The Girl Who Came Back

 The Girl Who Came Back

 Luna

Five years ago, Kian Voss stood in front of the entire pack and rejected me.

"I reject you as my mate."

Four words. That's all it took to end me at seventeen. I remember my knees threatening to buckle and locking them straight through sheer will. I remember his mother's sob cracking somewhere in the crowd. I remember walking out of that circle with my spine straight and my whole world in pieces, and I remember swearing, somewhere between that circle and the Blackthorn border, that I would never again let anyone see me break.

I am not that girl anymore.

Tonight I stand at Blackthorn's border wearing someone else's name like armor. Rhea Sorensen. Ashwood liaison, here to investigate border violence. Nobody inside these walls should recognize my face, my scent, or the sound my heart makes when it's lying.

"Last chance to turn around," Maren's voice crackles through my earpiece.

"I'm not turning around."

"You don't owe him a second look, Luna."

"This isn't about him." It's mostly true. The rest of it is a question I've carried for five years whether the man who gutted me in front of his whole pack is capable of being anything other than the boy who did it.

I cross into Blackthorn territory. The trees haven't changed. Neither has the way the air here makes my skin feel too tight, like the land itself remembers exactly who I used to be.

The pack house rises ahead, stone walls glowing gold from every window. I used to think it was beautiful. Tonight I catalog exits instead of sightlines, guard rotations, the fastest way out if this goes wrong.

A guard steps into my path before I've gone ten feet. Built like a wall, scar through one eyebrow, arms crossed.

"State your business."

"Rhea Sorensen. Ashwood liaison. Your Alpha's expecting me."

He studies me a beat too long, then jerks his chin toward the doors.

That's when it happens.

A pull rips through my chest hard enough to steal my footing, my wolf snapping to attention like she's caught a scent buried five years deep. My whole body goes electric, every nerve screaming one word.

Him.

No. He's supposed to be gone. Mated to someone the elders approved of. Someone worth keeping.

I follow the guard inside, telling myself it's nerves.

It isn't.

The doors haven't fully closed behind me before I see him standing at the top of the staircase like he owns the air in the room, because he does. Five years carved him into something harder. Broader shoulders. A jaw that looks permanently clenched, like he forgot how to unclench it. He looks like a man who's been carrying something heavy for so long he doesn't remember what it feels like to set it down.

His eyes find mine, and something catches in his expression recognition with no name attached yet, just instinct clawing at the surface.

He felt it too.

"Ms. Sorensen." His voice hasn't changed. That's the cruelest part. "Welcome to Blackthorn."

He doesn't know me. Contacts hide my eyes. Five years reshaped everything else. The last person his mind is built to find standing in his hallway is the girl he threw away.

"Thank you for having me, Alpha." I hold his stare like it costs me nothing.

He descends the stairs slower than a busy man should, and stops two feet away, jaw working like he's wrestling something he can't name.

"Do I know you?"

My blood turns to ice.

"I don't believe so, Alpha. I've never been to Blackthorn."

The first lie. Not the last.

He nods, but his eyes don't release mine, and behind them I catch his wolf pacing just as thrown as mine. The air between us pulls taut, storm-charged, dangerous.

Then a voice slices through it like a blade.

"Alpha. A word. Now."

A woman fills the archway behind him fifties, draped in dark green, watching me the way something watches wounded prey while it decides whether to strike yet. I don't know her name. My gut already knows to fear it.

Kian steps back, and his face shutters closed like a bolted door.

"Excuse me. Declan will show you to your rooms."

He's gone before I can answer, and I let out the breath I'd been holding hostage.

I came here for evidence. Proof of who's really staging the attacks on the border, evidence to clear Ashwood's name before this turns into a war neither pack can survive. I came here to disappear into a job and walk out clean, the way I walked out five years ago except this time with something to show for it.

I did not come here to feel his eyes on me like that again.

Behind me, the woman in green hasn't looked away once. When our eyes finally meet, hers don't flinch.

She knows something.

And worse I'd bet everything I have left that she already knows exactly who I am.