Reborn on my Mating Night

The rain was the first thing I noticed. The second was that I couldn’t feel my legs.

I lay on my side in the mud, cheek pressed to wet leaves, trying to remember how I got here. Thinking felt like wading through cold water.

The phone call. That was it.

Your mother’s condition has worsened. You should come now.

I’d run out of the Silver Lake packhouse without a coat, without telling anyone. Not that anyone would have cared. Not after the fight with my husband. Not after Jessi.

Then the road. Headlights. A van door sliding open. Too many hands, and a cloth over my face that burned like fire.

Now this.

Something sharp was buried in my side. I didn’t need to look. Silver burned differently from anything else. It spread slowly, patiently, like ink soaking through paper.

A wolf could have fought it. A wolf could have healed.

But I’d never had one. Twenty-one years old, and the Moon Goddess had never sent her. Wolfless Kira. Useless Kira. The Dark Moon Pack had found so many names for me.

Footsteps squelched closer. Two of them, maybe three. Black masks covered their faces, and they reeked of wolfsbane, thick enough to bury any scent I might have caught.

Someone had planned this carefully.

“Is she done?” one asked.

“Close enough.” A boot rolled me onto my back. Rain hit my eyes. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. Your mother went first. You won’t be alone long.”

No.

The word tore through me, but all that came out was a wet, broken sound.

Mom. Selene. Who’d held my hand through every insult and every closed door, even after the silver poisoning stole her strength. Who’d only ever wanted us to be safe.

They’d killed her too.

The footsteps faded. An engine coughed to life beyond the trees and disappeared.

I lay there in the rain and thought about who wanted us dead.

My stepbrother, Dakota, who had looked at me every day since I moved into his father’s house like I was something rotten he’d stepped in. Who called my mother a traitor in front of the whole pack. Who had grabbed me by the throat three days ago and sworn I’d pay for what happened to Jessi’s baby.

I never touched her. No one believed me.

Or my husband.

Alpha Zion of Silver Lake. The man I’d loved from the moment I met him, who married me only so he could keep walking into Dark Moon territory to look at another man’s wife. Who stood in our bedroom on our mating night and looked at me like something to be endured.

Who handed me a contract instead of a vow.

The cold was creeping into my chest. My heartbeat felt slow and far away.

Then I heard it. Heavy paws crashing through the underbrush.

A massive black wolf burst between the trees.

He shifted mid-stride, and suddenly a man was on his knees in the mud beside me, rain sliding down his bare shoulders.

Zion.

He’d come.

For one stupid, desperate heartbeat, hope flared inside me.

Then I saw his face. His jaw was locked so tight it trembled. His eyes were wild and dark. He reached for me, then stopped, his hand hovering over the blade in my side as if he couldn’t decide whether to touch me.

Was he angry? Disgusted? Relieved?

I couldn’t tell. I’d never once been able to tell what he was thinking.

He bowed his head until his breath brushed my temple. His voice came out rough, barely louder than the rain.

“Maybe this contract was a mistake from the very start.”

Something inside me cracked open.

Even now, bleeding out in the mud, I was a mistake to him.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to ask if he’d done this, if he and Dakota had planned it together, if Jessi had asked them to. But my lips wouldn’t move, and the darkness was rising to swallow me.

If I ever get another life, I thought, I will never love you again.

The last thing I felt was his hand closing around mine.

*****

Light.

Silver and soft, pressing against my closed eyes, filling the emptiness where my body should have been.

Child.

A woman’s voice, ancient and gentle, like moonlight given sound.

You were never meant to end like this. Try again.

*****

I gasped awake.

Air flooded my lungs, warm and sweet. No rain. No mud. No silver burning in my side.

I clutched at my ribs. Smooth fabric. No wound. No blood.

White silk pooled around me, embroidered with tiny silver crescent moons. Lace sleeves covered my arms.

My wedding gown.

I was sitting on the edge of an enormous four-poster bed scattered with rose petals. Candles flickered on every surface. A fire crackled in a stone hearth beneath the Silver Lake crest.

I knew this room. I knew this night.

My hands shook as I grabbed the phone from the nightstand. The screen lit up with a date I’d never forget.

My wedding day.

My mating night.

I pressed a hand over my mouth. My memories were already slipping like water through my fingers. Faces blurred. Whole months went dark. But some things stayed sharp as knives.

The mud. The silver. Your mother went first.

And Zion’s voice in the rain.

Mom was alive. I was alive.

And someone in my life was going to kill us both.

Out in the hallway, footsteps approached. Slow, heavy, unmistakable.

I knew exactly whose they were.

The door handle turned.