REBORN FOR THE LYCAN KING

Chapter 4

I Was Reborn Before My Engagement

Pov: Diana

I opened my eyes and gasped, air burning into lungs that shouldn't have been working. I braced for pain, for the fiery sting of a dagger in my stomach, for the cold stone of the wedding hall beneath me, for the sound of a crowd that had refused to save me.

But there was no pain.

I sat up in a soft, pink-linened bed, sunlight pouring through a wide, familiar window, warm against my skin. This wasn't my palace. This was my old bedroom, back in my father's house, where I'd lived as a girl—the same faded wallpaper, the same c***k in the ceiling shaped like a river.

“Diana, sweetie, you have to wake up.” The door opened and my mother walked in carrying a tray of fresh fruit. My heart stopped in my chest.

My mother was alive. I had buried her two years before my wedding. I had dug her grave with my own hands, in the rain, when no one else could bear to.

I stared at her, speechless, my mouth open and no sound coming out. She looked exactly as I remembered her before the illness took her—full-cheeked, warm-eyed, humming under her breath the way she always did in the mornings.

“Why are you looking at me like you've seen a ghost?” She laughed, setting the tray on my nightstand, then pressed a warm hand to my forehead. “No fever. Get out of bed, you lazy girl—the festival's about to start, and your father's been waiting downstairs forever.”

I glanced past her to the digital calendar on the wall, and the breath left my body. It was exactly three years before the night I died. Today was the festival, the very day Jax would kneel in front of the whole pack and slide a ring onto my finger—the opening move of the trap that would end, three years later, with me bleeding out on a marble floor while he watched.

Memory crashed over me in a single wave: the west hallway of the palace, the door to the private study swinging open, Ivy's red dress rucked up around her thighs, the sound of her breathless laugh. Jax's flat, heartless eyes telling me he'd never loved me. The cold bite of Ivy's dagger sliding into my stomach while a hall full of people watched me die and did nothing. And beneath all of it, a pair of golden eyes and a voice breaking apart as it begged me to stay.

I started to laugh.

I kept laughing, tears streaming down my face—confused at first, and then unmistakably happy, the two feelings so tangled together I couldn't separate one from the other.

My mother stepped back, her smile faltering. “Diana? What's gotten into you?”

I barely heard her. Warm tears slid from my closed eyes as I pressed both hands to my chest, the joy and the grief tangled together so tightly I could hardly breathe. I had a mother again. I had three whole years I hadn't earned and didn't intend to waste.

I had come back. I had been reincarnated.

Heaven, or fate, or whatever cruel force ran the universe, had given me another chance—three years to live all over again, and this time I remembered everything. I knew exactly how they would scheme, exactly how they would lie, before either of them opened their mouths. This time, I would not be the one bleeding on the floor. This time, someone else would pay for every single thing they had taken from me.

The door flew open and my attendant Lily rushed in, cheeks flushed, chest heaving from the stairs.

“Miss Diana!” she gasped. “You need to come down right now—everyone's waiting in the grand garden. Young Master Jax is up on the stone stage with a black velvet box in his hand. He's about to propose in front of the whole pack!”

“Let him wait,” I said, my voice perfectly calm, calmer than I had any right to feel.

Lily and my mother went silent, watching me like I'd become a stranger overnight.

I slid out of bed, my bare feet finding the sun-warmed floor, and walked slowly to the full-length mirror in the corner of the room. I lifted the hem of my white cotton nightshirt and looked down. My skin was smooth and unbroken—no blood, no scar, no wound where Ivy's dagger had gone in. Just soft, unmarked skin, as if none of it had ever happened.

The eyes staring back at me weren't the eyes of the girl who used to trust everyone without question. That girl was gone, buried somewhere in a hall three years in the future that no longer existed.

An image rose unbidden in my mind—not of Jax, not of Ivy's cruel smile, but of Zach Hamilton crashing through the palace doors, his golden eyes blazing, the entire hall dropping to its knees before him. I remembered him kneeling in my blood, weeping like a child. I remembered spending my whole first life running from him, calling him a tyrant, a monster, never once asking myself why he stayed so close to my pack when he had nothing to gain from it.

Now I understood. He was the only one who had ever truly loved me. The only one who fought for me when I had nothing left. He could have had anything in the world, and all he'd ever wanted was me. He'd stayed near my pack for years just to watch over me, to keep me safe from the people who claimed to love me and never once meant it.

I let my nightshirt fall back into place and turned from the mirror to find my mother and Lily still watching me, twin looks of confusion on their faces.

“Tell them I'm coming,” I said to Lily. “Tell Jax I'll be there in five minutes.”

Jax believed he was about to trap me. He believed I was the same blind, lovesick fool who would sign away her inheritance for a fake smile and a diamond ring. He had no idea what was coming for him.

“You will never be my one true love either, Jax,” I murmured to the empty room, and meant every word of it.

Then I walked out of the bedroom, ready to destroy him piece by piece.