Reborn Luna: His Darkest Regret

Testing the Timeline

The old temple wasn't hard to find if you knew where to look.

Selene had passed it a hundred times as a child—an overgrown ruin on the northern edge of Pack territory, half-swallowed by wild roses and moonlight vine. The Pack had abandoned it decades ago, when the new Alpha temple was built closer to the main hall. No one came here anymore. No one except the ghosts.

She pushed through the tangled undergrowth, thorns catching at her dress. The temple's stone archway still stood, carved with the crescent moon symbol of the Goddess. The same symbol now burned on her collarbone.

Find the other journal. The one hidden beneath the altar.

The interior was dark and cold, smelling of damp stone and old magic. The altar sat at the far end—a simple slab of white marble, cracked down the middle, covered in dead leaves and spiderwebs. Selene knelt before it and ran her fingers along the base.

Nothing. Just cold stone.

She pressed harder, searching for a seam, a hidden compartment, anything. Her fingers scraped against rough edges, and she felt something shift. A loose stone. She pried it free, and there it was—a leather-wrapped bundle, smaller than the first journal, tied with a silver ribbon that had long since turned gray.

She unwrapped it with trembling hands.

The second journal was thinner than Elyria's. The handwriting was different—older, more formal, the ink faded to near-invisibility. But the first page was clear enough:

The Lunar Awakening: A Guide for the Last Daughter

You carry the blood of the First Luna, blessed by the Moon Goddess to walk between worlds. Your power is not a gift—it is a responsibility. It is also a death sentence if the Shadow Order finds you before you are ready.

Do not attempt to awaken your wolf before the Marking Ceremony. The bond must be present for the transformation to be controlled. Without it, the power will consume you.

But you may prepare. These are the signs of the Awakening:

1. The crescent moon mark—burning silver on your skin.

2. Dreams of the Goddess—her voice, her warnings.

3. The ability to see what others cannot—the threads of fate, the echoes of what was and what might be.

Selene stopped reading. The threads of fate. The echoes of what was and what might be.

She closed her eyes and tried to feel it. The bond was there, dormant, waiting for Kael's scent to awaken it. But beneath the bond, something else stirred. Something older. Something that had been sleeping for a very long time.

She opened her eyes, and the world shifted.

Threads. Silver threads, impossibly thin, stretching from every living thing around her. The vines on the walls. The spiders in their webs. The distant wolves moving through the forest. Each thread pulsed with a faint light, a heartbeat, a story.

And some of the threads were broken.

She saw them clearly now—the places where fate had been severed. A thread that should have led to a servant's death in the kitchen. A thread that should have led to her own death in the dungeon. The broken threads hung in the air like torn spiderwebs, waiting to be rewoven.

She could change things. She could see the future—or rather, the future that would have been—and she could choose differently.

The vision faded, and Selene was back in the temple, gasping for breath. The crescent moon mark on her collarbone was burning. She pressed her hand against it, and the heat subsided.

The ability to see what others cannot.

She had three days. Three days before the Marking Ceremony. Three days to test whether she could truly change the timeline—or whether fate was a cage she couldn't escape.

The servant's name was Lena.

Selene remembered her from the previous life. A quiet girl, barely older than Selene herself, who worked in the kitchens. She'd died three days before the Marking Ceremony—a "random accident," the Pack had called it. A pot of boiling water had tipped from the stove, scalding her so badly that even wolf healing couldn't save her.

But it hadn't been an accident. Selene knew that now. One of Vivian's lackeys had loosened the stove grate. A test run. A way to see if anyone would notice, if anyone would care about an Omega servant's death.

No one had.

In the previous life, Selene had been in the great hall when it happened, serving drinks to the Beta families, too busy to notice the screams from the kitchen. By the time she'd heard about it, Lena was already dead.

This time, she would be there.

She found Lena in the kitchen just before dawn, stoking the fires and preparing the morning meal. The girl looked up as Selene entered, her eyes widening. Omegas didn't usually visit the kitchens at this hour. Omegas didn't usually visit the kitchens at all.

"Can I help you?" Lena's voice was cautious. She'd learned to be careful around higher-ranking wolves.

"I need to borrow you for a moment," Selene said. "There's a delivery at the eastern gate. They asked for you specifically."

