0006

Elsa’s POV

The moment she stepped through that doorway, I knew.

Didn’t need her name, didn’t need her voice, my body just knew. Every instinct screamed danger. My wolf, who’d been sleeping under the weight of normalcy, school runs, office coffee, human routine, suddenly clawed her way up, growling.

And then the scent hit me. Pine. Earth. Buried beneath the sour perfume of the city. Blackwood.

My pen slipped from my fingers. The papers in front of me blurred, and my stomach just… dropped. It couldn’t be.

But it was.

As she came closer, weaving between the desks, the air around me tightened. Those eyes. That posture. The way she moved like she was still waiting for someone to strike her.

Miriam.

My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I hid them under the desk, pretending I was fine, pretending I was Elsa Marin, paralegal, not the ghost of a Luna who ran in the night with her children. Three years. Three whole years of silence, and now my past had just walked into my office.

“Elsa?” Marjorie’s voice broke through. Always too observant. I could feel her watching, piecing things together.

“It’s… fine,” I said. “She’s an old friend.”

I lied. What was I supposed to say? She’s from the pack I ran away from. The one whose Alpha would burn the world to find me.

Marjorie didn’t buy it, not fully, but she left, thank goodness, mumbling something about the file room.

Then it was just us. Me and Miriam.

The silence was awful. Thick. Heavy.

“Luna,” she whispered.

That word. It froze me.

“Don’t,” I said, too fast, standing so my voice would stop trembling. “That’s not my name anymore.”

“Is it not?” she asked, stepping closer.

She looked… broken. Hollow cheeks, dark eyes sunken from sleeplessness. The girl who used to smile when she poured my tea was gone. What was left was sharp, desperate. Dangerous.

“What are you doing here, Miriam? How did you find me?”

“I had to,” she said, voice cracking. Tears followed right after. “Please, Elsa. I have no one else to turn to.”

And despite everything, the panic, the dread, I felt something twist inside me. I remembered her. She’d been kind, back when kindness was a rare thing. She’d defended me when the others whispered I was barren. She held my hand when I cried alone.

“Sit,” I said finally. “Tell me what happened.”

She collapsed into the chair. “After you left… everything fell apart. Riguel lost it. He tore through the pack like a storm, accusing everyone. Said I helped you escape.”

Guilt stabbed through me. I hadn’t thought, hadn’t dared think, about who might’ve paid the price for my freedom.

“He banished me,” she said quietly. “No pack, no money, nothing. Do you know what it’s like for an omega out here alone?”

I did. Too well. Not as an omega, but as a wolf pretending to be human. Pretending not to exist.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I never meant for that.”

“I know,” she said, and for a second, I thought maybe, maybe this wasn’t so bad. Until she looked up, and I saw something flicker in her eyes. “That’s why I came to find you. I thought maybe you could help me. Just until I get back on my feet.”

My heart sank. “Miriam…”

“I need money,” she said. “Somewhere to stay. You’re working now. You have a job, a home. You can help me.”

Her voice was pleading, but underneath it, something else. A tremor. A threat she didn’t need to say out loud.

“I want to help,” I managed. “But I have three kids. Rent and daycare eats a large—”

“Three boys,” she said softly. Then her tone changed. “Luca, Mateo, and Noah. They go to Little Sprouts on Fifth. You pick them up every day at 5:30.”

Everything inside me went still.

“How—”

“I’ve been watching,” she said. Just like that. Like it was normal. “For two months. I know where you live. Where you work. I know who you are now, Elsa Marin.” She leaned in. “I know everything.”

My wolf snarled. Every nerve in my body screamed threat.

“I’d never hurt you,” Miriam said quickly. “You were always kind to me. But I’m desperate. You understand that, right?”

And I did. Moon goddess help me, I did. Desperation makes monsters of all of us.

“Give me time,” I said, barely hearing my own voice. “A week. I’ll figure something out.”

“A week?” She laughed, a short, broken sound. “I don’t have a week. My car’s gone. I slept in a park last night.”

“Then three days,” I said. “Please.”

She stared at me for a long time. Then nodded. “Three days. That’s all.” She stood, brushing invisible dust off her jeans. “I know you’re not the Luna anymore. But others haven’t forgotten. And some of them are still looking.”

The words landed like a punch.

At the door, she turned once more. For a heartbeat, I saw her, the real Miriam. The girl who’d once been my friend. “I really am sorry, Elsa. You didn’t deserve what he did to you.”

Then she was gone.

Just gone.

And the scent of Blackwood lingered like smoke in my lungs.

I sat there, frozen, watching the city swallow her up through the window. My whole world, all the walls I’d built, the routines, the names, the lies, they all started to crack.

When Marjorie came back, I was still sitting there.

“Everything okay?” she asked gently.

“Fine,” I said, too quickly. “Just an old friend.”

But as I looked down at the case files, the words swam uselessly across the page.

Because the truth was clear as blood:

My past had found me.

And it wasn’t done with me yet.