Death's Embr

The silver burns more painfully than I expected death to feel. They gripped the chains tightly around my wrists, my ankles, my throat. Each link searing into my skin like liquid fire, eating through flesh until I can smell my own burning. I should be screaming. I think I was, moments ago. Now there's only the wind rushing past my ears as I fall, and the strange clarity that comes when you know these are your final seconds.

Widow's Peak earned its name for a reason. Seventy-three widows, the pack history says. Seventy-three women who threw themselves from this cliff rather than live without their mates.

I'm about to be seventy-four.

Except I didn't jump.

The frozen river rushes up to meet me, black and merciless in the moonlight. My wolf howls inside my mind, a sound of pure anguish that no one else will ever hear. She's dying with me. We're dying together, betrayed by the one person who was supposed to protect us above all others.

Damien.

His name tastes like poison on my tongue. Or maybe that's the actual poison they forced down my throat an hour ago, making sure I'd be too weak to shift, too weak to fight, too weak to do anything but feel every agonizing second of this.

I hit the water.

The cold is a knife, a thousand knives, stabbing through the burns the silver left behind. My lungs seize. The chains pull me down, down, down into the black. I open my mouth to scream and water rushes in, freezing and absolute.

This morning, I was a Luna.

The thought drifts through my dying mind, surreal and distant. This morning, I woke up in silk sheets beside my mate. This morning, I planned a menu for the pack dinner. This morning, I was loved.

This morning, I was a fool.

The mate bond shreds inside my chest, the final threads snapping one by one. Each break is agony worse than the silver, worse than the drowning, worse than anything I thought possible. They say a broken mate bond can kill you instantly.

They lied.

It's so much slower than that.

Images flash behind my eyes, my life rewinding as my body shuts down. The rejection ceremony three hours ago. The entire pack gathered under the full moon. Damien was standing at the altar in his ceremonial robes, looking like every fantasy I'd ever had of my Alpha mate.

And beside him, her.

Vivian Cross. Beautiful, blonde, perfect Vivian with her honey-sweet smile, her elegant hands, and her belly just starting to swell.

"I, Damien Blackwood, Alpha of the Crescent Moon Pack, reject you, Sera Nightshade, as my mate and my Luna."

The words echo in my skull. Clinical. Cold. Like he was reading a grocery list instead of destroying my entire world.

I'd stood there in my white ceremonial dress, the one I'd spent months choosing, the one that was supposed to be for our official mating ceremony, not my public humiliation. I'd stood there while three hundred wolves watched. While my knees buckled. While the bond stretched and stretched and finally snapped.

I survived it.

That was my first mistake.

Earlier. Go earlier.

My oxygen-starved brain obliges, pulling me back weeks. Months. The secret meetings I wasn't supposed to know about. Damien's phone calls ended abruptly when I entered the room. The scent of Vivian's perfume on his clothes, his skin, his mouth when he kissed me and thought I wouldn't notice.

I noticed everything.

I just didn't want to believe it.

"She's better suited to be Luna," Vivian had told me once, cornering me in the Pack House library. This was before I knew. Before I understood, "Damien needed someone strong. Someone who understands politics and power. Someone who can give him the heirs he deserves."

I'd laughed it off. Told her she was mistaken. Told her Damien loved me.

God, I was stupid.

The water is so cold now I can't feel my body anymore. That's probably good. The silver has stopped burning because there's nothing left to burn. My wolf has gone silent, retreated to whatever place wolves go when they die.

I'm alone.

I've been alone for a long time, I realize. Even when Damien held me. Even when he whispered promises against my skin. Even when the mate's bond hummed between us like a living thing.

It was all a lie.

Why?

The question floats through the dark. Why betray me? Why not just reject me quietly, let me leave with some dignity? Why the public ceremony, the humiliation, the chains and the cliff and this brutal, drawn-out death?

The answer surfaces with the last of my consciousness: Because I knew too much.

Pack secrets. Business deals. The things I'd seen and heard as Luna, the confidences shared, the documents I'd signed without reading carefully enough. I was a liability. A rejected Luna who might talk, might challenge, might.

