Remnants of us

The first time Damon Voss kissed me, we were fourteen and hiding behind the training shed after sparring. I still had a black eye, and he still had blood on his knuckles, but I remember thinking, this is what fate feels like.

I’d been raised on stories of destined mates, fierce love, and unwavering devotion. We grew up together—me, the future Luna, and him, the boy who would become Alpha. Our families told us we were blessed. That the Moon Goddess had spun our souls from the same thread.

But they never talked about how threads could fray.

Killian's fire crackled low behind me in the cave, but I barely noticed. My mind was drifting, haunted by the echoes of a past I no longer claimed.

Damon had once been my everything.

He used to sneak into my room after curfew just to lie next to me in wolf form, his thick, silver-gray fur warming my side. I’d bury my face in his neck and breathe in the promise of forever. He used to trace my spine with his fingertips like he was memorizing a map to his future.

And for a long time, I believed in us.

I remembered his laugh—low and husky, the kind that rumbled in his chest more than from his throat. I remembered the way he used to pull me out of nightmares, how he stood between me and bullies when I was too small to fight back.

But what I remembered most...

Was the shift.

It happened so fast. The moment we turned eighteen and the bond solidified, something in Damon changed. At first, he grew distant. Then cold. Then cruel.

“You were better before the bond,” he told me one night. “Now I can’t breathe without feeling you. It’s suffocating.”

I told myself he was just scared. That he’d come back around. That the pressure of being Alpha made him act out. But with every kiss that turned colder, every touch that felt like punishment instead of pleasure, I began to feel it too—the unraveling.

Until one day, he said it.

“I reject you, Selene Winters.”

Four words. One sentence. And everything we’d built, everything I’d clung to, shattered.

I remember the sting of the rejection slicing through the bond like a hot blade. Nyra had howled inside me, collapsing in pain. My knees had given out in front of the entire pack. Damon didn’t help me up. He didn’t even flinch. He just turned and walked away like I was nothing more than a mistake.

I think that was the moment I stopped believing in fate.

The memory of it burned now, even here in the cave, even under Killian’s quiet presence. I stared into the fire, the flames reflecting in my eyes like the ruin I’d walked through.

But somewhere under the ache, another feeling pulsed.

Anger.

Not at Damon. Not anymore.

At myself.

For believing that I had to be someone’s Luna to be worth anything. For shrinking myself to fit into his shadow. For letting love become my leash.

Behind me, I felt Killian move. He hadn’t said a word while I sat lost in my memories. Maybe he could sense them. Maybe the forest whispered them to him. I didn’t know.

“You’re quiet,” he said eventually.

“I was remembering,” I said. “Who I used to be.”

“And who’s that?”

“A girl who thought love meant obedience. Who thought strength meant silence.”

Killian made a low sound in his throat. Not quite a growl. Not quite a laugh.

“She’s dead now,” I added.

He walked around the fire and crouched beside me. “Good. Because that girl wouldn’t survive what’s coming.”

I looked up at him. “And what’s coming?”

He didn’t smile this time. “War. And if you want to make Damon Voss bleed, you’re going to need to become the kind of woman he can’t even look in the eye.”

My heart kicked. Not out of fear.

Out of something darker.

Yes, Damon had rejected me.

But I hadn’t rejected myself. Not anymore.

“I want to be her,” I said.

“Then let’s start by burning who you were.”

Killian reached into the fire with a thick stick and pulled out the remains of my ceremonial silk dress, now ash and ember. A symbol. A sacrifice.

“You’re not his Luna anymore, Selene.”

I met his gaze.

“No,” I whispered. “I’m my own Alpha now.”

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