Lena frowned. "A delivery? No one ever sends me—"

"It's from your family," Selene said, and the lie came easily. She'd learned to lie in her previous life. She'd learned to do a lot of things. "They said it was urgent."

Lena's face softened. Her family lived in a village on the edge of Pack territory, barely scraping by. A delivery from them would be rare. Precious.

"I'll be right back," Lena said to the other kitchen workers, and followed Selene out the door.

They walked in silence through the cold morning air. The eastern gate was a ten-minute walk from the kitchen—far enough that by the time they returned, the "accident" would have already happened. Or rather, it would have already not happened, because the person it was supposed to happen to wasn't there.

Selene's heart was pounding. She was gambling. If the timeline couldn't be changed, if fate was fixed, then Lena would die anyway. Maybe not today, maybe not in the kitchen, but soon. The broken thread would find another way to sever.

But if she could change it—

They reached the eastern gate. The guard on duty looked confused. "Delivery? No deliveries scheduled for this morning."

Lena turned to Selene, her expression shifting from hope to suspicion. "There's no delivery, is there?"

"No," Selene said quietly. "There isn't."

"Then why—"

"Because if you'd stayed in the kitchen, you'd be dead right now."

Lena's face went pale. "What?"

Selene didn't answer. She was already walking back toward the kitchen, her legs moving faster than her thoughts. She needed to see. She needed to know.

The kitchen was in chaos when she arrived.

Workers were gathered around the stove, their faces white with shock. The pot of boiling water had tipped—exactly as it had in the previous life—and scalded the floor where Lena would have been standing. The grate was loose. The accident had happened.

But Lena wasn't there.

Selene stood in the doorway, her breath catching in her throat. The silver threads flickered at the edge of her vision. The broken one—the one that should have led to Lena's death—was gone. In its place, a new thread, whole and unbroken, stretching into an uncertain future.

She had changed it.

She had actually changed it.

Her legs gave out. She caught herself against the doorframe, her whole body shaking. The timeline could be altered. Fate wasn't fixed. She could save people. She could save herself.

"Are you all right?" One of the kitchen workers was looking at her with concern. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"I'm fine," Selene managed. "I just—I need some air."

She stumbled outside and leaned against the stone wall, her chest heaving. The crescent moon mark was burning again, hotter than before, and when she looked down at her wrist, she saw something new.

A second mark. Smaller than the one on her collarbone, but unmistakably the same shape. A crescent moon, pale silver, pulsing with its own heartbeat.

The bloodline awakens in stages, Elyria's journal had said. Each time you change a fate, a new mark appears. Each mark is a key. When you have gathered enough keys, the door will open.

She was changing. With every altered thread, with every saved life, the Lunar bloodline grew stronger. And the stronger it grew, the harder it would be to hide.

Lena appeared at the edge of the courtyard, her face still pale. She'd followed Selene back. She'd seen the kitchen. She'd seen what had almost happened.

"You knew," Lena whispered. "You knew that was going to happen."

Selene met her eyes. "Yes."

"How?"

"I can't explain it. Not yet. But I need you to trust me." Selene took a step toward her. "There are people in this Pack who want to hurt me. People who will hurt anyone who gets in their way. You're in danger now, because I saved you. They'll notice. They'll wonder why."

Lena's jaw tightened. "Who?"

"Vivian Nightshade."

The name hung in the air between them. Everyone knew Vivian. The beautiful Beta daughter, the Pack's darling, the woman who was all but certain to become Kael's chosen Luna. Accusing her of anything was dangerous. Accusing her of murder was suicide.

But Lena didn't laugh. She didn't dismiss it. She looked at the kitchen, at the loose grate, at the boiling water that would have killed her, and something hardened in her eyes.

"What do you need me to do?"

Selene felt something shift in her chest. Not the bond. Not the bloodline. Something simpler. Something she hadn't felt in a very long time.

Hope.

"Stay alive," she said. "Stay quiet. Watch everything. And when the time comes—be ready to speak the truth."

Lena nodded slowly. "I can do that."

She turned and walked away, disappearing into the servants' quarters. Selene watched her go, and for the first time since waking up in her eighteen-year-old body, she felt like she wasn't completely alone.

