CHAPTER 14 : THE WOMEN BEFORE ME

I’d already killed him once. At least, that’s what the message on my bedside table said—my own handwriting, staring at me in the grey dawn every time I tried to look away. I hadn’t slept. The room felt smaller every time my eyes drifted back to those words.

Who was I supposed to trust? The man who’d risked everything for me, or a warning scrawled by my own hand? The worst part was the memory. Not even a real memory—just a flash. Blood on snow. Darius reaching for me. My hands smeared red.

But I didn’t remember killing him. I never had. Still, something inside me reacted to the message—a sick sort of recognition.

I needed answers. I already knew where to start.

The key, hidden away by the archivist right before he died. He’d told me to look beneath my mother’s grave. Maybe the answers had been sitting under my nose all along.

I dressed before the sun was up, the sky still bruised and dark. I fastened my mother’s pendant around my neck, slipped the key into my pocket, and left quietly. I didn’t tell Darius. I couldn’t risk it, not after what I’d seen. That realization hurt more than I cared to admit. I’d started to enjoy his company. He made me feel safe—sometimes even made me forget just how much danger surrounded us. But if that message was right, letting myself trust him could end up destroying everything. Including him.

My mother’s grave rested under a willow at the far edge of the cemetery. I hadn’t been here in months. In my first life, I went there whenever Lucian’s cruelty got to be too much. I’d sit, talk, say things I couldn’t share with anyone else. But ever since my execution, those memories just hurt.

I knelt by the headstone and brushed away fallen leaves.

“I’m sorry I stayed away,” I whispered, voice tight. “I thought I knew you. I thought I understood why you died.” I touched her name, carved deep into the stone. “But now I don’t know anything.”

Branches swayed overhead. For a heartbeat, I could almost hear her telling me not to be afraid.

At the bottom of the stone, nearly hidden under moss, there was a small groove. The key fit. A click sounded. The ground trembled, and part of the earth beside the grave slid aside, opening to a narrow stairwell leading into the dark.

My mother—buried above a secret entrance. How long had it been down there? Who else knew?

I grabbed my lantern, heart hammering, and went down. The air got colder, the smell of wet stone and paper pressing close. At the bottom: a door, old and thick, marked in black. Two words beneath it: BLOOD REMEMBERS.

Key in lock. Pause. The door opened.

And the floor went out from under everything I thought I knew.

The chamber was huge, lined top to bottom with shelves holding leather books, sealed boxes, brittle scrolls. Dust lay thick, except for a stretch near the entrance—someone else had been here recently.

I lifted the lantern. Portraits hung everywhere. All women. Some regal, some plain, all with eyes I recognized. I stepped closer. One had dark hair, pale skin, and a crescent-shaped mark near her wrist. Just like mine.

I checked my own wrist—the crescent birthmark I’d had my whole life. My mother used to call it a family thing. But the woman in the painting—Lady Seraphine Vale, according to the nameplate—had the same mark.

The note below said she’d been promised to a powerful Alpha, accused council members of treason during their ceremony, branded mad, and her mate was found dead before morning.

I stopped cold. Her mate had died. She’d been the one blamed.

I moved on. Next—Lady Amara Vale, the same eyes, the same mark, her story another disaster stirred up by betrayal. Every portrait—different names, decades apart—all the same face, same mark, and every one ending in tragedy.

“No,” I breathed, backing away. Maybe all this was coincidence. Maybe my family had reused names or the mark was nothing. Maybe those stories had grown over time. But the details lined up too neatly—every woman tied to an Alpha, every one caught up in prophecy or political chaos, every story nearly erased. I shoved away the doubt and went searching for anything about my mother.

I found it, wrapped in the blue cloth she used for her most precious things, hidden in a locked drawer. My hands trembled as I opened the journal. Line after line, it listed the women on the walls, and then, one passage marked in black:

The cycle has begun again.

I read:

The daughter bears the mark. The past calls her back. The Alpha stands beside her, unaware that love will become the weapon that destroys him.

Underneath, another line:

If she returns after death, the cycle cannot be broken by killing her enemies alone.

Returns after death. My heart pounded. I flipped pages: a drawing—woman standing over a fallen Alpha, blood on her hands, crescent moon overhead. The woman’s face scratched out. But the wrist? Still marked.

I staggered away, another flash hitting me: snow, blood, Darius falling, my hands shaking.

I pressed my palm over my mouth. “What have I done?”