Might survive.

So they made sure I wouldn't.

My lungs are screaming, but I have no air left to give them. The darkness at the edges of my vision spreads, consuming everything. The last thing I see is the moon through the water, distorted and distant. Full and bright and completely indifferent to my suffering.

Moon Goddess.

I don't know if I'm praying or cursing. Both, maybe.

If you're real... if you ever cared about me at all...

My heart stutters. Once. Twice.

Stops.

Let me have another chance.

The moon ripples above me, or maybe that's just my dying brain's final hallucination.

Let me come back.

Everything goes dark.

Let me make them pay.

SOMEWHERE BEYOND DEATH

I'm floating.

No pain. No cold. No burning silver or frozen water or shredded mate bond tearing me apart from the inside.

Just... nothing.

Peace, maybe. Or the absence of everything that isn't peace.

Is this what death is? I expected fire or light or judgment. The Moon Goddess standing with her scales, weighing my soul. Something.

Not this empty quiet.

"Child."

The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. Female. Ancient. Powerful enough to make my non-existent bones vibrate with recognition.

I try to speak but I have no mouth. No body. I'm just consciousness drifting in the void.

"You have been wronged."

Yes. The thought forms without words. Yes, I was wronged. I was murdered. I was betrayed by my mate, by my pack, by everyone I loved and trusted.

"And what would you give to return? To have another chance?"

Everything. Anything. I'd give my soul itself to go back, too.

Wait.

Caution filters through my desperation. This is how deals with gods go wrong. You promise everything and they take it literally.

"Smart child." There's approval in the voice now. "Not broken by death. Not ruled by revenge alone. Good. You'll need that clarity."

Who are you?

"You know who I am. You've prayed for me since you were old enough to speak. You've thanked me for your mate bond, cursed me for your suffering, and in your final moments, begged me for vengeance."

The Moon Goddess.

She's real.

"I am real. And I am offering you a gift."

What gift?

"Time. A second chance. Six months returned to you, before the betrayal, before the rejection, before your death. Six months to change your fate."

My consciousness reels. Six months ago, Damien still pretended to love me. Six months ago, I didn't know about Vivian's pregnancy. Six months ago, I could have.

What's the price?

Because there's always a price.

The Moon Goddess laughs, and it sounds like wind chimes made of stars.

"The price is that you must pay it yourself. The timeline will resist your changes. Some events are fixed, others fluid. You'll have your knowledge, your memories, your pain. But the future is no longer certain. Your death is no longer guaranteed."

And if I fail? If they kill me again?

"Then you die. Truly and finally. There are no third chances, Sera Nightshade."

I consider this. Return to life, to the pain, to the betrayal I'll have to relive. Face Damien, knowing what he'll do. Smile at Vivian knowing she'll destroy me.

Or stay here in this peaceful nothing and let it all go.

I want to go back.

"I know you do." The voice is gentle now, almost sad. "But know this: The girl who died tonight cannot be the one who survives. She was too trusting, too soft, too willing to be broken. You must become someone else. Someone harder. Someone who can do what's necessary."

I understand.

"Do you? Because revenge is a cold companion, child. It will keep you alive, but it will not keep you warm."

I don't need warmth. I need justice.

"Justice and revenge are not the same thing."

Then I'll settle for revenge.

The Moon Goddess is silent for a long moment. When she speaks again, her voice carries a weight that presses against my consciousness.

"Very well. Six months. Use them wisely. And Sera?"

Yes?

"Your death was not random. It was orchestrated by the powers of a jealous mate and his mistress. If you want to truly survive, you must discover who wanted you dead and why. The answer lies in your bloodline. In what your mother never told you."

Before I can ask what she means, the void begins to collapse.

Light erupts around me, blinding and violent.

I'm falling again, but this time it's up, up, up toward something bright and terrible and alive.

"Wake up, Sera Nightshade. Wake up and take back what was stolen."

"But remember: You conquered death once."

"Now you must conquer everything else."

TO BE CONTINUED...