Chapter 4 – Refusing to Fall Again

I carried the linens inside without looking back again.

By the time I’d finished laying them out in the guest rooms, my cheek had stopped throbbing and settled into a dull heat. The rest of my body still ached from yesterday’s work and from the phantom pain of a death that technically hadn’t happened yet.

It didn’t matter. In Bloodthorn, work didn’t stop because your soul was tired.

“Aria!”

Madam Hest, the head of servants, stuck her head out of the laundry room, grey hair coming loose from her bun. Her lip curled when she saw me.

“Training grounds,” she barked. “Before the warriors start snapping at us. Towels, water, move.”

“Yes, Madam,” I said.

She thrust a stack of rough towels into my arms and jerked her head at the back door. A wooden yoke leaned against the wall beside two heavy water buckets.

I slid my arms through the yoke and hefted it onto my shoulders, muscles complaining. The weight bit down across my collarbones, the buckets sloshing cold against my calves as I walked.

The training grounds were already buzzing when I stepped outside.

Warriors ran drills in tight formation, barked orders flying across the dirt. Wooden blades cracked against each other. The smell of sweat and churned earth hit me first, followed by the sharper tang of male wolves testing their strength against each other for no purpose except dominance and habit.

In my last life, this had been one of my favorite views.

I’d watched Damon here in stolen moments, heart fluttering, convincing myself that one day he’d glance my way and see not a servant, not an omega, but a mate.

This time, my heart didn’t flutter. It lodged in my throat for a different reason.

I wove my way to the edge of the field, keeping my head down. A few warriors looked up as I approached the water; most didn’t. To them, I was furniture that moved.

“Set the buckets there,” Hest’s assistant snapped, pointing at a spot near the equipment rack. “And don’t get under anyone’s feet. The last thing we need is you tripping an alpha.”

Last life, I would have nodded, mumbled an apology even though I’d done nothing wrong. This time, I just set the buckets down carefully and stepped back, folding my hands together to keep from rubbing at my sore shoulder.

The warriors finished a drill. Damon and his Beta sparred at the center of the field, wooden swords singing in the air. Dust rose around them, golden in the late light.

“Water!” someone called.

I moved forward with a towel and a dipped cup, my steps measured, eyes on the cup so I wouldn’t be tempted to look where I shouldn’t.

“Aria.” Damon’s voice stopped me halfway out.

Old instinct told me to shiver, to blush, to trip over my own tongue.

A new instinct told me to keep my face blank.

I lifted my gaze to him only when I was close enough to offer the towel.

“Alpha Damon,” I said, dipping my head just enough to be respectful without spilling into servility. “Water. Towel.”

His hair was damp with sweat, dark strands sticking to his forehead. He’d grown since the version of him outside my window—his shoulders broader, his stance more solid. Not yet, the cold, polished man who’d watched me die from a balcony but closer.

For a heartbeat, he just looked at me, towel unmoving between us, as if he were trying to place what was wrong with this picture.

Then he took it, fingers brushing mine for the briefest second.

In my first life, that touch would have sent my heart into fireworks.

This time, I barely felt it through the numbness I’d wrapped around myself.

“You’re quiet today,” he said, wiping his face. “Mouse steals your tongue?”

The old pet name scraped across my nerves. I kept my voice light, but even.

“I was told to deliver this, not disturb your training, Alpha,” I said. “You have better things to focus on than servants’ chatter.”

His brows lifted just a fraction.

No stammer. No wide eyes. No desperate half‑smile.

Something in his expression flickered, then shuttered.

“I see,” he said, tone caught somewhere between amused and irritated.

His Beta, a broad‑shouldered man with a smug mouth, snorted.

“Careful, Damon,” he drawled. “Your little omega might start thinking she’s too good to talk to us.”

A few nearby warriors chuckled.

“Or she’s just finally learned her place,” another added under his breath.

Heat pricked my ears, but I didn’t flush the way I once would have. I dropped my gaze to a neutral point on Damon’s shoulder.

“My place is wherever I’m ordered to be,” I said, soft but steady. “Right now, that’s delivering water. I’ll get out of your way.”

I turned to go.

“Hey.”

A hand caught the back of my skirt, yanking me up short.

The Beta had closed the distance without my noticing. His fingers twisted in the fabric, jerking me closer, invading the thin bubble of space I had left.

“Don’t walk off when I’m talking,” he said, voice lowering. His breath was hot with training exertion and something sourer. “Or did you forget who you serve, little omega?”

The instinct to flinch rose up hard. I swallowed it.

His grip on my skirt tightened. The fabric bit into my hips.

Before I could decide what this life would do, another hand snapped around his wrist.

“Enough,” Damon said.

The word was quiet, but the air around us shifted.

The Beta pulled back slightly, half in surprise, half in challenge.

“She’s just a servant,” he said. “We’re just having a little fun. You’re the one who calls her your mouse.”

Damon's gold eyes narrowed, and a sudden, hot wave of irritation that felt almost possessive flashed across his scent. His own wolf gave a sharp, uninvited tug of protectiveness in his chest, surprising him. He hated that feeling, the way this weak omega could still affect him.

“She’s a Bloodthorn servant,” he said, emphasizing hard on the pack name. “Not your toy. You want to break something, use the dummies.”

The Beta’s mouth worked, clearly not used to being checked like this in front of an omega.

Reluctantly, he let go of my skirt.

My heart hammered. I saw the flash in Damon’s eyes—the confusion, the abrupt correction of his Beta—and understood it was a genuine change from the last life.

But a change now wouldn't save me later.

​"He still rejects someone like me in the end," I reminded myself, cutting off the nascent hope.

