Chapter 3: I'm Back?!

Phoebe's POV

I gasped awake, sitting bolt upright in bed, my chest heaving like I'd just run for my life. Sweat clung to my skin. My heart slammed against my ribs so hard it hurt, and for one disorienting second, I braced for the pain — the claws, the blood, the shattered glass ceiling above me.

None of it came. Just soft morning light and the smell of clean sheets.

The door flung open before I could process any of it.

"Hi, Miss Rousey." Shantel stepped in, brisk and cheerful, like this was any other ordinary morning. "You have a very important discussion with Alpha Raymond. Your father."

Father. The word landed strangely, like a puzzle piece forced into the wrong slot. Nothing about the room felt right. Everything was too bright, too sharp, too young somehow — and yet none of it made sense until the memory hit me in a single violent wave.

Stella's claws. The paper crushed in my fist. Simon's voice calling me disembodied. The warmth of my own blood pooling beneath me on the glasshouse floor.

I'd died. I was certain of it — could still feel the ghost of that pain lodged somewhere behind my ribs.

"Phoebe? Are you alright?" Shantel's voice cut through, laced with concern.

I didn't answer. I threw the blanket off and bolted past her toward the bathroom, ignoring whatever she called after me, my bare feet slapping against cold marble. I gripped the edges of the sink and forced myself to look up.

The face staring back wasn't the one I remembered dying with.

I was young again. Slimmer. Untouched by five years of marriage to a man who'd apparently spent every one of those years hating what I looked like in private while smiling at me in public. My hands trembled as I touched my own cheek, half expecting the reflection to shatter like the glasshouse had.

Still shaking, I grabbed my phone off the counter and checked the date, my stomach twisting tighter with every second the screen took to load.

Twelve days before my anniversary.

Except this time, it wasn't an anniversary at all. It was twelve days before my bonding ceremony with Simon — the day he'd mark me as his, the day that would set every single thing that destroyed me back into motion.

The realization dropped through me like a stone. I had died. And somehow, impossibly, I'd been given this back — a second chance, wound backward to the exact moment before my life had started unraveling.

I stared into the mirror, and slowly, a grin spread across my face — sharp, unfamiliar, nothing like the naive girl who used to live behind these eyes. I splashed cold water on my skin, and it still felt achingly smooth, achingly alive

I was back. And this time, I refused to let Stella or Simon crown themselves over my broken body. Not while I still had breath left to fight with — not even if it cost me every last drop of it twice.

"Dad, sorry I'm late." I slid into my seat at the long table, forcing my voice into something calm, something that didn't betray the storm raging beneath my skin. My younger sister, Flora, sat beside me, oblivious to the fact that I now knew exactly how this day would end if I let it play out the same way twice.

"It's alright, Phoebe." My father's eyes softened as he looked at me — a warmth I hadn't fully appreciated the first time I lived through this, back when I was too busy dreaming about wedding dresses to notice how much he actually loved me. "I hope you haven't forgotten about the meeting today. The exclusive one, with Simon. Alpha of the BlackAsh pack."

The memory of this exact conversation slammed into me — how eagerly I'd smiled the first time, how blindly I'd said yes without a single question, how thoroughly I'd handed my future to a man who was already planning my downfall before I'd even said the word *bonded.*

This time, my smile came slower. Colder. Calculated.

"Of course I remember," I said, and accepted the meeting exactly as I had before — because changing everything all at once would only raise questions I wasn't ready to answer. Not yet. Let them believe I was still the same girl. Let Simon believe it most of all.

I rose from the table and drifted toward the window, my pulse picking up before I even reached it. And there it was.

The glasshouse.

The same one Simon had built with his own hands and gifted me in another life — except this time, it stood half-finished, scaffolding wrapped around its frame like a skeleton not yet given skin. Settled deliberately in the disputed land between our two packs. Positioned exactly where it needed to be for a man planning to marry his way into a second throne.

He'd built it there on purpose. Not out of love — out of *strategy.* A monument to a wedding meant to hand him everything: my pack, my birthright, my body, and eventually, my life.

My hands curled into fists at my sides as I stared out at the half-built glass walls glinting under the morning sun, memory and fury tangling together until I could barely tell which feeling belonged to which lifetime.

I wouldn't be the fool twice. Whatever game Simon thought he was playing — whatever Stella believed she'd already won — neither of them had the faintest idea what kind of Luna they'd be facing this time around.

"Phoebe." Flora's voice broke through my thoughts, quiet and hesitant, the way it always was right before bad news. "Simon is here."

My whole body went rigid.

I turned from the window slowly, my heart hammering a warning against my ribs, and forced my expression into something soft, something unsuspecting — the same mask I'd worn for five years without ever realizing it was a mask at all.

Let the games begin.