Chapter 5 — The First Warning

I spent the entire drive home pretending the messages didn’t frighten me.

They did.

I had survived an apocalypse in my first life. I had watched people turn against one another over food, watched families abandon the weak, watched entire neighborhoods disappear beneath floodwater. I had faced creatures in the dark and known what it meant to feel completely helpless.

But this was different.

In my first life, I knew what was coming.

This time, someone else seemed to know that I knew.

I kept checking the rearview mirror as I drove. The black SUV was gone, but that didn’t reassure me. Whoever had been following me had already learned where I trained, and I had no idea how much they knew about my plans.

When I finally reached home, I didn’t drive directly into the garage. I circled the block once, then again, checking for unfamiliar vehicles before entering through the private gate. Only after the gate closed behind me did I allow myself to breathe.

I was becoming paranoid.

Or perhaps I was finally paying attention.

Inside my room, I locked the door and placed my phone on the desk. The anonymous message was still there.

That was a mistake.

I read it again.

Then I typed:

Who are you?

The message delivered almost instantly.

No response came.

I waited.

Nothing.

I set the phone aside and opened my notebook.

If someone wanted to distract me, I couldn’t afford to let them.

I began writing everything I remembered.

Not guesses.

Not rumors.

Things I had personally witnessed.

The first major storm had arrived forty-nine days before the world completely collapsed. Power problems became common shortly afterward. Transportation started failing. Certain areas reported contaminated water. Stores began limiting essential purchases. Then came the animal attacks, the evacuation orders, and finally the flood that swallowed entire districts.

I stopped writing.

My pen hovered above the page.

Something was wrong.

I looked toward the window.

Snow.

A single white flake drifted past the glass.

My heart sank.

There shouldn’t have been snow.

Not now.

I checked the weather forecast again. Clear skies. Normal temperatures. No warning.

I searched several different reports, but none mentioned anything unusual.

The snow continued falling.

I slowly wrote beneath my previous notes:

The timeline has already changed.

That realization frightened me more than the apocalypse itself.

If the future was changing, then my memories could no longer guarantee my survival.

I had been depending on the knowledge of my first life because I believed it gave me an advantage. But if one decision could alter the future, then every action I took could create consequences I had never seen before.

For the first time, I understood what being reborn really meant.

I hadn’t been given a map.

I had been given a second chance with half the roads erased.

A knock sounded on my door.

I quickly closed the notebook.

“Mara?”

Tessa’s voice.

I opened the door.

She stood there holding two cups of coffee, her expression suspicious.

“I brought this because you look terrible.”

I accepted the cup. “Thank you.”

She walked inside and glanced around.

“You know, most people who reject their mate don’t immediately start buying enough supplies to feed a village.”

I stiffened.

“How do you know about the supplies?”

She gave me an unimpressed look. “Because you’re my best friend, not because I’m spying on you.”

I relaxed slightly.

Tessa sat on the edge of the bed.

“Are you going to tell me what happened with Ryan?”

I looked down at my coffee.

There were so many things I wanted to say.

I wanted to tell her that I had already died once. I wanted to tell her that in sixty days the world would begin collapsing. I wanted to warn her about the winter she would never survive.

Instead, I gave her the only truth I could safely offer.

“I don’t trust him anymore.”

Tessa’s expression softened.

“Did he do something?”

“Not yet.”

She frowned. “Then why—”

“Because I know him.”

It wasn’t entirely a lie.

Tessa studied me for a long moment before reaching across the bed and taking my hand.

“Whatever you’re planning, don’t let him make you doubt yourself.”

I looked at her.

Those simple words almost broke me.

In my first life, Tessa had been one of the few people who tried to make me listen to my own instincts. I had ignored her too often because I was always trying to keep the peace.

This time, I squeezed her hand.

“I won’t.”

She smiled.

“Good.”

After she left, I stood by the window and watched the snow disappear.

Something about it bothered me.

The weather wasn’t simply changing.

It was early.

Too early.

And that meant the countdown I had been relying on was already unreliable.

I needed more information.

I needed more supplies.

And I needed to understand what my mother had hidden from me.

That thought led me back to the storage building.

I had barely entered when Raya stirred.

Try it.

I knew what she meant.

The strange ability that had awakened inside me after my rebirth.

I picked up a box of bottled water and held it against my chest.

For a second, nothing happened.

Then the box disappeared.

I froze.

I could still sense it.

Not gone.

Somewhere else.

I closed my eyes.

A strange sensation spread through my mind, and suddenly I could see a place that shouldn’t have existed.

It looked like a vast underground chamber beneath a silver sky. The water bottles sat exactly where I had placed them, untouched.

I opened my eyes.

The box was gone.

My heart began pounding.

“The Moonwell.”

The name came from Raya.

I had never heard it before, yet somehow it felt like a memory buried beneath my skin.

I tested it again.

Another box disappeared.

Then another.

The ability worked.

But as I reached for a third, a sharp pain suddenly pierced behind my eyes.

I stumbled backward.

Raya growled.

Enough.

I leaned against the wall until the dizziness passed.

So the Moonwell had limits.

Good.

I needed limits.

An ability without limits would make me careless.

I was still catching my breath when every light in the storage building went out.

I froze.

The generator was running.

I had checked it myself.

Yet the entire building had suddenly gone dark.

Raya became completely alert.

Someone is outside.

I slowly reached for the flashlight beside me.

A faint sound came from beyond the door.

Not footsteps.

Breathing.

Heavy.

Slow.

I moved toward the window and looked through the narrow gap in the curtain.

At first, I saw nothing.

Then something moved between the trees.

Too low to be human.

Too large to be an ordinary animal.

My pulse began racing.

Raya’s claws pushed forward inside me.

Don’t open the door.

I stepped away from the window.

My phone suddenly vibrated.

Unknown number.

I stared at the screen before answering.

“Who is this?”

For several seconds, there was only silence.

Then a man’s voice came through.

Low.

Calm.

Certain.

“You’ve awakened something that was supposed to remain hidden.”

My blood ran cold.

I gripped the phone tighter.

“What are you talking about?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“No, I don’t.”

A quiet laugh came through the receiver.

Then his voice dropped.

“The Moonwell.”

My heart stopped.

Nobody knew that name.

Not Ryan.

Not Tessa.

Not Ethan.

Not even my father.

Before I could speak, the stranger added one final sentence.

“Your mother wasn’t hiding you from the Alpha, Mara.”

The call ended.

I stood completely still.

Outside, something scraped its claws against the storage building door.

And suddenly, the warning in my mother’s letter made sense.

She hadn’t been telling me to stay away from Ryan because he was dangerous.

She had been warning me because Ryan wasn’t the only one looking for me.