Chapter 6

I didn’t move.

Even as she stepped into the packhouse like death had never touched her, I stood motionless. My mind couldn't catch up with what my eyes were seeing. Every instinct told me this was real, but everything else rebelled.

Her voice lingered in my mind, reverberating through my thoughts with disturbing clarity.

“Where is my child, Kael?”

That single question unmade me. It wasn’t just the words, it was the weight behind them, the knowledge that I had no answer and the fact that I, an Alpha, her mate, the man meant to protect her, should’ve known. Should’ve done better. But I hadn’t and I failed her.

“She can’t stay here,” Astra said beside me, her voice unsteady but edged with fury.

I didn’t turn toward her. My gaze remained fixed on the direction Eva had walked. The woman who vanished seven years ago had returned, but she was no longer the girl we’d discarded.

“That’s Eva,” I murmured. “She’s changed… but it’s her.”

“She’s a threat,” Astra insisted, clutching my arm tighter now. “You saw her eyes, Kael. That wasn’t human. That was… something else.”

“She wouldn’t have needed to change if we hadn’t let her die,” I said flatly.

Astra hesitated. Her hand dropped. For the first time in a long while, she looked vulnerable…fragile even.

“She should’ve stayed buried,” she muttered.

“No,” I said, voice low. “We should’ve protected her while we had the chance.”

The words landed like a blade, and she slapped me. The sharp sound cracked the air. Guards around us paused with wide eyes, but I didn’t react.

“She’ll unravel everything we’ve built,” Astra hissed.

“Then maybe it deserves to unravel,” I responded. My tone was calm, but absolute.

She looked like I had struck her. “You still love her,” she said, disbelief seeping into her voice. “Even after she cursed me…”

“She never cursed you,” I interrupted. “She warned you. If she meant to destroy you, she wouldn’t have hesitated.”

Astra blinked, her lips parting like she wanted to protest. But there was nothing left to say. We both knew the truth, even if we’d spent years pretending otherwise.

“She shouldn’t be alive,” Astra whispered. “The Moon Goddess doesn’t just resurrect the dead unless…”

“She didn’t die,” I said through clenched teeth. “We believed she did. We assumed. We never looked deeper. That failure is ours.”

Astra’s face went pale. “You love her.”

“I never stopped,” I admitted.

Her expression cracked. The weight of those words broke everything between us, something brittle that had only ever been taped together out of necessity.

“I gave you everything,” she whispered. “And you never once gave me her place.”

“I never could,” I said quietly.

I turned and left her behind.

Every step I took back into the packhouse was weighted with guilt. The walls felt different now, as though they remembered what we did. The air itself carried judgment, thick with a tension that clawed at my skin.

Eva’s scent lingered, smoke tinged with something metallic and wild. It wasn’t comforting, but it was unmistakably hers. She wasn’t just a memory. She had become something ancient and unknowable. A force, not a person.

I passed two omegas in the hallway, both froze the moment they caught her scent.

“Alpha…” one of them whispered, shrinking back.

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.

They didn’t need an explanation. They had seen her too. The way her shadow moved with a grace that didn’t belong to this world. The way her gaze burned through you without blinking. She didn’t need to raise her voice to command fear.

I followed her scent to the west wing, to the door of what used to be her quarters, the Luna’s quarters. It made sense that she’d go there. Once, it would have been hers by right, before fate twisted everything, or I did.

I raised a hand to knock but hesitated.

What could I say?

What did she remember?

What did she want?

She didn’t scream at me. She didn’t cry. She didn’t collapse in rage. She asked one thing:

Where is my child?

The child she had carried when she disappeared. The child I never searched for.

I braced myself against the wall. My fingers dug into my skin. That night, her collapse beneath the willow, the blood…should’ve been enough for me to dig deeper. But I didn’t. I buried her and my guilt, and tried to forget.

Tried.

But I never truly did.

I used to sit by her grave in silence, nursing half-empty bottles and half-formed prayers. Telling her things I didn’t have the courage to say when she was alive. I’d talk to the dirt like she could hear me. Like that could fix anything.

Now she is here. Alive. And judging me with every breath.

Was it better if she didn’t remember everything?

Or worse, if she did?

The weeks after her death had been a blur of nightmares and whiskey. I dreamt of her empty eyes, her silent pleas. I had watched her die. Or thought I did. Turns out, even in that, I was wrong.

She walked these halls now like a ghost with purpose. She saw through everyone. Through me and she didn’t flinch. Not once.

And maybe that was what scared me the most.

Because if she had returned with vengeance in her eyes, if she had come back screaming, I could’ve handled that.

But she hadn’t.

She had returned with silence. A silence so loud it pressed against my skull.

And a question I didn’t have an answer to.

A knock jarred me from my thoughts.

A guard rushed down the hall, breathless.

“Alpha!” he shouted. “You need to come. Immediately.”

I stood straight. “What is it?”

“There’s a child at the gates,” he said. “A boy. Maybe ten or eleven. But… something is off.”

My heart skipped.

“What do you mean?”

“He has your features,” the guard said. “But his eyes… his eyes are hers.”

Everything inside me froze.