Chapter 4: Phantom

Layla's POV

The corridor outside the banquet hall smelled like roasted venison and expensive wine. Through the kitchen doors, I could see servants rushing back and forth, carrying platters piled high with imported meats, bottles of liquor that cost a fortune, trays of desserts arranged like tiny sculptures.

I stopped. Watched.

Two servants struggled past with an ice carving, a howling wolf, cut from a single block, already sweating in the warm air. Behind them, another hauled a case of wine that cost more than most border families earned in a month.

I knew where the money for all of this came from.

When they'd brought me home three months ago, I'd been so desperate to belong that I'd looked into the Pack's finances through my own channels. What I found was ugly. Father looked like a good Alpha on the surface. He held the borders, gave good speeches, kept up the act. But his treasury bled money every single quarter.

Out of some naive hope that I could help my new family, I'd started funneling funds from my personal accounts through Night Veil. Nothing outrageous by our standards, but enough to keep the Thorne Pack solvent.

They'd spent it on ice sculptures and imported wine. For a birthday party celebrating the daughter who mattered.

I turned away from the kitchens. A maid came rushing around the corner with a tureen of soup, heading straight for me at full speed. I caught her trajectory in a glance and sidestepped.

She stumbled past, soup sloshing over the rim. The other servants stared. They hadn't expected the clumsy border girl to move like that.

The maid recovered and spun on me. "What are you doing lurking out here? You nearly made me spill the whole thing."

A whisper from behind her. Not quiet enough. "That's the one who got thrown out of the banquet. Ruined Miss Aurora's birthday."

"Same womb, same blood, but look at the difference." Another voice, dripping with pity. "Aurora was raised properly. This one can't even hold a fork right. She's still just a wild child from the border."

In my first life, these exact whispers had kept me awake at night. I'd practiced Aurora's posture in the mirror until my ankles ached. Memorized which fork went with which course. Studied the way she lowered her eyes when Father spoke, the way she tilted her head to show she was listening, the way she folded her hands in her lap as if obedience were something elegant.

None of it worked. The harder I tried, the wider the gap grew, and the more they mocked me for trying.

Even the servants looked through me.

The maid with the soup turned to leave, muttering under her breath.

I caught her wrist.

She spun around, mouth already open.

"You knocked into me." I kept my voice flat. "And you're not going to apologize?"

Her chin lifted, a retort already forming. Then her eyes met mine. Whatever she saw there killed the words mid-breath. "I — I'm sorry, miss."

I let go. She stumbled back two steps, nearly dropping the tureen.

The man who'd been escorting me cleared his throat. "Miss Layla, the Alpha won't approve of you causing problems with the staff."

"Who cares." I didn't turn around. "If the staff can't show basic respect to the Alpha's daughter, they're welcome to go back to the banquet and tell everyone I'm not his daughter. I'm sure the guests would love another scandal tonight."

Silence. Complete silence.

I walked.

They'd put me in a storage room on the east wing's ground floor. Not a guest room. Not even a servant's quarter, just a supply closet someone had cleared out and shoved a cot into.

I'd lived in worse. The house I grew up in on the border had a tin roof that leaked in storms and walls thin enough to hear the rogue wolves howling at night.

But that house was home.

When the servants first brought me here, they'd said they hadn't prepared a proper room yet. Nobody ever mentioned moving me.

This room was a message: you exist because we allow it. I'd accepted that message for three years, slept here, thanked them for it.

The girl who believed that had bled out on a stone floor with a silver knife in her stomach.

I sat on the narrow cot. My phone buzzed. Brenna.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" The volume nearly blew out my speaker. "Eighteen! Legal to drink, legal to fight in sanctioned combat, legal to — wait. Why'd you cancel the payment?"

Something loosened in my chest. Brenna Sterling, the first real friend I ever had, the girl who fought beside me on the border when we were both too young and too stubborn to die. She'd helped me build Night Veil from nothing.

She'd never once looked at me like I needed to be someone else.

"Nothing happened," I said. "They've had enough of my money."

"Layla." Her voice dropped an octave. "You sound wrong. Who did this? Was it Marcus? I swear to the Goddess, if that man laid a hand on—"

"Brenna."

"—I will drive up there and personally rip his—"

"Nobody hurt me."

My throat tightened. I pressed my palm flat against my knee and focused on the pressure. Hearing her voice after everything, the death, the knife, the rebirth, this whole impossible night, cracked something I'd been holding shut since I opened my eyes in that banquet hall.

I couldn't let it crack all the way. Not yet.

"Thank you," I said. It came out quieter than I'd intended. "For everything. I mean that."

Silence. Then: "Okay, what the hell. Are you dying? You never talk like this."

"I'm being sincere."

"That's what's scaring me." A pause. "I'm coming to get you. Tonight. Pack a bag."

"No." I leaned back against the cold wall. "I have other plans. The resources I set aside for the Pack — keep them ready. I found a better use."

"Better than propping up your useless father's operation?"

"I want to approach the Lycan King."

Five seconds of dead silence.

"The — Layla. The Lycan King? Valerius?"

"I know who he is." I kept my voice even. "There's something I need to handle tonight. I'll explain later."

"Layla—"

"Trust me."

Brenna exhaled — long, frustrated, the kind of breath that meant she wanted to argue and knew she'd lose. "Fine. But if I don't hear from you by morning, I'm coming. And I'm bringing everyone."

"I'd expect nothing less."

I hung up and sat in the dark.

The Lycan King's convoy would pass through the valley east of our territory tonight. Around midnight, an ambush would strike his carriage. Arrows from the ridge, a coordinated hit designed to look like a rogue attack.

In my first life, that ambush was the beginning of the end. The arrow carried a curse that even the royal healers couldn't break. I'd stood beside him for three years afterward and watched a man who stopped his convoy to help strangers on roadsides lose himself to something nobody could name.

The Moon Goddess had brought me back to this exact night. Not a day before. Not a day after.

I checked my phone. 10:47 PM.

Just over an hour.

I stood up.

Time to rewrite both our fates.