Kaitlin's POV:
I gasped, my eyes flying open.
Air flooded my lungs in a burning, ragged torrent. My chest heaved violently, and the frantic, rhythmic thud of a heartbeat echoed in my ears.
I am breathing.
The realization hit me with the force of a lightning strike. I remembered the suffocating void, the absolute finality of my death in The Stone Quarters. I remembered my spirit fading away into nothingness at the graveyard. Yet here I was, feeling the soft linen beneath my hands and the painful, undeniable throb of life in my veins.
The Moon Goddess hadn't let me fade. She had sent me back. I was reborn.
But as I tried to sit up, a wave of intense dizziness washed over me. This body... it felt entirely alien. It was a fragile, bird-like cage of bones, completely devoid of the muscular strength and vitality I had possessed as a Luna.
I swung my unfamiliar legs over the side of the bed, my bare feet hitting a plush rug. The room around me was a blur of soft pink walls and a vanity table cluttered with girlish trinkets. It wasn't the damp prison I died in, nor was it the grand Alpha's estate.
Trembling, I used the edge of the vanity to pull myself up and stared into the ornate mirror.
The face staring back at me confirmed my impossible reality. It was not my own.
It was a girl, no older than seventeen or eighteen. She was undeniably pretty, but painfully pale and delicate, like a porcelain doll on the verge of shattering. Wide, frightened eyes stared back at me. This was not the face of Elara Gardner, the twenty-eight-year-old woman who had commanded respect and endured unimaginable betrayal.
I reached up, my trembling fingers brushing the stranger's cheek. I felt the touch. It was my cheek now.
Suddenly, a tidal wave of foreign memories crashed into my skull, so violent it drove me to my knees.
I remembered... water. Freezing, dark water filling my lungs. I had been in the garden. I was always weak, always sick. I had fallen into the pond.
Names and faces that weren't mine flooded my mind. A life of quiet, pathetic suffering. I was Kaitlin Padilla. I had a stern, distant father, Lord Victor, and a vain, cruel younger sister, Antonia.
Two lives, two souls, violently colliding and fusing inside this one frail vessel. The agony of Elara's rejection and death mixed with the suffocating terror of Kaitlin's drowning. I cried out, clutching my throbbing head.
"Miss! Oh, Goddess, you're awake!"
The bedroom door flew open, and a young maid rushed in, her face a picture of absolute relief. She dropped the towels in her hands and hurried to my side, helping me up with gentle, practiced hands.
Through Kaitlin's newly integrated memories, I recognized her. This was Willow Hayes, my personal maid. Her concern was genuine, a small, unexpected island of warmth in the chaotic sea of my rebirth.
"I... I feel dizzy," I managed to whisper. The voice that came out was thin and reedy. Kaitlin's voice.
Willow carefully guided me back to the bed, fussing over me and pressing a glass of cool water to my lips. "You gave us such a fright, Miss Kaitlin! You've been unconscious for three whole days since you fell into the pond. The doctor said it was a miracle you survived!"
Three days.
I gripped the glass, my mind racing. "Willow," I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. "What... what is today's date?"
She blinked, confused by the question, but answered quickly.
When she spoke the date, my blood ran ice-cold.
It was the exact anniversary of my death. I had been dead for exactly one year. For twelve months.
After Willow finally left to inform my "father" that I was awake, I lay in the silence of the pink room, letting the pieces click into place.
I closed my eyes and reached deep inside myself, searching for the familiar, comforting presence of my wolf.
Nothing. Absolute silence.
This body was completely wolfless. To any werewolf, I was the lowest of the low, a weak, scentless human-like girl.
A slow, dark smile crept onto my lips. It was a perfect disguise. No one in their right mind would ever suspect a sickly, wolfless teenager of harboring the vengeful soul of their former Luna.
The grief, the despair, the agonizing pain of my past life... it was all still there, burning in my chest. But it was no longer a weakness. It had been forged into a weapon of pure, glacial hatred.
I pushed the blankets aside, stood up, and walked back to the mirror. I looked deep into the eyes of Kaitlin Padilla.
The frightened, fragile girl who had drowned in that pond was gone.
In her place burned the cold, unyielding fire of Elara Gardner.
I am back.
My lips didn't move, but the vow echoed in the deepest, darkest part of my new soul.
Estella Monroe. Hardin Preston.
I will take back everything you stole from me. And I will make you pay in blood.
