CHAPTER THREE

The dagger was already at my throat before I finished turning.

Cassius moved like smoke and murder, the blade kissing the hollow beneath my jaw with the same tenderness he’d used to mark me as his mate only hours ago. His eyes were fully gold now, no trace of the man who had whispered forever against my skin. Only the Lycan King remained, ancient, ruthless, and awake.

“Why,” he asked, voice soft as snowfall over a grave, “does the thing inside you reek of the Crimson Court?”

I didn’t flinch. I leaned into the steel until a bead of blood rolled down my collarbone. Let him smell his own fear on me.

“Because it isn’t yours,” I said.

The lie tasted like honey and arsenic.

His pupils contracted to pinpricks. The hand not holding the dagger shot to my stomach, claws pricking through the silk nightgown. I felt him search, felt the beast inside him snarl when it found the truth I’d buried under layers of glamour and venom.

There was a child.

But it was not a wolf.

And it was not alone.

Cassius’s face fractured, something raw and monstrous bleeding through the regal mask. “How long?” he rasped. “How long have you been wearing her skin?”

I smiled, slow and terrible. “Since the moment you murdered me the first time, husband.”

The roar that tore out of him shook the walls. Plaster rained from the ceiling. Windows exploded outward in a storm of glittering shards. Somewhere in the palace, wolves howled in answer.

He flung me across the room.

I hit the vanity hard enough to crack the marble, lipstick and perfume bottles shattering like bones. Blood filled my mouth, copper-bright and familiar. I laughed through it.

Cassius stalked forward, shifting as he came. Bones cracked, fur poured over muscle, the color of midnight, until the man was gone and only the monster remained: ten feet of black-furred death, eyes burning like twin suns.

He wrapped one clawed hand around my throat and lifted me until my feet dangled. The dagger clattered to the floor; he didn’t need it anymore.

“Tell me the truth,” he snarled, voice distorted into something not human. “Or I rip it out of you, piece by lying piece.”

I wrapped my hands around his wrist, let my own claws (black, curved, vampire) slide free for the first time in this life.

“The truth?” I whispered. “The truth is you never knew which one of us you were fucking, Cassius. And you never will.”

His grip faltered, just a fraction.

It was enough.

I drove my knee into the soft spot under his ribs, twisted, and dropped. Landed in a crouch as he staggered. The thing inside me surged forward, lending me speed that shouldn’t have been possible this early in a pregnancy.

I snatched the fallen dagger, silver, etched with binding runes, and slashed a shallow line across his chest. Not deep. Just enough to make him bleed.

He stared down at the wound as black veins spider-webbed from the cut. Silver poisoning for a Lycan king. Slow. Painful.

I backed toward the broken window, wind whipping my hair into a white storm.

“You have twenty-nine days left to choose, my king,” I said, tasting his blood on the air. “Kill the wrong Luna again, and the beast you spent three lifetimes trying to wake up dies screaming inside you forever.”

Then I stepped backward into the night and let the darkness swallow me whole.

I fell three stories and landed in the arms of the Crimson Court.

Rowan caught me like I weighed nothing, crimson eyes glowing with triumph. Behind him, an entire legion waited in the courtyard: vampires in bone-white armor, wolves with red brands seared into their fur, and at the center of them all:

The real Elara.

No longer chained. No longer pregnant.

She stood radiant and terrible in a gown made of living shadows, belly flat, power rolling off her in waves that made the torches gutter. The child was gone, absorbed back into her somehow, or perhaps never human to begin with.

She smiled at me with my own face.

“Took you long enough, little ghost.”

I straightened in Rowan’s arms, wiped Cassius’s blood from my lip. “He’s coming,” I said.

She laughed, the sound of a thousand glass coffins opening at once.

“Let him.”

Above us, a roar split the sky. Cassius exploded through the window in full Lycan form, landing in a crouch that cracked the flagstones. His wound was already knitting, silver burning out of his system too fast.

He looked at the army.

Then at the two identical women wearing his mate’s face.

And for the first time in three lifetimes, the Lycan King looked afraid.

Elara, the real one, stepped forward. Shadows coiled around her wrists like bracelets.

“Hello, darling,” she purred. “Miss me?”

Cassius’s gaze snapped to me, then to her, then back again. I saw the moment the bond tore in half inside him, golden threads fraying as it tried to latch onto two souls at once.

He took one step toward me.

Then one toward her.

And stopped.

Elara tilted her head. “Poor beast. Can’t tell which one of us you’re supposed to murder this time?”

She flicked a finger.

Every vampire and branded wolf dropped to one knee.

The message was clear: she commanded legions.

I commanded only the monster growing in my womb and the venom in my veins.

