Chapter 6

~Nyla~

"Horrors?" I repeated, my voice cracking on the word.

I expected to see flames. I expected the underworld, or nothing at all. Instead, I was lying on hard-packed earth, the scent of grass and smoke still clinging to my skin.

Oswald Ashborne was standing over me, very much alive, very much unmarked by the death I'd watched claim him.

I scrambled backward, putting distance between us before I even understood why. My hands hit dirt, not ash. Not fire.

"Careful." He didn't move to help me. He just watched, arms folded, waiting to see what I would do next like I was something curious he'd stumbled across in the woods.

I looked around. The clearing. The same clearing where the coming of age ceremony had been held. Except there were no drummers, no dancers, no altar. No priestess. No crowd chanting for my death.

"How am I here?" I whispered, more to myself than to him.

"You collapsed." He said it plainly, like it was an unremarkable thing, a wolf fainting in the grass. "I was passing through and found you. You've been muttering in your sleep for the better part of an hour."

An hour. Not three days. Not a lifetime. An hour.

I touched my throat. No mark. No scar from his teeth. My whole body still remembered the phantom press of his mouth against my skin but there was nothing there now. Just smooth, unclaimed skin.

I looked up at him properly for the first time since waking. His face was the same — the same sharp jaw, the same storm-grey eyes I used to trace with my fingertips while he slept. But something in his expression was wrong. The Oswald I knew had never once looked at me like I was a stranger to be assessed.

"You said my name in your sleep." He tilted his head slightly. "Oswald. Over and over. Care to explain how an omega who's never set foot on my land knows my name?"

My chest ached like the fire had reached it after all.

"Everyone knows your name." I managed. "You're the alpha."

"Everyone knows my title." He corrected. "Not everyone screams it in their sleep like a woman drowning." His eyes narrowed, studying me the way I imagined he studied enemies before a battle. "Who are you?"

"Nyla." My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to. "Nyla Moonke."

Something crossed his face at the name — the briefest flicker, gone before I could name it. Recognition, maybe. Or the ghost of something that hadn't happened yet.

"Moonke." He repeated it slowly, like he was testing the shape of it in his mouth. "The runt from the orphan home."

Of course he knew that much. Everyone did. It was the only thing about me anyone ever bothered to remember.

"Yes." I lowered my eyes, old shame rising in me automatically, even though I'd once stood beside this same man as his crowned Luna, commanding sentinels and negotiating with elders. That woman felt very far away now, burned to nothing along with everything else.

"You have no wolf." It wasn't a question.

"No." I admitted.

"And yet here you are, unconscious in my territory, calling my name like you know me." He crouched slightly, bringing himself eye level with me, and I had to fight the urge to reach for him the way I once did, without thought, without fear. "So tell me, Nyla Moonke. Do you know me?"

I want to belong to you. I want to be your Luna again. I want to warn you that someone is going to poison your wine and I am going to watch you die in my arms and then burn for a crime I never committed.

None of it would sound like anything but madness.

"No." I shook my head, forcing steadiness into my voice. "I don't know you. I must have had a fever dream. People say strange things when they're sick."

He didn't look convinced, but he didn't push either. He straightened back to his full height, putting distance between us again, like he'd caught himself leaning too close and didn't like it.

"You should go home." He said. "Whatever this was."

"I don't have a home." The words slipped out before I could stop them, bitter and honest. "Just a shack near the runts' quarters."

Something shifted in his face again — not quite pity, but close to it. I hated it. I didn't want his pity. I'd had a lifetime of pity from people who never once tried to help.

"Can you stand?" He asked instead.

I pushed myself upright, testing my legs. They held, though barely. I refused to let him see me stumble.

"I'm fine." I said, even though nothing about me was fine. I had died. I had burned. And now I was standing in a clearing with the same man who used to call me little wolf, and he was looking at me like I was a stranger who'd wandered too far from where I belonged.

"Good." He said, already turning to leave. Then he paused, glancing back at me over his shoulder. "Nyla Moonke."

"Yes?"

"Stay out of my territory unless you have business here." His tone was flat, final, giving nothing away. But his eyes lingered on me a moment too long before he turned and walked into the trees, leaving me alone in the clearing with my racing heart and a hundred unanswered questions.

I stood there long after he'd disappeared, staring at the space where he'd been.

He didn't remember me. He didn't love me. He didn't even like me, not yet. Everything I had — his devotion, his protection, his mark on my throat — I would have to earn all over again, brick by brick, with no guarantee the ending would be any different.

But I was alive. I was here. And whoever had poisoned him once would try again, unless I stopped them first.

I straightened my spine, wiped the dirt from my knees, and made my way back toward the only home I had ever known, already turning over every memory I had of the months before his death, searching for the first thread that would lead me to whoever wanted him dead.

This time, I told myself, I would not fail him.

This time, I would not burn.