Chapter 4 — Someone Is Watching

I stared at the final message until the words began to blur.

Sixty days is not how long you have.

It’s how long they are giving you.

The storage building suddenly felt much smaller than it had a moment ago. Boxes of food were stacked along the walls, bottled water filled three shelves, and a generator sat beside several containers of fuel, yet none of those things made me feel safer. I had spent the last few hours convincing myself that knowing what was coming meant I had control. That message reminded me how little I actually understood.

Someone knew about my rejection.

Someone knew about my mother.

And whoever they were had deliberately chosen to warn me instead of attacking me.

That bothered me more than a threat would have.

I locked the storage building and walked back toward the house without looking around too obviously. The road outside was quiet, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching from somewhere beyond the trees. Raya was alert beneath my skin, her senses stretched toward every unfamiliar sound.

Don’t panic, she said.

“I’m not panicking.”

Your heart disagrees.

I almost smiled despite myself. “You always were terrible at comforting me.”

You never listened when I tried.

That stopped me.

She was right.

In my first life, whenever Raya warned me about someone, I had dismissed it as instinct. When she told me Ryan was angry, I told myself he was simply stressed. When she resisted certain members of his pack, I forced her to obey. I had spent years silencing the part of myself that recognized danger because listening to it would have meant admitting that the people I loved weren’t as good as I wanted them to be.

This time, I wasn’t going to make her quiet.

I reached the house and locked the door behind me. Before doing anything else, I changed the passwords on my accounts, disabled location sharing, and moved the money I could access without raising questions. It wasn’t enough to prepare for the apocalypse anymore. I had to prepare for people who knew something about me that I didn’t understand.

The following morning, I met the survival instructor I had called the previous day.

His name was Ethan Cole.

I knew nothing about him when I arrived at the private training facility except that the person who recommended him had described him as someone who could teach an inexperienced person how to survive without treating them like a child.

That was exactly what I wanted.

The facility was outside the city, surrounded by thick woodland and an old military-style obstacle course. I parked near a small training building and stepped out, expecting to see an older instructor waiting for me.

Instead, a tall man in dark training clothes walked toward me carrying a medical bag.

He looked at my car before looking at me.

“You’re Mara?”

“Yes.”

His gaze remained on me for another second. It wasn’t flirtatious or curious in the way Ryan’s had once been. Ethan looked at people as though he were quietly measuring how much trouble they could become.

“You’re late.”

I glanced at my watch.

“I’m three minutes early.”

His expression didn’t change.

“Then you’re three minutes early for the wrong reason.”

I frowned.

“What does that mean?”

“It means if you arrive at a dangerous situation three minutes early, you might think you have time to relax.”

I stared at him.

He turned toward the training area.

“Come on.”

I followed, already annoyed.

Within twenty minutes, I understood why he had been recommended.

Ethan didn’t care that I was an Alpha’s mate. He didn’t care about my family, my money, or my reputation. He corrected every mistake I made without softening his words, and when I struggled through a basic defensive exercise, he didn’t offer encouragement simply because I looked frustrated.

“You’re relying on strength,” he said.

“I don’t have much.”

“Exactly. So stop fighting like you do.”

I tried again.

He stepped aside just before I reached him and caught my wrist, turning my momentum against me. I landed hard on the mat.

Pain shot through my elbow.

I glared at him.

“You could have warned me.”

“If someone attacks you during the apocalypse, do you think they’ll warn you?”

I hated that he had a point.

I got back up.

We continued.

By the end of the session, my palms were bruised, my muscles were trembling, and I was breathing hard enough to taste blood.

Ethan handed me a bottle of water.

“You’re not prepared.”

I took it without thanking him.

“I know.”

He studied me.

“Most people who hear that become defensive.”

“I don’t have time to be defensive.”

Something changed in his expression.

Only slightly.

“Why sixty days?”

My fingers tightened around the bottle.

There it was.

The question I had been expecting.

“Personal reasons.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

“I know.”

He watched me for a long moment before looking toward my car.

“You’ve been buying unusual quantities of supplies.”

My stomach tightened.

“How do you know that?”

“I pay attention.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“It answers enough of it.”

I didn’t like him.

At least, that was what I told myself.

But there was something about Ethan that felt different from the people I had known in my first life. He wasn’t trying to impress me, control me, or convince me to trust him. He simply observed.

And that made him dangerous.

When I left the facility, I noticed a black SUV parked across the road.

I slowed.

The same vehicle had been near my property the previous evening.

My pulse quickened.

I drove past it without looking directly at the driver.

The SUV followed.

For the next ten minutes, I changed routes several times. It stayed behind me.

By the time I reached a crowded intersection, it finally turned away.

I exhaled.

Then my phone vibrated.

Another unknown number.

I opened the message.

You went to Ethan Cole.

I stopped breathing.

A second message appeared.

That was a mistake.

I stared at the screen.

I had known Ryan’s family might watch me after the rejection. I had expected questions from the pack.

But Ethan?

I had met him for the first time that morning.

Nobody should have known I went there.

I looked at the road ahead, suddenly aware that my second life had already begun moving in ways I couldn’t remember.

Then Raya spoke.

We need to find out who is watching us.

I tightened my grip on the steering wheel.

For the first time since waking up, I understood the real danger of being reborn.

I knew the future.

But someone else might know enough about me to change it.