She spent the rest of the day in the archives, reading every page of Elyria's journal. The Lunar bloodline was older than the Pack itself—older than the Shadow Order, older than the current hierarchy, older than almost everything Selene had ever been taught about werewolf history.

The First Luna had been the Moon Goddess's mortal vessel, a wolf who could walk between the physical world and the spiritual realm. She had borne daughters, and those daughters had borne daughters, and the bloodline had passed down through the centuries, growing stronger with each generation.

Until the Shadow Order had found them.

The Shadow Order had been hunting Lunar Wolves for five hundred years. They believed the bloodline was a threat to the natural order—that a wolf with the power of the Goddess herself would upset the balance of power between Packs. They had killed dozens of Lunar Daughters, erasing their names from history, burning their records, making it seem as if they had never existed.

Elyria had been the twelfth. She had hidden her journals, hoping that someday, a daughter would find them. Hoping that someday, the bloodline would rise again.

Selene was the thirteenth.

She closed the journal as the sun began to set. The archives were growing dark, the high windows fading to gray. She had been reading for hours, and her eyes burned with exhaustion, but her mind was sharper than it had ever been.

She knew what she was now. She knew what she was up against. She knew what she had to do.

The Marking Ceremony was two days away. Kael would scent her. The bond would snap into place. Vivian would begin her campaign of lies and manipulation. And this time, Selene would be ready.

But first, she needed allies. She needed people who would stand with her when the Pack turned against her. She needed—

A knock at the archive door.

Selene froze. No one came to the archives at this hour. No one except—

The door swung open, and Kael Blackthorn stepped inside.

He was still in his training clothes, his dark hair damp with sweat, his silver-gray eyes scanning the room. He hadn't expected to find anyone here. That much was clear from the way he stopped in the doorway, his brow furrowing.

"You," he said.

It wasn't a question. It wasn't an accusation. It was just a word, spoken with the kind of confusion that came from seeing something you couldn't explain.

"Alpha." Selene rose to her feet, her voice carefully neutral. She tucked Elyria's journal into the folds of her dress, hiding it from view. "I was just leaving."

"Wait."

The word stopped her cold. Not because of the authority in it—she'd heard Kael give orders a thousand times—but because of something else. Something in his voice that she'd never heard before.

Uncertainty.

"You're the Omega," he said slowly. "The one who's been... different lately."

Selene's heart hammered against her ribs. He'd noticed. Of course he'd noticed. She'd been careless, too focused on her plans to maintain the perfect mask of invisibility.

"I don't know what you mean, Alpha."

"Don't." He took a step closer, and the bond in her chest stirred—a low, hungry pulse that made her want to close the distance between them. "Don't pretend. I've been watching you. You move differently. You speak differently. You look at me like—"

He stopped. Swallowed. His jaw tightened.

"Like you hate me," he finished.

Selene said nothing. What could she say? That she'd loved him once, with every fiber of her being, and he'd thrown her away like garbage? That she'd died alone in a dungeon while he celebrated upstairs with the woman who'd murdered her?

That she'd been given a second chance, and she wasn't going to waste it on a man who'd never deserved her in the first place?

"I don't hate you, Alpha," she said quietly. "I don't feel anything for you at all."

It was the cruelest thing she could have said. She knew it the moment the words left her mouth. Kael's expression flickered—confusion, hurt, something that might have been anger—and then settled into a cold, hard mask.

"You should," he said. "Everyone does."

He turned and walked out of the archives, leaving Selene alone in the darkness.

She stood there for a long moment, her heart pounding, the bond screaming in her chest. Mate. Mate. Mate. Her wolf didn't understand. Her wolf only knew that the other half of her soul had just walked away.

But Selene understood. She understood that Kael Blackthorn was the most dangerous person in her life—not because he was her enemy, but because he was her mate. Because the bond would make her want him. Because she'd spent her entire previous life wanting him, and it had destroyed her.

This time, she would be stronger.

She touched the crescent moon mark on her wrist. Still warm. Still pulsing. A reminder of what she was. A promise of what she could become.

Two days until the Marking Ceremony. Two days until everything changed.

And this time, she would be the one holding the knife.

To be continued...