The Moon Goddess Gave Me Two Alpha's.

Born Knowing

I was still falling when I woke up.

That was the worst part, that my body didn't know it was over, that I came back gasping and grabbing at my own throat because my last memory was water and cold and the moon getting smaller above me.

And Lyra's voice saying the Goddess chose the wrong sister, and for three full seconds I was still there, still falling, still dying, still believing her.

Then my hands hit the mattress and I was in my bedroom and I was breathing and I was sixteen years old and I was alive.

My wolf surged up inside my chest so hard it almost knocked the air out of me and she was whole, completely whole, and she was loud.

"We are reborn, she said, "we are back, we have another chance, we have another chance Elara, do you understand what that means? We have another chance.”

I understood.

The door flew open and Lyra ran in still in her pyjamas and I turned around and my heart jumped so hard it hurt because I knew that face now.

I knew exactly what lived behind it, and she was standing in my doorway looking panicked and concerned and like the most loving sister in the world and I felt my whole body go still.

"Elara, oh my god, I heard you screaming, are you okay?" She crossed the room fast and grabbed my arms and looked at my face. "You're shaking, we need to get you to a hospital, something is wrong—"

I looked at her hands on my arms. Then I looked at her face.

"I'm fine," I said.

"You are not fine, you just—"

"Lyra." My voice came out flat and quiet and completely different from anything I had ever directed at her before and she stopped talking immediately, something flickering across her face that she covered fast. "I said I'm fine. You can go."

She stared at me for a second. "Elara—"

"Please."

She went. She didn't like it, I could see that, but she went, pulling my door shut behind her.

I stood in the middle of my room and listened to her footsteps slowly on the stairs and felt absolutely nothing about her discomfort because I was done feeling things about Lyra.

I was done with all of it, the guilt, the explaining away, the desperate need to believe she loved me, done, finished, completely over it.

My wolf settled in my chest like she was getting comfortable. Good, she said simply.

Mum knocked two minutes later, softer, more careful. "Baby? Lyra said you had a scare."

"I'm okay mum, come in."

She came in and sat on my bed and pulled me into a hug without asking and I let her, actually leaning into it, because mum was mum and whatever she was and wasn't she had never pushed me off a cliff and right now that was enough.

"Bad dream?" she asked into my hair.

"The worst," I said honestly.

"You want tea? Breakfast?"

"In a bit," I said. "Mum, can I use your phone, mine is dead."

She handed it over without question and kissed my forehead and told me to come down when I was ready and left, and the moment the door closed I was already scrolling to find the number I needed.

Mara picked up on the third ring. "Hello?"

Just her voice made my chest do something painful because Mara was alive, she was alive and she had no idea what was coming for her in four years and I was going to make absolutely sure none of it happened.

"It's me," I said. "Can you come over?"

"Right now? Elara it's like seven in the morning on a Saturday."

"I know, I'm sorry, I just really need to see you."

A pause. Then, because Mara had always been the best person I knew, "give me twenty minutes."

I hung up and sat at my desk and pulled out a notebook and opened it to the first page and started writing.

Everything I remembered. Every name, every date, every conversation, every move Lyra had made in the three years I had already lived through, the forged letters, the rogues she had contacted, the exact timeline of how she had built the case against me piece by careful piece.

My wolf watched me write and didn't say anything and didn't need to.

I filled four pages before Mara even arrived, and I was on the fifth when the burning started on my wrist so suddenly I dropped the pen.

I looked down at it.

Sharp and spreading and completely wrong because this wasn't supposed to happen for another three years, no bond, no mark, nothing, not yet..

My wolf was on her feet inside my chest going completely electric, turning toward the window, pressing forward hard toward something outside in the morning light.

The burn split into two, two separate pulses, two separate marks pressing into my skin, pulling in two completely different directions.

My wolf turned to me with an expression I had never felt from her before, not excitement, not fear, something bigger than both.

“Two,” she said. “There are two of them.”

I stared at my wrist and outside my window the morning felt suddenly very different, like something had just shifted in a direction I didn't have a name for yet.

Two mates. I had come back from the dead with two mates.