CHAPTER TWO

The paralysis venom wore off exactly eleven hours and forty-seven minutes after I counted every second.

Cassius’s fingers twitched first. Then his lashes fluttered like black ravens waking on snow. When those molten-gold eyes finally opened, they found me instantly, kneeling beside him in the ruined wedding gown now streaked with his blood and mine, tears drying on my cheeks like war paint.

“Elara?” His voice cracked, raw from the venom. He tried to sit up, failed, then managed it on the second try. The confusion in his gaze was almost believable. “What… what happened?”

I let my lower lip tremble. I let fresh tears spill. I threw myself into his arms like the terrified, loving bride he expected.

“You collapsed,” I sobbed into his neck, breathing him in (pine smoke, winter steel, and something darker now that I knew how to name it: guilt). “Right after the vows. The healers said… they said it was a rare reaction to the bonding bite. I was so scared, Cassius. I thought I’d lost you on our wedding night.”

His arms closed around me like iron bands. One hand stroked my hair with aching tenderness while the other slid to the small of my back, pressing me closer, as if he could fuse us together and erase whatever had frightened me.

“I’m here, my moon,” he murmured against my temple. “I’m here.”

Liar.

I clung harder, letting him feel the tremor in my body that was not entirely fake. Because even knowing what he was, even carrying the memory of poison burning down my throat, my traitorous heart still skipped when he said my name.

Elara.

But which one of us was he seeing?

I pulled back just enough to cup his face. His cheekbones could cut glass. His mouth was still swollen from the kiss that had sealed our vows hours ago, the same mouth that would one day force death between my lips.

I kissed him.

Not soft. Not sweet. I kissed him like I was trying to crawl inside his skin and devour the truth hiding there. Teeth, tongue, a hint of bite. I tasted his shock, then the growl that rumbled out of him as he took control, flipping us so I was beneath him on the marble, wedding dress rucked to my thighs, his weight pinning me exactly where I wanted to be.

Trapped.

His hand slid up my leg, claws pricking through the lace, and for one dizzy second I wondered if he would rip the gown off me right here beside the puddle of his own blood.

He didn’t.

He stopped. Pulled back. Eyes searching mine with sudden, terrifying clarity.

“You’re different,” he said quietly.

My pulse thundered.

He traced my lower lip with his thumb, smearing the crimson I’d reapplied while he slept. “Your scent… it’s sharper. Wilder. Like frost and iron.”

I laughed, a brittle sound, and nipped his thumb. “Maybe almost losing you woke something up in me, husband.”

His pupils blew wide. The mating bond flared hot and vicious between us, a golden rope trying to drag me under. I felt his wolf rise, saw the flash of fang as he smiled.

“Then let’s finish what we started, wife.”

He carried me to the bed that had been prepared for our wedding night, silk sheets the color of fresh blood, rose petals already crushed beneath us. Every touch was worship and warning at once. He peeled the ruined dress from my skin like he was unwrapping a present he’d waited centuries for.

And I let him.

I arched and sighed and whispered filthy promises in his ear while cataloguing every scar on his body, every place I would sink silver one day. When he finally pushed inside me, I wrapped my legs around his hips and met him thrust for thrust, nails scoring his back deep enough to scar.

Mine, my wolf snarled.

His, the bond sang.

Liar, the memory of death whispered.

I came with his name on my tongue and murder in my heart.

After, he held me like I was fragile. Like I might break. His lips brushed lazy circles over the fresh mating mark on my shoulder, the one that now pulsed like a second heartbeat.

“Tell me you’re mine,” he said against my skin, voice hoarse.

I turned in his arms, pressed my forehead to his, and lied with every piece of me.

“I’ve always been yours, Cassius. Only yours. Forever.”

He shuddered, buried his face in my neck, and for one terrifying moment I thought he was crying.

Good.

Let him drown in it.

Morning came too soon.

Sunlight speared through the stained-glass windows, painting the room in shades of blood and gold. Cassius dressed in silence, every movement precise, kingly. When he buckled his sword belt, the sound of leather snapping made me flinch.

He noticed. Of course he did.

“Nervous?” he asked, coming to kneel in front of where I sat on the bed, still wrapped in nothing but his scent.

I let him see the fear. “The court… they’ll expect me to be perfect today. Your Luna.”

“You already are.”

He kissed my knuckles, then stood.

“There’s something I need to handle before the coronation tour. A prisoner transfer from the northern cells. I won’t be long.”

Prisoner transfer.

My stomach turned to ice.

He was going to check on her. The real Elara. The one swollen with his child and centuries of vengeance.

