Chapter One: Aria Would Be Dead in Eleven Minutes
1834 Words
Aria would be dead in eleven minutes.
She just didn’t know it yet.
The first warning was the silence.
Hundreds of wolves had gathered inside the Nightshade Pack’s great hall for the mating ceremony. Silver banners hung from the pillars, and the ceremonial fire cast golden light across the gathered Alphas, warriors, and Elders.
Aria stood before the fire in a simple white dress, trying to ignore the eyes fixed on her.
Tonight was supposed to change her life.
For three years, she had courted Alpha Kael Nightshade, believing their relationship would culminate in the bond they had discussed so often. He had comforted her when the pack whispered about her uncertain origins. He had held her hand beneath the old oak tree and promised that, when the Moon Goddess revealed their bond, there would be no one else.
She had believed him.
Perhaps that was her first mistake.
Kael approached in ceremonial black, the silver insignia of his pack gleaming against his chest. He was handsome, powerful, and accustomed to being obeyed. Aria searched his face for the warmth she knew, but his expression was strangely distant.
She offered him a small smile.
He didn’t return it.
“Kael?” she whispered.
He turned toward the Elders instead.
“Before this ceremony proceeds, there is a matter I must settle before the pack.”
The conversations around them faded.
Aria’s smile disappeared.
“What matter?”
Kael ignored her question. “Serena. Come forward.”
A woman stepped from between the pillars.
Serena of the Northern Bloodline wore crimson silk embroidered with her family’s silver crest. She moved with the composure of someone who had never needed to wonder whether she belonged in a room.
She didn’t look surprised to be summoned.
Aria’s stomach tightened.
“Why is she here?” she asked.
“This is not the place for an argument,” Kael replied.
“Then explain why she’s standing beside you during our mating ceremony.”
Several wolves exchanged glances. One of the Elders lowered his eyes.
Aria noticed. It was the expression of someone who already knew what was coming.
Kael faced her.
“Aria Sorin, I reject you as my intended mate and as Luna of this pack.”
For a moment, the words meant nothing.
Then the pain struck.
The rejection tore through the fragile Recognition between them, sending a violent ache through her chest. Her wolf recoiled inside her, leaving her struggling to breathe. There had been no Completion, no fully accepted bond to sever, but that did nothing to lessen the agony of having the connection she had believed in rejected before the entire pack.
He had rejected her.
Not privately, where they might have argued or grieved together, but before the Elders and the entire pack.
Three years of promises had ended in a single sentence.
Kael’s expression remained unchanged.
“I have chosen Serena of the Northern Bloodline as my mate,” he announced.
Whispers erupted around the hall.
Serena stepped beside him. He allowed her to stand there, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched.
Aria stared at them.
“Why?” she managed.
“Serena’s bloodline offers an alliance the Nightshade Pack cannot afford to ignore.”
An alliance.
Three years of her life reduced to an inconvenient arrangement.
“You promised me,” Aria whispered.
Kael’s jaw tightened. “I made the decision that is best for my pack.”
“And what was I?”
For the first time, something shifted in his expression. He looked away before she could understand it.
That was answer enough.
Serena offered her a sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry, Aria.”
“No, you’re not.”
Serena’s smile sharpened.
Kael’s voice hardened. “Enough.”
Once, Aria would have lowered her eyes at that tone. Once, she would have searched for a way to make his decision easier to bear.
Not tonight.
She straightened, even as the pain continued to tear through her.
“If this is your decision, I won’t beg you to change it.”
Surprise flickered across Kael’s face.
Aria turned away before he could hide it.
She walked past the Elders and through the parting crowd. Some wolves watched with pity. Others looked relieved, as though her humiliation had confirmed something they had always believed about her.
One Elder refused to meet her eyes.
She filed that detail away.
The great hall doors opened, letting cold air brush her face. Behind her, the ceremony remained suspended in whispers, but she knew how quickly the pack would recover. By morning, people would have found ways to justify what Kael had done.
They would call it duty.
They would call it politics.
They might even call it fate.
Aria continued toward the eastern grounds.
She needed distance. Beyond the ceremonial hall lay the old boundary road, leading toward the forest and territory that did not belong to the Nightshade Pack.
She had little money and no clear plan for what came next. Leaving would be difficult. But staying among people who considered her disposable suddenly seemed worse.
For the first time that evening, the future contained a choice that belonged to her.
Then she heard footsteps.
Aria slowed.
The eastern passage was quiet, the music from the hall fading behind her. She glanced toward the trees, but nothing moved.
Perhaps she was being foolish.
She took another step.
A hand seized her arm.
“Let go of me!”
She twisted, trying to break free. A second figure emerged from the darkness.
