed the letter on the dressing table.

The handwriting on the outside stopped my breath.

It was mine.

Not merely similar. Mine.

I restored handwritten manuscripts for a living. I knew how easily signatures could be copied, how ink could be aged, how pressure patterns betrayed forgery.

But no forger could know that I always made the second stroke of the letter n slightly darker. It was an unconscious habit caused by a childhood injury in my thumb.

The date in the upper corner was eleven months from now.

I unfolded the letter.

Lena,

If the obituary has arrived, the first breach is already open.

Do not marry Julian.

Do not go to Halcyon House.

And whatever Aras tells you, do not let him fall in love with you again.

Love is how the cycle learns us.

—You

The final word blurred before my eyes.

“This isn’t possible.”

“I know.”

“Did you write this?”

“No.”

“Then where did you get it?”

“From your body.”

My head snapped up.

Aras’s jaw tightened.

“It was hidden inside the lining of your dress when I found you.”

A shiver moved through me.

“The dress I died in?”

“The dress I married you in.”

I should have called security.

I should have run into the corridor and never looked back.

Instead, I asked, “Were we happy?”

That dangerous hunger returned to his eyes.

“Sometimes.”

“Did I love you?”

His gaze lowered to my lips.

“You tried very hard not to.”

The air between us seemed to thicken.

He was a stranger. An intruder. Possibly a liar who had spent months constructing an elaborate way into my life.

Yet my body did not understand that.

It knew the scent of rain on his coat. It knew the warmth of him standing close to me. Every nerve beneath my skin strained toward him with a recognition my mind could not explain.

Aras lifted one hand.

He stopped before touching my face.

His restraint was worse than the touch itself.

“Tell me to leave,” he said.

I tried.

No words came.

His fingertips brushed the inside of my wrist.

The room disappeared.

My back struck a rain-cold window.

Aras’s body was pressed against mine, hard and hot, his hand locked around my bare thigh. My dress hung open. His mouth moved against the hollow beneath my ear, and my fingers were tangled in his hair.

I heard myself whisper his name.

Not with fear.

With need.

A need so fierce it bordered on pain.

Then the vision shattered.

I stumbled backward, but Aras caught me around the waist.

The contact triggered another flash—black sheets, his mouth descending along my stomach, my own breathless voice begging him not to stop.

Heat flooded my face and spread through every part of me his hands had touched in the vision.

I shoved him away.

“What did you do to me?”

His breathing was no steadier than mine.

“Nothing.”

“I saw us.”

“So did I.”

“You were—”

“I know what I was doing.”

The quiet certainty in his voice sent another pulse of unwanted heat through me.

He stepped back, putting distance between us even though every muscle in his body appeared to resist it.

“That is why the letter warned you,” he said. “Our minds forget when the cycle begins again. Our bodies don’t.”

Someone knocked on the door.

“Lena?” Julian called from the corridor. “Are you awake?”

Aras’s entire expression changed.

The desire vanished, replaced by something lethal.

His hand moved beneath his coat.

I caught a glimpse of metal.

“Don’t,” I whispered.

His eyes returned to mine.

For one impossible moment, he looked like the man from the vision—not the dangerous stranger in my hotel room, but someone who had touched me a thousand times and still feared it might be the last.

“Come with me,” he said.

Another knock sounded.

“Lena, open the door.”

I looked toward Julian’s voice.

Six years.

That was how long I had known the man waiting outside.

I had known Aras for less than ten minutes.

When I turned back, he was standing at the balcony door.

He slipped something into my hand and closed my fingers around it.

A plain black wedding band.

There was an inscription inside.

Lena, in every life.

My throat tightened.

“What happened to us?” I asked.

Aras opened the door to the rain.

“You believed the wrong man.”

Then he was gone.

The knocking became harder.

My phone began to ring.

Julian’s name glowed on the screen.

I answered, but before I could speak, he said, “Listen to me carefully. A man may have entered your room.”

I stared at the open balcony door.

“How do you know?”

“His name is Aras Vale. He’ll tell you he knows your future. He may even show you letters written in your handwriting.”

The black ring dug into my palm.

Julian’s next words turned my blood to ice.

“Whatever happens, don’t let him touch you, Lena.”

I couldn’t breathe.

“Why?”

There was a long silence on the other end.

“Because the last time he did,” Julian said, “you begged me to kill you.”