The last of the guests had departed, leaving behind a garden of crushed flowers and dying laughter. Elara stood on a dark, secluded terrace, letting the cool night air wash over her. The party was for Briar, but today was her birthday, too. They had shared the same day, if not the same life.
"Elara."
The voice was a deep baritone that vibrated through the stone beneath her feet. It was a voice that haunted her dreams and her nightmares.
She didn't have to turn. She knew.
Alpha Ryker Blackwood.
His presence was overwhelming, a physical force that pressed in on her. He smelled of forest rain and dark cedar, a scent that had once been her entire world. Now, it made her stomach clench with nausea. The mate bond, the cruel joke the Goddess had played on her, thrummed painfully between them.
She felt his gaze on her back. "I heard you were back," he said. His voice was strained.
"Yes, Alpha." The formal title was a shield. A wall.
A heavy silence stretched between them. She could feel his frustration, his unease. He took a step closer, and her entire body went rigid.
"Today is… it's your birthday, too," he said, his voice softer now. "Happy birthday."
She finally turned. Ryker stood there, a giant of a man, his jet-black hair disheveled as if he'd been running his hands through it. In his large hands, he held a small, carved wooden box. His piercing gold eyes, usually so full of command, held a flicker of something she couldn't—or wouldn't—name. Guilt.
He opened the box. Inside, nestled on black velvet, was a cloak woven from shimmering silver wolf fur. A mating cloak. A gift reserved for a future Luna.
A harsh, hysterical laugh bubbled in her throat, but she swallowed it down.
"Elara, I know I hurt you seven years ago," he began, his voice a low rumble. "But it was to protect Briar. She was so fragile, so weak after… after everything. Now that you're back, we can…"
His fingers brushed hers as he tried to hand her the box. A jolt, sharp and hot like electricity, shot up her arm.
*Mine.* The word was a possessive growl in her mind, not from her wolf, but from his.
Just as the absurd, agonizing hope threatened to flicker within her, a piercing scream cut through the night.
"Aaaahhhh!"
Briar.
Ryker's head snapped up. The conflict in his eyes vanished, replaced by pure, undiluted panic. He dropped the box. The silver cloak tumbled out, landing in a patch of damp earth by the rose bushes.
He didn't give it a second glance. He was already gone, a black-clad blur disappearing around the corner toward the source of the scream.
Elara stared at the beautiful cloak, now soiled with mud. A perfect metaphor for her life.
Her feet moved on their own, carrying her after him. She found them in the center of the garden. Briar was collapsed on the ground, her breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. A sheen of cold sweat covered her forehead, and her hand was clutching her chest as if her heart were being squeezed.
Ryker was on his knees beside her, his face a mask of terror.
"Ryker…" Briar gasped, clutching at his shirt. "My wolf spirit… from when I saved you… the damage was too deep. It's… it's fighting me… a backlash…"
"Healer! Someone get the Pack Healer!" Ryker roared, his Alpha command echoing through the silent garden. He gathered Briar into his arms, cradling her as if she were made of spun glass.
His wild, golden eyes scanned the few servants who had rushed out. He looked from Briar's pained form back to where Elara stood in the shadows, his mind reeling. The mating cloak was in the dirt. The bond between them pulsed with a confusing mix of hope and pain. But Briar's gasp of his name shattered the moment, and his panic hardened into a familiar, ugly suspicion. They landed on Elara. The look he gave her was colder than a winter storm. It was pure accusation. *This is your fault. Your presence did this to her.*
The world went silent. The frantic shouts, the rustling leaves, all of it faded into a dull roar. Elara was no longer on the lawn of Thorne Manor.
She was back on this very terrace, seven years ago. She was sixteen, her heart full of a terrible, wonderful secret. The Moon Goddess had shown her her mate. She had just told a handsome young Alpha named Ryker.
He was dying. Poison from an enemy attack was burning through his veins. And she, without a second thought, had performed the ancient, forbidden ritual. She had offered half of her own powerful wolf spirit, her life force, to save his.
When she woke up, drained and weak, it was to the sight of Ryker cradling a sobbing Briar. Her sister was claiming she had found a rare herb to cure him. And Ryker, his eyes cold and distant, had looked at Elara and uttered the words that had shattered her world. "I cannot accept you, Elara. Not while you stand accused of such dark magic. You are no mate of mine." He hadn't performed the formal rejection ritual—that required witnesses and council approval—but his public dismissal, his choice to believe the lie, had been a blade to her soul, leaving the bond between them frayed and bleeding, but not severed.
The memory slammed into the present with the force of a physical blow. Her gaze shifted from Ryker's agonized face to Briar's. And through the mask of pain, Elara saw it—a flicker of a triumphant smirk in her sister's eyes, gone as quickly as it appeared.
A laugh, silent and horrifying, shook Elara's thin frame.
She turned her back on the drama. She walked calmly back to the terrace, her steps even and measured. She knelt in the dirt and picked up the mating cloak. She didn't try to brush off the mud.
Clutching the soiled, beautiful thing to her chest, she walked back to her attic prison.
