Chapter 1: The Moon’s Truth

I woke up with a mouth full of phantom blood. My hands flew to my throat, expecting to feel the ragged tear where Silas’s claws had ripped through my flesh to push me out of the bunker. 

I expected the freezing rain of the Blood Moon and the snapping jaws of the corrupted beasts. Instead, my fingers met smooth, unbroken skin. 

I scrambled out of bed, my bare feet hitting the hardwood floor, and stumbled to the en-suite bathroom. Gripping the edges of the sink, I stared into the mirror. No sunken cheeks. No frostbite scars. No hollow, dead eyes. The girl staring back at me had bright, clear skin and thick, unthinned hair.

 I looked exactly as I had before the apocalypse. Before I starved myself to feed the pack. My eyes darted to the digital clock on the counter. I snatched my phone from the sink edge, my thumb slipping on the glass. 

October 12th. Sixty days. Exactly sixty days before the Blood Moon shattered the veil and turned half the werewolf population into mindless, blood-crazed monsters. 

My stomach twisted, a violent wave of nausea hitting me as the memories crashed in. In my past life, when the corrupted beasts breached the pack’s borders, Silas had promised we would survive together. I had spent the last three years pumping my healing energy into him, into his pack, until my own core was practically hollow.

 But when the bunker doors were closing, there was only one spot left in the decontamination chamber. Silas hadn't even looked at me. He had shoved me backward into the freezing mud and pulled Elara inside. But he didn't just save Elara. He saved her sick, half-corrupted wolf pup. 

As the beasts tore into my legs, Elara looked down at me from the safety of the glass and smiled. And in my final, bleeding moments, the Moon Goddess hadn't given me peace.

 She had given me the truth. The mark on my neck wasn't a low-born omega brand. It was the royal crest. I was the last heir of the First Pack. And Silas had thrown me to the monsters for a woman who wasn't even his fated mate. 

I gripped the porcelain sink until my knuckles turned white. Heaven, or the Moon, had given me a second chance. I wasn't going to waste it playing the devoted, self-sacrificing mate. 

I was going to hoard every resource, build a fortress, and let Silas and his precious Elara choke on their own arrogance when the Blood Moon rose. But as I turned to leave the bathroom, a practical thought stopped me. How? Silas controlled the pack's finances. 

He kept my allowance so tight I could barely buy my own clothes, let alone stockpile weapons, silver, and food for an apocalypse. Then, the memory of the Moon Goddess's final gift surfaced. Before I died, she hadn't just shown me my royal bloodline. She had shown me the truth about my mother.

 My mother hadn't been a weak, human stray who abandoned me. She was the exiled matriarch of the Northern Territory. 

The "worthless" rocky wasteland Silas had mocked me for wanting to visit? It wasn't just dirt. It was the ancestral Deadlands. And the deed, along with the sealed Royal Vault beneath it, had legally transferred to me on my eighteenth birthday. Silas thought I was just a naive, low-born omega. He had no idea I was sitting on a fortune that could buy out his entire pack ten times over. 

A sharp knock at the bedroom door shattered the silence. "Lyra?" The voice made my blood run cold. Silas. "I know you're awake," he said, his tone dripping with that familiar, patronizing patience.

 "Get dressed and come downstairs. Elara's family is here for the pre-ceremony dinner. And Lyra? Wear the gray dress. The one that hides your shoulders. 

You need to look modest next to her. We need to prepare her for the Luna announcement." In my past life, I would have swallowed the lump in my throat, put on the ugly dress, and smiled until my face ached while his mistress paraded around my home. 

I looked at my reflection one last time. The naive girl who loved him was dead. She died in the mud sixty days from now. I walked out of the bathroom and stopped in the center of the bedroom.

 Silas was leaning against the doorframe, looking perfectly handsome in his tailored suit, smelling of cedar and arrogance. He didn't even see me as an equal. He saw me as a placeholder. 

A convenient healing battery. "I'm not going downstairs, Silas," I said. My voice was quiet, but it didn't shake. He blinked, clearly caught off guard. A frown creased his perfect forehead. 

"Excuse me? Lyra, don't start with your insecurities today. It's important that Elara feels welcome—" "I don't care about Elara," I interrupted, stepping closer. I could see the confusion shifting into annoyance in his golden eyes. "And I don't care about your pack, your dinner, or your precious Luna announcement." 

"Lyra, you're being hysterical," he sighed, reaching out as if to pat my head like a disobedient child. "We'll talk about this after—" I slapped his hand away. The sharp crack echoed in the room. Silas froze, his eyes narrowing into dangerous slits. 

"You will not speak to me like that. You are my fated mate. You belong to me, and you will show some respect." I looked at the mate bond stretching between us, a glowing, invisible tether I could suddenly see with my awakened royal sight. It didn't look like love. It looked like a chain. 

I reached up, grabbed the silver mate pendant resting against my collarbone, and crushed it in my fist. "I reject you," I said, the words ringing with the absolute, undeniable power of the Moon. "As my mate."