Chapter One: The Omen Wakes

The man beside me is cold.

Not sleeping-cold.

Not early-morning chill.

Dead-cold.

I know before I open my eyes. My body always knows first—my skin humming with the familiar, sickening quiet that follows. The silence after a heartbeat stops. The silence after I take something I never meant to claim.

I lie still, staring at the ceiling of the rented room, counting my breaths like it might undo what I’ve done. One. Two. Three. The air smells wrong—iron threaded through sweat and cheap soap. My throat tightens.

Don’t look yet, Lyra.

Delay doesn’t save you, but it softens the blow.

I turn my head anyway.

His name was Edrin. He told me last night, voice rough with drink and loneliness, that he’d come south looking for work. That he missed the mountains. That I looked like someone who wouldn’t ask him to stay.

He was right about that.

Edrin’s eyes are open, glassed over, staring past me like he finally saw the truth and couldn’t survive it. His lips are blue. One hand is curled toward my waist, stopped mid-reach, fingers stiff as if death froze his regret in place.

My chest burns.

Seven men.

That makes seven.

I press my palm to his sternum, just once, because pretending I didn’t care would be another lie stacked on the law’s cruelty. There is no heartbeat. No warmth. Just the echo of my own pulse pounding too loud in my ears.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

The words feel useless. They always do.

I swing my legs off the bed and stand, forcing my body into motion before grief can root me to the floor. Movement is survival. Stillness gets you killed—by the Council, by the packs, or by your own guilt.

The mirror across the room catches me as I reach for my clothes.

Lyra Noctis, it reflects back.

The omen. The mistake. The girl who should never have been born.

My dark hair is tangled, falling loose down my back, hiding the crescent-shaped brand burned into my shoulder blade when I was thirteen. Marked by law. Declared unfit for bond. My eyes—too silver in the low light—give me away if I don’t keep my gaze lowered.

I dress quickly. Black trousers. Long-sleeved shirt. Boots worn thin from too many roads. I wipe down every surface I touched, methodical, practiced. I don’t cry. I don’t scream.

I learned young that grief is a luxury.

As I bend to retrieve my bag, the memory hits without mercy.

Blood.

Moonlight.

My mother screaming.

I was born under a fractured moon, they said. The sky split white, then red. Selene Noctis, my mother, had held me once before her body gave out, before the power tore through her like it had been waiting for breath.

They told my father it was my fault.

Ronan Noctis, Alpha of the Black Hollow Pack. A man made of iron law and colder silence. He never denied it. He never looked at me the same again. When the elders spoke of ancient rules and cursed bloodlines, he let them brand me. Let them erase my name from pack records.

She must live alone, the law declared.

Her bond is death.

I sling my bag over my shoulder and step back from the bed.

Edrin deserves more than this ending. More than a nameless room and a woman who vanishes before the body cools. But staying would mean punishment. Execution. Proof dragged before a Council that has waited years for me to slip.

A howl cuts through the night.

Not close—but not far enough.

My spine goes rigid.

Territory.

I hadn’t crossed into claimed land yet. I was careful about that. Always careful. But the borders shift when Alphas grow restless, and the smell of blood doesn’t respect invisible lines.

Another sound follows—boots on gravel outside. Voices. Human, maybe. Or scouts.

Time’s up.

I slip out the door, pulling my hood low, heart hammering as I descend the stairs two at a time. The inn’s common room is empty, lanterns dimmed. I move like a shadow, every sense stretched raw.

Outside, the night air bites.

I head for the trees.

The forest beyond the road is thick, unfamiliar. I welcome it. Wild places don’t ask questions. They don’t care who you are—only whether you can survive.

As I run, the bond ache flares low in my abdomen, a cruel reminder of what I can never have. What I should never risk again.

Never.

I don’t slow until the sounds of pursuit fade, until my lungs burn and the moon climbs higher, watching me with that same fractured gaze.

I lean against a tree, pressing my forehead to the bark, breathing hard.

“That was the last time,” I lie to the dark.

The forest answers with silence.

Then—something else.

A presence.

Not hostile. Not curious.

Aware.

My skin prickles as if the night itself has turned to look at me. Somewhere deeper in the woods, something ancient shifts, and for the first time in years, the fear twisting my chest isn’t about death—

It’s about being seen.

I straighten slowly.

Whatever just noticed me…

it isn’t running away.

And neither, suddenly, am I.