The words echoed in the cavernous space. I’d spent my second life desperate to avoid execution, convinced that if I uncovered the conspiracy, I’d change everything. But what if my death was only a tiny piece of something ancient? What if the people who condemned me were just acting out a pattern over and over? And what if Darius stood next in line?

I kept reading. Behind the shelves, a passage led to a table strewn with sealed documents. One seal matched the pendant around my neck. Another bore Darius’s family crest. His people had been entangled in this far longer than I’d dreamed.

I broke the seal. Inside—a letter to my mother:

Elena,

The council learned of the prophecy. They fear what the girl may become if she returns. If they discover the Alpha’s bloodline is bound to hers, neither child will be allowed to live.

Destroy the records. Keep the pendant hidden. Never let them bind the two before you know the truth.

If the cycle repeats, the Alpha will die by the hand of the woman he loves.

If she remembers what she’s done, she might not survive the truth.

My hands shook as I set it down. Darius. His family. My mother—she knew. Their lives, all tangled together, but how?

I rummaged deeper, found another old parchment—

SEREN VALE. DARIUS THORNCREST.

My name. His name. Below, lines scratched out, a few fragments left:

When the daughter returns…

…the Alpha shall remember…

…the blood debt shall be paid…

I reached for the nearly ruined sheet under it. Tilted it right. A single sentence surfaced:

The one who remembers must choose between the kingdom and the woman who will destroy him.

Darius remembered my death. He said so himself. Did he know what I was capable of? Was that why he kept so many secrets? I remembered the fear in his eyes when I first showed him my mother’s pendant. He’d looked afraid for me, not himself. I’d mistaken that for concern. Maybe it was recognition.

I stepped away. “No,” I whispered to the empty darkness. I wouldn’t accept it. Prophecies aren’t laws. The past isn’t a curse I can’t escape. No matter what my bloodline had done, this wasn’t going to be my ending. If the cycle wanted Darius dead, I would break it. Even if it meant digging up every secret my family ever buried.

A sound jerked me around—footsteps descending the stairs.

I killed the lantern and pressed into the shadow between shelves. The footsteps stopped at the chamber door. Metal scraped stone. Someone was breaking in.

My heart nearly drowned out everything else. I stuffed the prophecy and letter inside my dress as three figures in black armor burst in, the symbol painted on their chests.

“Find the records,” one barked. “Burn everything with the girl’s name.”

Another headed for the table. A third turned straight toward my hiding place.

I didn’t breathe. Didn’t move. The smallest slip—stone shifting under my boot—gave me away.

“There!”

I ran. A sword slashed the shelf near my head. Books rained down as I dove behind the table, forcing myself through the narrow passage. Someone grabbed my cloak. I wriggled free, left the cloth behind, and ran for the stairs, clutching the prophecy.

Behind me: the sounds of wood splitting, fire crackling. They were burning everything.

I climbed, lungs on fire, until I burst back into the evening at my mother’s grave. Distant horns sounded. I barely managed a breath before someone moved out from the shadow of the willow.

Darius.

He saw my torn clothes, the blood on my hands, and his face changed.

“Seren? What happened?”

I flinched. He noticed. His face tightened, but he didn’t step closer.

“You’re hurt.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re shaking.”

“I said I’m fine!” The words came out too sharp.

He stopped. Didn’t speak for a long moment. His eyes slid to the paper pressed to my chest.

“What did you find down there?”

I hesitated. I wanted to spill everything—to beg him for answers, to ask how our names had ended up together in an ancient prophecy. But I remembered the warning:

Do not trust Darius when the blood moon rises.

You have already killed him once.

I couldn’t tell him yet.

“Records about my family,” I said, keeping my voice flat.

His gaze searched mine. “Just your family?”

I didn’t answer. He stepped closer, his voice low.

“Seren, whatever you read—some prophecies aren’t warnings. They’re instructions. Ways to make them happen.”

A chill ran through me. “How do you know that?”

He looked away, toward my mother’s grave. “Because my family helped write one.”

Before I could press him, an arrow slammed into the tree beside us. Darius pulled me behind him, drew his weapon. Another arrow hit the ground. Then a third. Whoever they were, they’d followed me from the crypt.

While Darius called for the guards, I unfolded the ragged remains of the prophecy. A last page, torn but still readable.

I stared at the words, read them again and again:

The woman who returns shall become the death of the Alpha she loves.

I looked at Darius, standing between me and danger. He’d saved me from execution. He’d risked everything to keep me alive.

And one day, if the prophecy was right, I was destined to kill him.

The most terrifying part—somewhere deep down, beneath the doubt and the fear, a single question had started to form.

What if I already had?