I caught his wrist. “Take me with you.”

He blinked. “It’s no place for—”

“Please.” I let my voice waver. “I’ve never got to see the dungeons last time. I want to know every part of your kingdom. Even the dark ones.”

Something flickered across his face, too fast to name. Then he smiled, slow and dangerous.

“As my Luna wishes.”

We walked the underbelly of the palace like descending into the throat of a sleeping dragon. Torches hissed. Chains rattled in distant cells. The air grew thick with old blood and despair.

Rowan met us at the final gate. His crimson eyes flicked to me, amused.

“My king. My queen.” The bow he gave me was mocking.

Cassius didn’t notice. Or pretended not to.

The cell was warded with silver and nightshade. Inside, chained to the wall with cuffs that burned vampire flesh, hung the real Elara.

She looked like hell.

Hair matted, belly still impossibly round, lips cracked and bleeding. But her eyes, those violet-red eyes blazed when they landed on me.

Cassius stepped forward, expression unreadable.

“How is the child?” he asked.

She spat blood at his boots. “Ask your whore.”

His hand cracked across her face so fast I barely saw it. Her head snapped sideways, but she laughed.

I moved before I could stop myself, catching Cassius’s arm. “Don’t. She’s pregnant.”

He looked at me like he’d never seen me before.

Since when do you care about vampire spawn, Elara?”

The question hung between us like a blade.

I met his gaze, let him see the steel I’d hidden for years. “Since the day you put a mating mark on my skin and called me yours. Hurt her, and you hurt something that carries your blood. Is that what you want?”

For a heartbeat, the dungeon was silent except for the drip of water somewhere in the dark.

Then Cassius stepped back. Inclined his head.

“Of course, my Luna.”

He turned to Rowan. “Double the guards. No one enters without my seal.”

Rowan’s smile was all teeth. “Yes, my king.”

As we left, I felt her eyes boring into my back. I didn’t look. Couldn’t.

But I heard her voice, soft and deadly, inside my skull.

You think you’re playing him, little ghost.

But he’s been playing you since the cradle.

Back in our chambers, Cassius kissed my forehead like a benediction.

“I have council meetings. Rest. Tonight we announce the pregnancy to the pack.”

My blood froze.

Pregnancy?

He saw my shock and laughed, low and warm. “Ours, Elara. The bond took. I felt it form at dawn.”

He placed a hand over my still-flat stomach, wonder in his eyes.

“You’re carrying the heir.”

I stared at his hand.

Inside my womb, something ancient stirred. Not a baby.

Something with fangs.

And it was hungry.

That night, the pack gathered under the full moon to celebrate the future prince or princess.

I stood at Cassius’s side in a gown of midnight blue, crown of moonstones heavy on my brow, smiling until my face ached.

The elders approached one by one to swear fealty to the child I supposedly carried.

When the last bowed and retreated, Cassius pulled me close, lips to my ear.

“Smile, my love. They need to see their Luna happy.”

I turned my face up to his, let the moon catch the tears I could no longer stop.

“I am happy,” I whispered.

And I was.

Because I had just felt the thing inside me stretch its claws.

Because the mirror in our bedroom had started bleeding again.

Because Rowan had slipped a note into my palm during the ceremony:

The Crimson Court marches at the next new moon.

Your father sends his regards…

and a gift.

I looked across the courtyard, past torches and cheering wolves, to the shadows beneath the archway.

A child stood there.

No more than seven. Skin white as bone, eyes red as the real Elara’s.

He smiled at me, showing tiny fangs.

Then lifted a severed head by the hair.

My head.

From the timeline where I never came back.

The boy bowed, mocking and perfect, and vanished into the dark.

Cassius followed my gaze, frowned. “What do you see?”

I turned back to him, pressed my body against his, and kissed him until he forgot the question.

“Nothing, my king,” I breathed against his lips. “Just the future.”

Later, when he slept, I stood at the mirror.

The crack had widened. Blood ran in steady rivers now.

Inside the glass, the child waited again.

This time, he held out his hand.

On his palm lay a single black rose.

Its thorns dripped with something that smelled like venom and coronation wine.

The voice from last night returned, velvet and ancient.

“Time to choose, Princess.

The wolf who will kill you again…

or the father who will burn the world to put you on its throne.

Thirty days.

Tick tock.”

The mirror shattered outward.

Shards flew like crimson snow.

One sliced my cheek, deep.

When I licked the blood away, it tasted like power.

And somewhere in the palace, a baby cried, too early, too loud, too wrong.

I smiled into the darkness.

Let the real games begin.