Cassius’s chest heaved. “Elara,” he said, voice cracking on the name like it physically hurt. “Both of you… come here. We’ll fix this. We’ll—”

“Fix this?” I laughed, and it came out layered, two voices at once: mine and something older. “You planned to kill one of us on coronation night anyway. Don’t pretend you’re suddenly noble.”

The real Elara’s smile sharpened. “He’s stalling. The coronation moon rises in twenty-nine days. He needs to choose before then, or the ritual fails and he stays half a beast forever.”

She looked at me. “And you, little ghost, need to make sure he chooses wrong.”

I met her eyes.

For one heartbeat, I saw it: the life she’d lived in the dungeon while I played happy bride. The child she’d carried alone. The centuries of planning.

I saw myself in her reflection, her weapon, her revenge.

And I smiled with all my teeth.

“Let’s give him a war, then.”

Cassius lunged.

But the night belonged to daughters of blood now.

We moved at the same time, mirror images of death.

I went high, claws aimed for his eyes.

She went low, shadows whipping out to bind his legs.

He caught my wrist, twisted until bone snapped, then used me as a shield against her shadows. Pain exploded white-hot, but I used the momentum to drive the silver dagger still in my other hand straight into his throat.

He roared, blood spraying black in the moonlight, and hurled me into the real Elara.

We hit the ground hard, tangled together, identical faces inches apart.

For a moment, the world narrowed to just us.

Her hand found my broken wrist and squeezed. I gasped.

“Listen carefully,” she hissed against my lips. “The child you carry isn’t his. Mine was… insurance. A decoy pregnancy so he’d never suspect I’d already absorbed the heir months ago.”

I stared.

She smiled like a knife. “That thing inside you? It’s the beast he’s been trying to wake. Pure Lycan royalty, born of betrayal and ritual murder. If he kills you on coronation night, it will tear its way out and crown him god-king.”

Her claws dug into my stomach, not breaking skin. Yet.

“But if I kill you first,” she whispered, “I take it. I become the vessel. I rule both courts. And he dies screaming.”

I laughed through the pain.

“You think I didn’t know?”

I head-butted her hard enough to split both our brows. Blood ran into my eyes as I rolled us, pinning her beneath me.

“I’ve been feeding it my memories,” I said. “Every time you bled in that dungeon. Every time he touched me pretending I was you. It knows who its real mother is.”

Her eyes widened.

I leaned down until our lips almost touched.

“And it’s hungry, sister.”

The thing inside me kicked, hard, claws raking from within.

Elara screamed.

And the night exploded into war.

Cassius tore through the vampire ranks like a hurricane. Wolves loyal to him poured from the palace gates, silver weapons flashing. The courtyard became a slaughterhouse.

I lost sight of everything except the woman beneath me.

We fought like feral things, claws and teeth and magic older than both our species. Every time one of us drew blood, the child inside me grew stronger, feeding on the violence.

At one point Cassius grabbed me from behind, arms like steel bands.

“Enough!” he roared. “I choose—”

But Elara was already there, shadows coalescing into a blade of pure night.

She drove it through his back and out his chest, inches from my face.

Black blood sprayed across my cheek.

Cassius looked down at the blade, then at her, betrayal raw in his eyes.

“You… were supposed to be the one I spared,” he rasped.

She twisted the shadow deeper.

“I was supposed to be the one you loved,” she answered. “But you loved the fake better. So now you die with her.”

He looked at me one last time.

“I did love you,” he whispered. “Both of you. That was always the problem.”

Then his knees buckled.

Elara yanked the blade free.

Cassius fell.

And the beast inside him finally, fully woke.

His body arched, bones snapping and reforming, growing larger, darker, something unholy clawing its way out of dying flesh.

The real Elara’s eyes went wide with hunger.

She reached for me, for the child, for victory.

I smiled.

And let the monster inside me answer its father’s dying call.

Power flooded my veins like liquid starlight.

I grew claws of shadow and fangs of moonlight.

When I stood, I was no longer just Elara.

I was both.

And neither.

The last thing the real Elara saw was my hand, her hand, closing around her throat.

“Checkmate, sister.”

I ripped her heart out and ate it while it still beat.

Her body dissolved into crimson mist that poured into my mouth, my wounds, my womb.

The child purred.

Above us, the coronation moon hung bloody and huge.

Twenty-nine days early.

Cassius lay dying at my feet, beast half-born, eyes locked on me in horror and awe.

I knelt beside him, stroked his cheek with blood-soaked fingers.

“Shh,” I whispered. “I choose you.”

Then I kissed him, tasting death and forever, and pushed the shadow blade into his heart myself.

The beast roared once, victorious, and poured into me instead.

When I stood again, the courtyard was silent.

Every vampire, every wolf, knelt.

Because the Queen they saw wore one face now.

And she was smiling with too many teeth.

I looked up at the moon, red as the heart I’d just consumed.

Then spoke, voice layered with both Elaras and something older than both.

“Let the coronation begin.”