Rosalia POV

My eyes flew open and the first thing I saw was a ceiling I had not seen in three years.

No. That wasn't right. I had never stopped seeing this ceiling because in my timeline, I was already dead. Twenty five years old, eaten alive from the inside by a wasting illness that nobody in this godforsaken Lycan Territory bothered to treat, and buried in a grave that I was pretty sure nobody visited.

So why was I staring at my old wedding chamber?

I sat up so fast that the silk sheets slid off my body, and that was when I noticed the nightgown. Sheer. Purple. So thin that you could see everything underneath it, and I mean everything. I remembered this nightgown. I had burned it the morning after my disastrous wedding night because wearing it had been the single most humiliating moment of my entire miserable life.

"Your Majesty, you look absolutely radiant this morning."

The voice hit me like cold water. I turned my head slowly toward the woman standing at my bedside with a silver tray and the most perfectly rehearsed smile I had ever seen.

Gianna Ferrante.

Fox ears. Auburn hair pinned back with pearl clips. A face so sweet and polished that you would never guess the venom living behind it.

She was dead. She had died two years into my marriage. I remembered attending her small, quiet funeral and feeling guilty for not caring more. And yet here she stood, alive and breathing and looking at me like I was something stuck to the bottom of her shoe.

That was when something impossible happened.

Look at her sitting there like a lost puppy. Pathetic. If I had her position, I would already have the king wrapped around my finger. And honestly, what is she even wearing? That nightgown does nothing for her figure. Her rear end is far too wide for silk that thin.

My blood went cold. Gianna's lips had not moved. Not even a twitch. Those words had come from inside her head, and somehow, impossibly, I had heard every single one of them.

I stared at her, my heart hammering, my mind spinning so fast I thought I might throw up. Time travel. Mind reading. A dead woman standing in front of me judging the size of my backside.

Three years. I had spent three years in this territory being ignored, mocked, whispered about, and slowly poisoned to death. Three years of trying to earn the love of a husband who walked out on our wedding night without a word. Three years of smiling through the pain while every beast in this estate treated me like I was trash someone had forgotten to throw away.

And now the universe wanted me to do it all over again?

Something inside me snapped. Not gently. Not quietly. It broke apart like a dam giving way to a flood, and what rushed through was not sadness or confusion or even fear.

It was rage. Pure, white hot, soul shaking rage.

"Your Majesty?" Gianna tilted her head, her smile never faltering. "Shall I prepare your bath? The King will be arriving soon, and we want you looking your very best for him."

If I help her look presentable enough, perhaps the king will glance my way when he enters. This nightgown is wasted on a woman like her. I would fill it out so much better.

I looked at her for a long, quiet moment. In my first life, I had trusted this woman. I had confided in her during lonely nights, poured out my insecurities, and she had carried every word straight to the people who used them against me. She had spent three years pretending to serve me while secretly plotting to climb into my husband's bed.

Not this time.

"Gianna," I spoke her name slowly, letting each syllable land like a stone dropping into still water. My voice was calm. Too calm.

"Yes, Your Majesty?" Her fox ears perked up, and her smile stretched wider.

"Tell me something." I swung my legs off the bed and stood up, the sheer purple fabric clinging to every curve of my body. "When you picked out this nightgown for me, were you thinking about what the king would like to see on me? Or what the king would like to see on you?"

The smile cracked. Just barely, just a tiny fracture at the corner of her painted lips, but I saw it.

"I... I beg your pardon, Your Majesty?" Her voice pitched higher, and her ears flattened against her skull.

"Because if you want to wear something this revealing and parade yourself in front of my husband, you are more than welcome to say so." I took a step closer to her, and the tremble that passed through her body was so satisfying I could have bottled it. "Go ahead, Gianna. Strip down. Put on the nightgown yourself. Walk into that hallway and throw yourself at the Lycan King on his wedding night. I am sure that will go very well for you."

How does she... She never talks like this. She never fights back. What happened to the quiet, obedient little queen who does whatever I tell her?

"Your Majesty, I would never presume to..." Gianna's voice was barely a whisper now, her composure shredded into pieces.

"Then stop thinking about my husband's preferences and start doing your actual job." I held her gaze without blinking, without flinching, without a single trace of the desperate, lonely girl I had been the first time around. "Or better yet, get out of my sight. I can dress myself."

Gianna's face went completely white. Her mouth opened, then closed, then opened again like a fish pulled out of water. No clever response came. No sweet manipulation. No poisoned smile.

She turned and left the room without another word, her fox tail tucked so low it practically dragged on the floor behind her.

The door closed, and I stood alone in the chamber, my chest heaving, my fists clenched at my sides. The anger was still burning through me, hot and alive and absolutely relentless. I had no idea how I had traveled back in time. I had no idea how I could suddenly hear people's thoughts. And I had no idea what I was supposed to do with a second chance at a life that had been nothing but suffering the first time.

But I knew one thing for certain. I was done being the quiet, pathetic queen who let everyone walk all over her.

A knock at the door pulled me out of my spiral.

"Your Majesty." A deep, formal voice from the other side. "His Majesty the Lycan King requests permission to enter your chambers."

My stomach tightened. Dante. My husband. The man who had walked into this very room on our wedding night, stared at me like I was a piece of furniture, and walked right back out without saying more than ten words.

"Your Majesty?" the guard repeated. "His Majesty requests your permission to..."

"Yes, I heard you!" I snapped.

Another pause. Another knock.

"Your Majesty, protocol requires a verbal confirmation of consent before His Majesty the Lycan King may cross the threshold of the Queen's private..."

"Oh, for the love of..." I grabbed a pillow off the bed and threw it at the door. It hit the wood with a soft, utterly unsatisfying thump.

"Your Majesty, shall I interpret that as..."

"JUST GET INSIDE ALREADY!"