Chapter 1

In my last life, I died three days after Layla became a "savior."

She stood beside my hospital bed, still wearing the white rescue jacket stained with blood. In front of the cameras, that jacket had earned her millions of likes. Away from the cameras, she hated the smell of blood on the cuffs and sprayed them with perfume again and again.

"Rowan, why do you always have to ruin things for me?"

She fed concentrated wolfsbane into my IV, sounding like she was scolding an assistant who had forgotten to book her a salon appointment.

"Once Seraphina dies, I'll be her savior. Even if Adrian doesn't love me yet, he'll remember me. And yet you had to call the police and hide the wolf-luring resin."

I tried to pull the needle out, but Gregory Vale pinned my wrist to the bed.

Mara Vale stood on the other side and reminded me coldly that the Vales had paid my tuition and given me a place to live. My life had stopped belonging to me long ago.

Layla laughed at that. "A charity case who can die for me. That's the most useful she'll ever be."

She pressed the injection button.

As the black liquid entered my vein, the last thing I saw was Seraphina's photo on Layla's phone. Layla was using it to rehearse how she would take Adrian's hand at the funeral.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back two hours before the charity night run began.

The computer on the desk was still on. The interview copy contained only a title: "I Never Thought About the Danger, I Only Wanted to Save Someone."

Layla threw a pair of white boots at my feet.

"Tie these for me first, then finish the last two paragraphs. The reporters will ask why I ran out. Make it sound natural."

I looked down at my own hands.

No needle marks, no black patches from the wolfsbane. The date on my phone was exactly the same as in my last life.

I really had come back.

"What are you staring at?" Layla nudged my calf with the toe of her boot. "I pay you to work, not to stand there daydreaming."

I didn't crouch down. I copied the files on the laptop to my private email and started recording.

"The east emergency door isn't properly locked. There could be an accident tonight."

That was the first warning I gave her.

Layla looked at me as though I were a servant who had forgotten her place.

"We go as planned, no changes. Once the event starts, stay away from the cameras. Don't let that sickly face of yours affect me."

In case I hadn't understood, she sent the order to the team chat as well.

I looked at the words on the screen and nodded slightly.

In my last life, when I discovered that the emergency door wasn't locked, I fixed it for her immediately. I deleted the segment of Tessa's test footage that showed the wolf-luring resin, then rewrote Layla's timeline three times.

She thought her plans were flawless only because I patched every hole before she noticed it.

This time all I saved was her order.

Before the run began, Blackpine Park was packed.

Seraphina, the head of the charity fund, walked at the front. Ordinary onlookers knew her only as the wife of Blackwood Security owner Adrian Blackwood. Only a handful of wolves knew she was also the sole Luna Adrian had ever acknowledged.

Tessa Gray positioned her phone in advance, then quietly smeared wolf-luring resin on the hem of Seraphina's cloak.

She asked Layla, "When do we go out?"

Layla watched the live feed.

"When the red light comes on. Saving her is pointless without footage."

A little boy chased a balloon toward the east side. I hit the security alarm anonymously first, then went and brought him back behind the barrier.

A low growl came from the shrubs.

A wolf driven mad by wolfsbane burst out of the trees and went straight at Seraphina.

Although Layla had a moonsilver bow in her hands, she deliberately held back for two full steps so Tessa could capture her face.

The arrow she loosed went wide as well. The arrowhead shattered a signpost, and moonsilver fragments cut across Seraphina's shoulder. She staggered and fell, and a second maddened wolf was already charging the crowd.

I pushed the boy into his mother's care, hauled a barrier into the wolf's path, ran to Seraphina, and pressed a first-aid blanket over the wound.

"Don't touch the moonsilver fragments!" I shouted at the staff rushing over. "Protect the wound first, and have the medical unit prepare the wolfsbane antidote."

The alarm went off three minutes earlier than it had in my last life.

When the black convoy swept into the park, Adrian was the first one out.

He didn't look at the cameras or at Layla in her white jacket. He seized the maddened wolf by the throat with his bare hands and slammed it into the pavement. The crack of bone against stone made every wolf nearby retreat on instinct.

Once the wolf was down, he turned and went to his wife.

The color had already gone out of Seraphina's face. Adrian went down on one knee beside her, his palm stopping just above the wound, and though he wasn't touching her, his fingertips were shaking.

"Seraphina, can you hear me?"

Layla pushed in front of him.

"Mr. Blackwood, I'm the one who saved her. When I ran out I never thought about whether I might be hurt."

Adrian finally looked at her.

His eyes went to Layla's gloves. There was resin on them, the same as on the cloak.

That look made Tessa step back, but Layla flushed.

While Adrian turned and lifted his wife, she said quietly to me, "Did you see that? He couldn't take his eyes off me."

"He was smelling your hands."

Layla's smile froze for a beat, then sharpened into a sneer.

"You don't understand men at all. That was him holding himself back."

In the medical unit, Seraphina went into shock from the combined effects of wolfsbane and moonsilver. The on-site blood bank had no compatible blood in stock, so I volunteered to be tested.

After the needle went into my vein, a silver light flickered along the transfusion line.

The readings on the monitor gradually steadied.

At that same moment Layla's silver eyes faded to an ordinary brown.

She didn't care whether Seraphina lived, and she didn't ask whether donating blood had taken a toll on me. She dragged me into a corner and ordered in a low voice, "One more treatment tonight. I want the color back before I see Adrian."

I pulled my hand away.

"I'm not going to the clinic today."

Before Layla could lose her temper, the medics carried Seraphina past.

The moonstone necklace slipped off the edge of the stretcher.

Layla bent to retrieve it. During the scramble to save Seraphina, she slipped the necklace inside her collar.

"That's Seraphina's anniversary gift," I said.

"She's practically dead. What difference does it make whether she has it on?"

Layla pulled the necklace out and adjusted the angle for Tessa's camera.

"Adrian will give me her other jewelry soon enough."

The moonstone glowed faintly between her fingers and recorded that sentence without a sound.

When Adrian turned back, he saw the necklace on her chest.

In that moment his eyes were colder than when he had pinned the maddened wolf.

Layla only straightened her back and deliberately copied the way Seraphina used to adjust that necklace.

In the car on the way back she pushed the laptop onto my lap.

"Write the press release tonight. Call it 'Adrian Can't Forget His Wife's Savior.'"

I closed the laptop.

"No."

Layla stared at me for a few seconds and then laughed. "You think I can't do anything to you if you won't help me?"

She looked down and messaged Tessa.

I saw a line come up on the screen.

"Take her to the old training hall. I want her to learn to keep her mouth shut whenever she sees me."