Chapter 5

Tory POV

"It's okay, Aldrich", Sabine's voice sliced through the standoff before I was ready to let it end.

I hadn't broken eye contact with him, I wasn't going to be the one who looked away first, not after everything, but she pulled him away by the hand anyway, and he let her, that same infuriating grin still tugging at his mouth as they disappeared down the hall.

I shut the door and let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding.

It escaped me without permission, ragged and shaking, and for one humiliating second my knees nearly gave out against the wood.

I was terrified.

Not of him exactly, of the threat he'd thrown at me like a blade.

Ninety days to leave the only home I'd built as a wolf.

Ninety days to leave the pack that was supposed to be mine.

Then it hit me, cold and immediate: ninety-one days until the sky opened up and ended the world.

The apocalypse wasn't a threat anymore.

It was a countdown, and it had already started running the moment I woke up screaming in that bed.

I had to move, now.

Every hour I spent standing in doorways trading insults with Aldrich was an hour I couldn't get back.

I glanced down at my palms, steady now, no trace of that eerie blue vapor left clinging to my skin.

Whatever had happened out at Sorrel Ridge, I didn't have the luxury of understanding it today.

Understanding could wait. Survival couldn't.

I grabbed what money I could carry from the vault and left for the Illuminaire pack, the closest neighboring territory with a market large enough to supply what I needed.

My hands wouldn't stop trembling the entire walk there, though I told myself it was only the cold.

"How may I help you, Luna?" The shopkeeper straightened the moment I stepped through his door, something close to reverence crossing his face.

Former Luna of the Europa Moon Pack.

The title still opened doors, even if it no longer meant what it used to. "Forgive me for asking, but what brings you to our pack today?"

I hesitated. What did you even ask for, when you were preparing for the end of the world?

Shelter. That was the only answer that made sense.

"I'll need earth bags for a roof, titanium sheeting, thick plywood, and timber beams for ceiling support. Cinder blocks as well, enough for a full structure." My voice came out steadier than I felt, and he nodded, scribbling down every word without question.

Shelter was everything now.

If the meteors were coming the way they had in my previous life, the way they had in my memory, the only place worth being was underground, buried deep enough that the sky couldn't reach me.

"Anything else, Luna?"

"Yes. I'll also need crash helmets, safety helmets, leather gloves, steel-toe boots, fire extinguishers, and......" I paused, my throat tightening around the next word, "a Geiger counter, if you have one."

He hesitated, pen hovering over his ledger. "I don't mean to overstep, Luna, but what exactly are all these supplies for?"

He looked genuinely concerned, not suspicious, which somehow made the lie taste worse in my mouth.

I couldn't tell him the truth. I couldn't tell anyone the truth.

*There's going to be an apocalypse, and I've already died in it once* wasn't a sentence that ended with anyone taking me seriously.

It ended with me locked away somewhere for my own protection, and I didn't have ninety-one days to spare arguing my way out of that.

"I'm building an underground shelter on my pack lands," I said instead. Not entirely a lie.

"Ah, of course. Funny enough, the man over there is doing the same thing." He nodded toward the far end of the shop, where a stranger stood loading supplies onto a cart, his back to me.

I turned to look, and something about him snagged my attention immediately, though I couldn't place why.

I didn't recognize him. And yet the shopkeeper's words wrapped around me like a hook.

"Excuse me, what do you mean, the same thing?"

"Oh, forgive me if I've overstepped, Luna. He's been purchasing the exact same supplies as you. All week, actually."

All week. Which meant someone else had known this was coming before I even woke from that nightmare.

My feet moved before my mind caught up, carrying me across the shop floor like they'd made the decision without me.

"Excuse me, I'm Tory," I said quietly, coming to stand beside him.

He didn't even glance my way. Just kept loading his cart, cold and unbothered, like I hadn't spoken at all.

Up close, something about him unsettled me even further.

No pack scent clung to him, nothing familiar, nothing marked.

He didn't smell like Illuminaire.

He didn't smell like anything I recognized at all, which in a world built on scent and bond, made him feel like a stranger from somewhere far stranger than a neighboring pack.

"I heard you're buying the same supplies as me," I pressed, refusing to let the silence swallow me. "For shelter. Same as I am."

Still nothing.

He tied off the last sack on his cart like I was furniture in his way.

Something in me snapped. "You will not ignore me. I am the Luna of the Europa Moon Pack, and you will answer me."

That got him to look up, but not at my face.

His eyes dropped instead to my collarbone, to the mating mark that had started fading there sometime after Aldrich walked past me twice: once in a another life, another in this one.

He watched it like it told him something I didn't yet understand about myself.

"I'm Delvin." His voice came out low and rough, thick with something I couldn't name, not quite hostility, not quite warmth.

Just weight.

"And why are you buying the same supplies I am?"

He hoisted the last of his cart and began walking away without waiting for permission, without so much as a backward glance.

I stood frozen, my heart slamming against my ribs, certain the answer was about to change everything.

"Because I died in it too," he said, not bothering to turn around. "Ninety-one days before it begins, the meteor. If I'm counting right."