Pain exploded beneath her ribs.
Aria gasped.
A blade protruded from her side.
Before she could react, the attacker withdrew it. Warm blood spread beneath her fingers, and her legs buckled.
She struck the ground hard.
For several seconds, she couldn’t understand what had happened. She pressed her hand against the wound, trying to stop the blood, trying to force her body to obey.
She needed to get up.
She needed to reach the road.
But her strength was already leaving her.
The truth arrived with terrible clarity.
Pack members did not attack a rejected intended Luna on familiar territory without understanding the consequences. Someone had permitted this. Someone had arranged for her death to resemble a rogue attack amid the confusion of the ceremony.
A convenient tragedy.
An unfortunate ending.
Aria tried to crawl, but her hand slipped against the blood beneath her.
Footsteps approached.
She forced her head upward.
Through the trees, she saw two familiar figures standing together.
Kael.
Serena.
They were close enough to see what was happening, yet neither moved to help her.
Aria stared at Kael, waiting for him to react.
He was the Alpha. One command could bring the attackers to a halt. He could summon help, demand answers, or simply refuse to let a woman die at his feet.
He did nothing.
His gaze met hers.
She searched his face for guilt, for horror, for any sign that this had gone beyond what he expected.
Instead, she saw relief.
The discovery hurt more than the knife.
Serena leaned toward him, her voice soft enough to seem private.
“There. That’s one loose thread gone.”
Aria heard every word.
The rejection. The attack. Their stillness.
This wasn’t a tragedy they had stumbled upon.
They were watching the conclusion of something they had allowed to happen.
She had spent three years believing Kael would protect her.
Now she understood that, when her existence became inconvenient, he had been willing to watch her disappear.
Aria tried to speak, but blood filled her mouth. Her vision blurred, the lights from the distant hall dissolving into pale streaks.
She held Kael’s gaze as long as she could.
She wanted him to remember her face. Not the woman who had pleaded for an explanation, but the woman who had finally seen him clearly.
Then the darkness closed in.
She had thought death might feel like a door shutting.
Instead, it felt like being erased while still understanding who had chosen to erase her.
And then there was nothing.
⸻
Aria woke beneath a water-stained ceiling.
A pipe knocked somewhere inside the wall. Cold air slipped through a poorly sealed window, carrying the smell of damp wood and cheap detergent.
She lay perfectly still.
Her hand moved to her side.
No wound.
No blood.
She sat up so quickly that the room spun. Gripping the mattress, she waited for her vision to clear before looking around.
A narrow wardrobe stood beside the door. A chipped cup rested on a small table. Across the room, another bed held a sleeping girl beneath a thin blanket.
Aria knew this room.
The realization was more frightening than the knife had been.
She swung her legs over the mattress and stood. Her body felt unfamiliar: lighter, smaller, weaker. She crossed to the mirror fixed to the wardrobe.
A young woman stared back.
Aria touched her cheek. The reflection copied her.
She recognized the face.
She had not seen it in three years.
“No,” she whispered.
Her voice sounded younger, too.
A girl stirred in the other bed.
“You’re doing it again.”
Aria turned.
“Doing what?”
“Talking in your sleep. You said a name.”
The girl rubbed her eyes, clearly unimpressed.
“Try not to wake everyone next time.”
She turned toward the wall and settled back to sleep.
Aria barely heard her.
Ashcombe Orphanage.
She was back at Ashcombe Orphanage, in the room she had occupied when she was eighteen.
Three years before the mating ceremony.
Three years before Kael rejected her.
Three years before Serena watched her die.
Aria pressed her palm against her chest. Her heartbeat was frantic but unmistakable.
She remembered everything.
The promises. The ceremony. The knife. Kael’s expression.
Serena’s final words.
Her memories had not been erased, and she had not been given a new childhood. She had returned to an earlier point in her own life, carrying the knowledge of what awaited her.
She didn’t know why.
She wouldn’t invent an explanation simply because uncertainty frightened her. She had spent too long filling the gaps in Kael’s behaviour with whatever answers she wanted to believe.
She would not repeat that mistake.
Aria looked at the girl in the mirror.
She was eighteen again, but the woman behind those eyes remembered how easily trust could become a weapon in someone else’s hands.
Three years remained before the night she died.
Three years to discover what she had overlooked, to understand the people who had arranged her murder, and to build a life that did not depend on being chosen by Kael Nightshade.
She could spend her second chance chasing revenge.
Or she could begin by making sure that nobody else ever held the power to decide whether she deserved to live.
Aria drew a slow breath.
She had no answers yet.
But she had her memories.
And this time, she would make her choices with her eyes open.
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