Chapter 3 – Waking in the Past

Not free.

Not strong.

Awake.

The words echoed inside me like a drumbeat as I sat on the thin mattress, heart racing, damp sheets twisted around my legs.

I forced myself to breathe. In. Out. Count the breaths. Count anything.

One: cracked ceiling. Two: water stains shaped like a crooked wolf. Three: the rusted nail holding the shard of the mirror in place. Four: the faint scrape of wooden dummies outside as someone reset the training yard.

This was real.

Or the Moon Goddess had crafted the most vicious dream of my life.

“Think,” I whispered to myself.

My voice still sounded young. Too young.

I slid off the bed. My legs wobbled as I stood, the old ache from yesterday’s chores humming in my calves. My toes pressed against the cold stone floor, the same uneven flagstones I used to curse when I stubbed them in the dark.

In the yard, Damon swung again, wooden swords slicing the air. He barked a short laugh at something his sparring partner said, the sound snatched away by the late‑day breeze.

My stomach turned.

The auction hall smelled of fear and power and my own burning magic. This room smelled of stale air, dust, the faint tang of lye from laundry soap. Ordinary. Familiar.

It shouldn’t exist anymore.

It shouldn’t exist because I had died.

Memory surged up like a flood.

Iron collar biting into raw skin.

Auctioneer’s voice: “Lot Twenty-Seven.”

Damon in the balcony, watching.

The four men on the opposite side: Alden, Theron, Jax, Rowan. “Our sister.”

Collar snapping open.

Light.

Power.

The dart.

Cold.

The feeling of the curse slamming shut around my soul.

Falling.

Nothing.

My knees hit the floor with a dull smack. For a second, I thought I’d fallen again on that stage.

“Get up,” I hissed at myself, fingers digging into the rough blanket.

I pushed back to sitting, then to my feet, muscles shaking but working. My chest ached—not from a wound, but from the ghost of one. I pressed my palm against the spot where the dart had hit.

Smooth skin. No scar. No raised tissue. But under my hand, deep inside, something flinched.

A spark of heat flickered beneath my sternum as if some hidden coal glowed for a heartbeat.

Hope tried to flare with it.

Then, the coal was stepped on.

A crushing pressure snapped down around that warmth, smothering it. It didn’t hurt like the dart had hurt. It was worse. Like the moment at the auction all over again, the feeling of a door being forced shut.

Invisible iron cinched around whatever had stirred inside my chest. My wolf, brave for once, tried to lunge.

She hit the restraints with a yelp and flattened, belly‑low, whimpering.

“My wolf tried to rise,” I breathed. “And the curse yanked her back like a chain on a collar.”

So. The collar was gone. The auction was… undone." But the curse—the thing that had smothered my shift all my life - and then killed me on that stage—was still there, coiled tight.

I stared at my reflection again. The girl in the mirror stared back, wide‑eyed.

“Three years,” I whispered. “It has to be three years.”

My mind flicked through the timeline like flipping pages in a ledger.

The rejection.

The contract.

The night they drugged me.

The illegal transport.

The auction.

I counted backward, matching bruises and scars and the way my face looked here, rounder, less hollow. The last bruise Mother had given me before the contract signing still bloomed along my jaw.

“Yes,” I murmured, throat tight. “I’m before the contract. Before the Debt Office man. Before they decide which rich Alpha gets my womb.”

Terror and exhilaration crashed together in a way that made my hands shake.

I had died. I was sure of it. No fever dream could invent the way silver poison felt pouring through your veins or the weightless drop into black afterward. No nightmare could conjure the specific, shattered way Alden had shouted my name.

Which meant this wasn’t a dream.

The Moon Goddess—or the curse, or something older and crueler—had thrown me back in time.

Last time, I stumbled blind down the road they chose for me. This time, I could see every step of it laid out ahead: Damon’s rejection, my parents’ signatures, the sedative swirling in my cup, the iron collar biting my neck, the auction lights, the brothers’ faces, the dart.

A cold, trembling laugh scraped out of me.

“The Moon Goddess didn’t bring me back so I could just die slower,” I muttered. “If She brought me back at all.”

My stomach cramped, reminding me I hadn’t eaten since… since a different life. I wrapped my arms around myself.

Footsteps pounded in the hallway outside.

I didn’t have time to decide what rebirth meant. I barely had time to brace before the door to the servants’ room slammed open hard enough to make the cracked mirror rattle.

“Aria!” Mother’s voice sliced into the quiet.

She filled the doorway like a storm cloud, an apron already stained from the kitchen, hair yanked back so tight it flattened the lines of her face. Her eyes darted around the room and landed on me, taking in my bare feet, my still‑rumpled blanket.

“You useless, wolfless rat,” she snapped. “Lying in bed when there are plates to scrub and floors to mop? We should’ve left you in the gutter where we found you.”

Her hand flew faster than my thoughts.

The slap cracked across my cheek, whipping my head to the side. Bright white flared in my vision, then the familiar burn settled under my skin.

In my first life, I would have gone numb. Let the words sink in. Let them name me.

This time, something else stirred.

My wolf tried to snarl.

The sound didn’t make it out of my throat. It didn’t even make it past my ribs. But I felt her, for the first time in years, rise—not in fear, but in defense.

Then, the curse yanked her back.

It was like a leash snapping tight around her neck. She choked and flattened in my chest, paws scrambling uselessly on stone.

My jaw stayed clenched, not from submission, but from the effort of not staggering. My cheek burned where she’d hit me, but the pain wasn’t the important part anymore.

Last time, I’d believed her. Every name she’d ever called me. Last time, I’d taken every blow as proof she was right.

This time, every insult landed like a signpost pointing at a truth I’d been too desperate to see before.

They’re not my family.

