Chapter 6

TASHA

I remembered the moment my first life ended. The poison worked faster than expected, and the world slipped away before I understood what happened. But something held me in place.

My body lay on the clinic bed, still breathing through machines, but my consciousness broke free and hovered just above it. I wasn’t alive and I wasn’t gone.

I existed in a suspended state, aware and unable to return to the body that had betrayed me. I saw everything clearly—the white lights, the quiet voices, the way the staff avoided looking at my face unless they had to. No one knew I could see them.

Kirk visited twice in three days. The first time, he stood at the foot of the bed with his hands in his pockets. He didn’t touch me or speak to me. He just stared with a detached expression, like he was deciding whether to replace a broken object or throw it out.

Violet stayed close to him, always a half-step behind, offering soft whispers: “You did everything you could… it wasn’t supposed to be this serious…” Her voice never carried guilt.

Kirk nodded without reacting. His eyes never reddened. He didn’t ask the nurses for updates. He walked out before the monitor finished its next cycle of beeping.

The estate elders came later. They signed the consent forms the clinic presented, flipping through pages with bored efficiency. They spoke about me as if I wasn’t in the room.

“She was always sickly.”

“We warned the Alpha about her fragility.”

 “This may be for the best.”

They left before the ink dried.

Angela arrived the next morning. She cried once—one burst of sound that felt like a performance—and then checked the time on her phone. She told the staff she had a dinner to attend and left before they could respond. Her heels clicked down the hallway long after her tears evaporated from her cheeks.

I remained trapped above my body while the world moved on. But the worst part wasn’t the adults. It was seeing my son in another room of the clinic, curled up and not making a sound, not even crying.

A nurse held him, she fed him at intervals, burped him and changed his diapers.

One evening, when he surprisingly burst into tears, Kirk stepped into the room only long enough to say, “Handle it,” before walking back out. My chest would have broken if it still belonged to me.

That was the moment I understood: I died unloved.

The longer I stayed in that soul-state, the more I learned. I drifted through hallways, rooms, and conversations I never would have heard while alive.

Violet cornered Kirk in an empty corridor. “This wasn’t supposed to kill her,” she hissed. “You promised me she would recover enough to step aside.”

Kirk pressed a hand over his face and muttered that he didn’t plan anything. His voice trembled but it was guilt, not grief.

The Alpha council met privately and discussed my death like it was a minor administrative error.

“So we'd have to get her off life support,” one elder said.

“Alpha Kirk would have to mate with Violet to restore order.”

Another warned that the pack would ask questions, so they agreed to hide certain details from the public report. They never mentioned justice. They never mentioned remorse.

A healer hesitated before signing the death certificate. “She wasn’t supposed to die this soon,” he whispered when he thought no one heard.

The Beta told him to stop overthinking it. “The Alpha can move forward without complications.” My life was reduced to a complication.

Kirk did not move forward. He didn’t marry Violet afterward. Not because he loved me or honored my memory, but because guilt hollowed him out and kept him from making decisions. He lost direction, and instead of correcting himself, he let the pack unravel. My newborn seemed confused and alternating between crying a lot and moments of unnerving silence.

Watching it broke something in me that death hadn’t.

When my time in that in-between state finally thinned out, I called out to the Goddess. I begged—not for vengeance, but for clarity. I wanted another life so I could understand everything that shaped my death. I wanted truth, not comfort.

The Goddess answered.

I woke again, aware, and holding the weight of what I had seen. My second life was not a blessing. It was a reset, a chance to walk the same path with open eyes. The world thought I returned as the quiet girl they expected me to be.

They didn’t know I remembered every conversation they tried to hide.

They didn’t know I carried the knowledge of my own murder.

And this time, I wasn’t going to die quietly. This time, the one who poisoned me would face me while I still breathed.