“Get back to work,” Damon snapped at his Beta, then looked at me again.

“Try not to wander underfoot, Aria,” he said, voice cooler. “Some people don’t watch where they’re swinging.”

“Understood, Alpha,” I murmured.

I stepped back, putting the weight of the water buckets between us like a shield. The warriors went back to their drills, the moment folding into the noise of the yard.

I lingered at the sidelines, refilling cups, handing out towels, and doing the work expected of me.

My wolf keened quietly, a little pull toward him even as he laughed with his Beta again, a defensive, angry sound I barely recognized in her.

The curse tightened the chain around her throat, and she quieted, sulking.

When the session finally ended, the warriors drifted away in groups, joking, slapping each other on the back, heading toward the showers, or the pack house.

The yard emptied until only the dummies, the scattered splinters, and my own tired body remained.

Madam Hest’s assistant shouted at me from the doorway of the main house.

“Buckets back to the well,” she ordered. “And don’t spill half the water before you get there this time.”

“Yes,” I said, biting back every other reply.

I lifted the yoke again, this time with the buckets mostly empty but still heavy enough to bite into my shoulders. The wood dug in as I trudged toward the rear of the grounds, where the old well waited like a dark eye.

The path was rutted, stones sticking up through the dirt. My arms trembled. My fingers ached. The ache didn’t scare me like it once would have. Pain meant I was still alive to feel it.

Halfway there, a splinter from the rough yoke dug into my palm.

“Damn it,” I hissed as pain lanced through my hand.

The buckets swayed dangerously. I set the yoke down just long enough to shift my grip and inspect my palm.

A thin, angry red line cut across the skin, and bright blood welled up in a bead.

For a second, it was nothing.

Then the blood glowed.

Silver‑blue light flared from that one bright drop, a tiny sun on my skin. It spread, tracing an outline beneath the surface like ink soaking into parchment.

A symbol emerged on my palm, pale and luminous:

Two crescents, back to back, almost touching but not quite. A twin moon.

My breath hitched.

The world sharpened around me in a dizzy rush. Every blade of grass at the path’s edge stood out in perfect detail. I could hear distant voices from the kitchens, every word clear. Smells slammed into me: damp stone at the well, the faint iron of my blood, the city beyond the pack lands.

My muscles felt suddenly full, strong, like I could heft the buckets and run laps around the yard without breaking a sweat.

Home, something in me sighed, but it wasn’t about this yard. It was about that symbol. That mark.

Then, just as fast, an invisible hand clamped down on my wrist.

The cursed pressure I’d felt earlier slammed into the new mark, crushing it.

The light flickered, stuttered, and went out. The symbol faded, leaving only the thin cut and a faint tingling sensation behind.

The world dulled. The sound retreated. My limbs felt heavy again, the buckets suddenly too much.

I staggered.

“What was that?” I whispered, staring at my now ordinary‑looking palm.

For a heartbeat, I swore I heard a voice.

Not mine. Not my wolf’s.

A low male voice, distant and confused but threaded with something like relief.

There you are…

The words brushed the inside of my skull like a feather against skin.

I jerked, nearly dropping the yoke.

“Who’s there?” I snapped aloud before I could stop myself, heart pounding, eyes scanning the empty yard.

No one.

The warriors were gone. The windows of the house were dark against the late day. Only a few stray leaves chased each other across the dirt in a small, cold breeze.

My mark—if that’s what it was—remained invisible, skin tingling under the smear of my own blood.

“I’m losing my mind,” I muttered. “That’s all. Dying will do that to a girl.”

Still, I rubbed my sleeve down over my palm as if someone might see through the skin.

Hand stinging and muscles trembling, I wrestled the yoke back onto my shoulders and carried the buckets the rest of the way to the well.

***

By the time night fell, my body hummed with exhaustion. Chores blurred one into the next: scrubbing, sweeping, chopping, carrying. The little coin hidden in my mattress and the borrowed Debt Office name sat like hot coals in the back of my mind.

In the cramped servants’ room, long after lights‑out, I sat on my mattress with my knees pulled up, a stub of candle throwing weak light over the blanket.

I turned my hand over in the flickering glow.

For a long time, nothing happened.

Just my hand. It's just a faint pink line where the splinter had cut me, almost healed already.

“Come on,” I whispered, feeling foolish. “I know you’re there.”

As if responding to the words, the air seemed to thicken around my palm. Heat bloomed low in my chest, spreading down my arm in a prickling wave.

The thin scar shivered with pale light.

The twin‑crescent symbol flickered back into visibility, faint but undeniable, silver‑blue lines etched just beneath the surface of my skin. Not ink. Not bruising.

Magic.

The mark pulsed once, weakly. Not a flare this time—just a soft, questioning throb.

“What are you?” I breathed.

The candle flame guttered as if in answer, casting shadows against the walls.

Somewhere far away—far beyond Bloodthorn, beyond this territory, beyond the life I’d already lived and lost—two men with eyes like mine jolted upright in whatever dark they were in.

One pressed a hand to his chest, to the exact place his own mark had just burned hot, frowning.

The other laughed under his breath, unsettled and intrigued all at once.

“There you are,” one of them murmured, though neither of them knew who she was yet.

Back in my narrow bed, I closed my fingers over the glowing crescents until the light vanished.

I didn’t know if what I’d felt was real or if my freshly reused life had just finally cracked my mind.

But I knew this:

Last time, I had been Lot Twenty-Seven. A number, a womb, a debt to be sold off.

This time, I had a mark. A curse. A name that didn’t belong to Bloodthorn.

And I was going to find out exactly what that meant—even if it killed me again.