“You hear me?” Mother shoved my shoulder, sending me stumbling back so my calves hit the bedframe. “Stop standing there like a dead fish. Get to the kitchen. We have guests in the Alpha’s hall tonight, and I won’t have you embarrassing us.”

Us.

My tongue tasted like iron. I forced it to move.

“Yes, Mother,” I said, the old habit of the word scraping my throat raw.

She scoffed, eyeing me like something she’d scrape off her shoe.

“You’re lucky we kept you at all,” she muttered. “Anyone else would’ve tossed a wolfless brat like you back on the street. Be grateful we’re giving you a roof, girl.”

Grateful.

I nodded once. My cheek throbbed where her hand had landed.

She turned and swept out, the door banging shut behind her.

For a moment, the room was a held breath.

My wolf whimpered inside my chest, testing the invisible chains again with a small, pained push. The curse squeezed. She tucked her tail, but she didn’t disappear.

Small progress.

Slowly, I straightened my shoulders.

Last time, I would have crumpled on the bed, crying until my eyes burned and the world blurred. This time, I moved.

I smoothed the blanket in one quick motion, wiped my face with the heel of my hand, and then bent to the rickety little crate I used as a table.

On it sat a chipped mug, a half‑burnt candle, and the thin leather pouch where I was supposed to keep my few coins between pay days.

Mother and Father took most of my wages, of course. “For your upkeep,” they’d said. “Food doesn’t buy itself. Clothing doesn’t mend itself.”

I loosened the pouch’s thong and tipped it nearly upsidedown.

Two coins tumbled into my palm. One of them was a dull copper I recognized as the one I’d been allowed to keep last week after working double shifts.

The other had bite marks on the edge. My bite marks.

“Missed one,” I murmured.

Quietly, I slipped the new coin into a hidden seam I’d once cut into the mattress. My fingers brushed against the memory of rough cloth and sharper hunger from my old life.

Last time, I’d never had the courage to hide more than a crumb of bread. This time, I was going to hide everything I could—coins, information, and chances.

After tucking the coin away, I pulled the pouch’s drawstring tight again, leaving the lone copper to clink inside. To anyone checking, it would look untouched.

At the door, my hand lingered on the rough wood.

I could go straight to the kitchen. I could move like a good little servant, hit the same marks in the same play, and say the same lines.

Or I could start writing a new script.

I cracked the door and slipped into the narrow hall, feet making almost no sound on the worn planks. Voices floated up from below—the clatter of pots, Mother’s barked orders, the distant hum of pack wolves moving through their day.

On the landing, a stack of folded linens sat by the wall, ready to be carried to the Alpha’s house. Beside them, someone had left a ledger half‑tucked under a cloth.

Debt Office. The seal on the front page made my skin prickle.

Last time, I’d seen that seal only on the contract that sold my body.

This time, I reached for it.

I slid the ledger out just enough to flip the cover with my fingertips. Columns of names and numbers marched down the page.

Blackthorn Pack – outstanding.

Various merchants – outstanding.

Private loans – outstanding.

My eyes skimmed fast, my heart pounding too loudly in my ears. There—a familiar name.

My “father.”

Beside it: a sum I remembered hearing shouted in our cramped kitchen. And a smaller column with notes about repayment.

They’d signed me away to cover this. To wipe these lines clean.

My skin buzzed. I didn’t have time to read everything. Footsteps were coming up the stairs.

Quickly, I traced one of the creditor names with my finger, memorizing the shape of the letters. Then, while my hand was still on the page, something strange happened.

The ink beneath my fingertip warmed.

For a split second, the letters blurred and rearranged themselves, shifting into other words only I could see:

SACRIFICIAL VESSEL.

BLOODTHORN.

MOONCREST.

My pulse spiked. I blinked.

The letters snapped back into their original shape. With a jolt, I snatched my hand away and shoved the ledger back under the linens just as a maid trudged up the stairs, arms full of firewood.

She gave me a distracted nod and kept going.

My mark itched under my skin. The same spot where the dart had struck me in the last life pulsed, then went still.

“The collar’s gone,” I murmured, fingers brushing absently at my chest. “But the curse isn’t.”

Last time, I’d stumbled along in the dark, thinking I was just a weak omega the Goddess had forgotten.

Now, I know better.

I straightened and took the linens, tucking the copied name into a corner of my mind as carefully as I’d hidden the coin.

By the time I stepped out into the yard, I had the beginning of a plan.

It was small. Stupidly small, compared to everything I needed to change. But a single crack in a dam was still a start.

***

The path from the servants’ quarters to the main house cut right along the edge of the training yard. Damon and the other warriors had churned the dirt into hard, uneven ground littered with scuff marks and broken splinters from dummies.

I kept my eyes on the bundle of linens in my arms, but I still felt the moment his attention slid toward me. It was a physical thing, like the way you feel a storm coming in your bones.

“Aria!” someone called a guard on the far side of the yard. “Move faster, girl, or Madam will have your hide.”

I quickened my pace, shoulders hunching automatically.

In my last life, I would have stolen a glance at Damon, heart hammering with hope he might look at me. A stupid, desperate part of me had clung to the idea that the mate‑bond meant something, that it could trump rank and cruelty.

Now, my heart is hammered for a different reason.

I reached the safety of the shadow under the main house’s overhang and let myself look back once.

Damon stood with his back to me, talking to his beta, a wooden sword resting on his shoulder. Sweat gleamed along the back of his neck. His laugh drifted over, easy and unburdened.

My wolf stirred, a weak, useless pull toward him. The curse slammed the sensation flat.

Last time, I fell in love with that boy, I thought, fingers tightening on the linens. This time, I’ll make sure I never need him.

I carried the linens inside without looking back again.