Chapter 5

The report came in at dawn.

I was in the war chamber, staring down at territory maps when Mateo burst in, breathless and wide eyed with something I hadn’t seen in a long time…fear.

“There’s someone at the border,” he said.

I didn’t even look up. “Then deal with it.”

“She looks like her,” he whispered.

I paused. “Who?”

“Eva.”

My throat closed for a second.

Then I laughed.

It was dry, sharp and humorless.

“You stir me at dawn to tell me ghosts are strolling across pack borders now?” I said, still not looking up. “Get some sleep, Mateo.”

“She crossed the border near the willow,” he added quietly.

I stopped breathing and everything inside me stilled.

The willow.

I hadn’t gone near that place in years, I couldn’t.

Mateo stood there, waiting silently. My heartbeat felt like thunder in my chest.

“It’s not her,” I said, finally. “Eva died.”

“No body was ever recovered,” he said.

My fist slammed into the table, cracking the corner of the map tile. “She died.”

Seven years.

Seven years since I made the biggest mistake of my life.

Since I threw her away.

Since I watched her collapse beneath that cursed tree and didn’t move, didn’t help or stop them.

My wolf had never forgiven me.

I told myself I’d done what needed to be done. That the bond was wrong, that I had no choice.

But I hadn’t slept in peace since. I walked out of the war chamber.

Down the corridor. Past the guards who stepped back without question. Past the painting of my father, past the throne room where Astra now sat in fake grace.

The scent hit me before I reached the gates.

Faint, but familiar.

Like frost and jasmine.

But… not exactly the same.

It was sharper, older and colder.

I stepped into the courtyard and there she was.

Standing in the middle of the gravel path, barefoot, her clothes worn, and her hair longer than I remembered, tangled and dark.

Eva.

She didn’t move or speak.

She just stood there with her arms at her sides, like she belonged nowhere and everywhere all at once.

I stopped a few paces away. She looked up and everything inside me shattered.

Those weren’t the same eyes.

Gone was the softness. The timid flicker. The girl who looked down and flinched at every sound.

These eyes were steel.

“Eva?” I breathed.

She tilted her head slightly.

“I was told this was the Storm Pack,” she said quietly.

“It… is,” I whispered. “You…”

“I came for one reason.”

My voice caught. “Eva, I thought you…”

“Where is my child?”

Silence.

I blinked.

“I…what?”

Her gaze didn’t flinch. “Where is my child, Kael?”

“I didn’t know…” I stammered. “You never told me…”

Her jaw clenched. “I didn’t get the chance.”

The air grew colder.

Before I could speak again, a furious voice cut across the silence.

“Get away from her!”

Astra.

Storming from the corridor, her eyes blazing with fear tucked underneath fury, hands clenched.

“She’s lying. She’s not real. This is a trick, Kael, some enemy illusion. She died. We all know it.”

Eva didn’t even blink. She turned to Astra.

Slow. Calm.

Dead calm.

“You know exactly what happened the night I died.”

Astra stopped.

Her face went pale and then…

She started choking.

Her hands flew to her throat, gasping, eyes wide, and body trembling as her knees hit the stone.

Eva didn’t even lift a finger.

But her eyes… her eyes were glowing and her voice was ice but deadlier when she whispered:

“This is only the beginning.”

Astra’s mouth opened and closed like she was trying to speak, to scream, but no sound came out. The guards moved forward, frozen between getting killed and protecting the Luna. No one moved.

Not even me.

Because I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.

The power radiating off Eva was unlike anything I’d ever felt. Not just magic. It was something wilder.

I remembered the stories of wolves reborn under blood moons, of ancient lines awakening.

Was that what she was now?

She turned her head slowly toward me, and her eyes, those same eyes I used to know, were expressionless..

“Tell me, Kael,” she said softly. “Did you mourn me?”

I opened my mouth, but no sound came. What could I say?

Every night since she vanished, I had drowned in regret. Every ceremony, every battle, every council meeting, I saw her shadow behind every decision.

But I had no right to mourn her.

“I…”

She took a step closer, and the guards actually took a step back.

“I mourned you,” she said. “While bleeding into the dirt you let them throw me in.”

That hit harder than any strike to the chest.

“I didn’t know,” I whispered. “I swear to the Goddess, Eva…”

“You didn’t want to know,” she corrected, voice flat. “That’s worse.”

Astra wheezed beside us, still on the floor, her face purple and veins bulging.

Eva flicked her wrist, and Astra dropped, gasping air into her lungs. But she didn’t speak. Oh she didn’t dare.

Eva’s eyes turned back to me.

“Seven years,” she said. “And you never once came looking for the truth.”

“I thought you were dead.”

“Because it was easier to believe that?”

I clenched my fists. “What do you want from me?”

Her stare was unwavering. “Everything kael…everything”

“I didn’t know…”

“You didn’t ask.” Her voice cracked for the first time. “You let Astra speak for me, you threw me away.”

“I made a mistake.”

“You made a choice.”

I swallowed hard. “If I could go back…”

“Oh but you can’t.”

She took a breath, then looked at Astra.

“She feared me even when I was powerless. Now?”

Astra shrank back. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“No,” Eva agreed. “I was supposed to die.”

She turned her attention to me again. “But I didn’t and now I’m here to finish what you all started.”

Kael stepped forward, voice rough. “Eva…”

“No,” she said, voice suddenly soft again. “Don’t speak to me like you have the right, not after that night”

“I never stopped thinking about you.”

“Then you should’ve thought harder before choosing her.”

She moved toward the gates.

“Where are you going?” I asked, something desperate clawing in my chest.

“To find what’s mine.”

She paused at the edge of the courtyard, moonlight catching in her hair like a crown.

Then she turned back, her gaze meeting mine one last time.

“You lost me once, Kael.”

Her voice was calm and certain.

“But you won’t survive losing me again.”