The Boy Who Wished Me Dead
844 Words
I did not sleep that night.
I lay awake, replaying his words over and over, turning them like a stone in my palm, looking for the trick hidden inside them. I feel like I already know you.
A line men used on girls all the time, a soft compliment meant to flatter, nothing more. That was what I told myself.
But Kade Wolfe did not flatter people. Not the man I married, and apparently not this younger version of him either. In seven years of marriage, I never once heard him say a careless thing. Every word he spoke was weighed first, measured twice, delivered only when it served a purpose.
So, what purpose did those words serve?
By morning, I had convinced myself it meant nothing, a strange coincidence, a young man testing a new kind of charm on the girl his father wanted him to marry. I dressed for the academy send off with that thought locked firmly in place and walked into the courtyard where the carriages waited to take the students to Blackthorn Academy.
Rowan fell into step beside me, adjusting the collar of his uniform. "You survived dinner. I'm impressed. Half the pack thought you'd bite the Wolfe heir's head off on principle."
"I considered it," I said.
He laughed, but his eyes stayed sharp on my face. "You really don't like him."
I did not answer that. I could not tell my cousin that I had spent seven years married to the boy climbing into the carriage ahead of us, that I had watched him grow colder every year until the night his true mate strangled the life out of me for standing in her way. I could not tell him any of it.
"I don't know him," I said instead. "That's all."
Blackthorn Academy sat on a ridge overlooking the border between our two territories, a sprawling stone building surrounded by training fields and a lake, so still it looked like glass. In my first life, I never attended this academy.
My father kept me home, said a future Luna did not need formal training, said my education would come from running a household, not sparring in a courtyard.
This time, I had begged him to let me enrol. I told him I wanted to understand pack politics before I was married to them. He agreed faster than I expected, distracted by whatever debts weighed on him that year. I had not questioned my good luck at the time.
Now, walking through the academy gates with my past life's memories sitting heavy behind my eyes, I understood the truth. In my first life, I never had the chance to see Kade before our wedding day.
Whoever controlled that outcome wanted me kept in the dark.
This time, I intended to see everything.
The training field buzzed with new students from a dozen allied packs, all sorting themselves into groups by rank and bloodline the way young wolves always did. I spotted Isolde Marsh before I found Kade.
She stood near the edge of the field, arms crossed, dark hair pulled back tight, watching the crowd with an expression I remembered too well. Sharp.
Watchful. Hungry for something no one around her seemed to notice.
In my first life, I met Isolde only once, days before my death, when she cornered me in a hallway and told me exactly what she thought of Ashworth women who married men that were never truly theirs. I never learned until my last breath that she and Kade shared a fated bond neither of them had chosen to honour.
Now she was seventeen, too. Unrejected. Unbroken. Still capable, maybe, of becoming someone entirely different.
I filed that thought away and kept moving.
"Selene Ashworth."
The voice stopped me cold. I turned and found Kade standing a few feet away, training gear slung over one shoulder, watching me with that same unreadable calm.
"Wolfe," I said, keeping my tone light.
"You're staring at Isolde Marsh," he said. Not a question.
My stomach tightened. "Am I not allowed to look around?"
"You can look at whoever you want." Something shifted behind his eyes, quick and guarded. "I only meant it as a warning. She isn't someone you want to cross."
I studied his face, searching for the meaning underneath his words. "Do you know her well?"
He hesitated. Actually hesitated, which the Kade I married never did.
"We're paired," he said finally, low enough that only I could hear. "Fated mates. My father doesn't know I haven't accepted the bond yet."
The ground seemed to tilt under my feet.
He had not rejected her yet. In this life, the bond was still open, still waiting, still something he could choose or refuse with his own free will.
Which meant the version of him who broke my heart, who let me die for a marriage built on lies, had not been born yet.
And I had just been handed the one piece of information that could change everything, or destroy me trying to use it.
- Writer
