Chapter 5

Veyra’s POV

Kael did not move as the infected wolf lay motionless on the ground, its blood darkening the stones beneath it. Yet the word it had spoken seemed to hang in the air, heavier than the silence that followed.

~Bloodline.

I had never seen the Alpha King look so disturbed by a single word.

“Do you know what it meant?” I asked.

His eyes remained fixed on the creature. “Take the body to the secure examination chamber. Nobody touches it without the royal healer present.”

Two guards stepped forward.

“And anyone who witnessed this stays silent until I understand what happened,” Kael added.

My fear immediately sharpened into anger.

“You cannot be serious.”

His gaze snapped toward me. “Excuse me?”

“You heard the creature speak to me. Whatever that thing recognized, it involved me. You don’t get to bury the truth because you want to control who hears it.”

“I am preventing panic.”

“Powerful men always discover the value of secrecy when the truth becomes inconvenient.”

The guards exchanged uncomfortable glances. Nobody spoke to the Alpha King like that. I could tell from their expressions. Kael studied me with cold, assessing eyes.

“You seem determined to make yourself part of a dangerous situation.”

“I didn’t ask that creature to recognize me.”

“No but you seem to know more about this catastrophe than you’re willing to admit.”

The accusation struck too close to the truth. Before I could respond, a woman in a dark medical coat hurried into the courtyard, carrying a leather examination case. The royal healer glanced at the fallen wolf, then at Kael.

“Your Majesty, what happened?”

“Find out what remains inside it.”

The creature was taken away. I followed. The healer examined the body beneath a bright examination lamp. Its skin had already begun to discolor, and dark veins spread across its limbs.

Something was consuming it from within, faster than ordinary decay.

“This is impossible,” she murmured.

“What is?” I asked.

She held a small instrument above the creature’s chest. The needle barely moved.

“I can hardly detect a wolf signature. Whatever made this creature a werewolf is almost completely absent.”

“Then what is keeping it alive?” Kael asked.

“I don’t know.” She collected a sample of blood into a glass vial. “But there is something else here. An energy I cannot identify.”

I stepped closer. The instant I approached the table, the dark liquid inside the vial stirred. The healer froze.

A faint silver shimmer appeared beneath the blood, pulsing once, twice, as if something had awakened. Then it went still. Everyone stared at me.

My stomach tightened. “I didn’t do anything.”

“I know,” the healer whispered, taking a step backward.

Kael’s expression hardened.

“Veyra, leave the room.”

“No.”

“This isn’t a request.”

“And I’m not one of your guards.”

His jaw flexed. For a moment, I thought he might force me out simply because he could. Instead, he lowered his voice.

“If that energy reacts to you, remaining here could be dangerous.”

“Or it could tell us why the creature recognized me.”

The healer glanced between us. Kael looked as though he was deciding whether my stubbornness was worth the trouble.

“Fine,” he said at last. “You stay. You follow every instruction the healer gives you.”

I hated the condition. But the strange energy had reacted to my presence, and I couldn’t ignore what that might mean. If my bloodline was connected to the Hollowborn, I needed answers before the world began to die again.

So I stayed and then I felt it. A strange pull in my chest.

It wasn’t painful. It was something deeper, an invisible thread tightening between me and the man standing beside the examination table. My wolf stirred violently.

I had spent years knowing her as a quiet presence inside me, a companion whose instincts I could usually understand.

Now she surged toward the surface with an intensity that stole my breath.

~Him.

I stumbled half a step. Kael turned sharply. His fingers curled against the edge of the table, and the muscles in his neck tightened as if he were fighting something equally powerful. The healer noticed.

“Your Majesty? Lady Veyra? Have either of you experienced unusual symptoms since meeting?”

Neither of us answered. She hesitated before continuing. “Sometimes, when two wolves recognize their fated mates, their instincts react before either person consciously understands the bond.”

The room tilted. A mate bond.

All my life, I had heard stories about it. Some wolves called it the greatest blessing the Moon Goddess could offer.

Others spoke of it as a curse, especially when fate tied two people together whose lives should never have crossed. I looked at Kael.

The Alpha King! The most powerful wolf in the north. And possibly my fated mate.

“No,” I whispered.

His eyes narrowed slightly. “No?”

“I won’t let a bond decide my future.”

For a moment, I expected arrogance. A command. Perhaps an announcement that being chosen by the Alpha King was an honor I had no right to refuse. Instead, Kael straightened.

“A possible mate bond does not obligate you to marry me or surrender your independence.”

I searched his face for the hidden demand.

“If it’s real,” he continued, “we will investigate it. We make no promises until we understand what we’re dealing with.”

I didn’t know what to do with that answer. In my first life, the people I loved had treated my devotion as something they owned.

My husband had decided my life was expendable. My mother had wept while allowing it to happen. I had returned to this world determined never to surrender myself so completely again. Yet here stood a man who might be bound to me by fate, and he wasn’t demanding anything.

For the first time, curiosity pushed through my fear. Perhaps my second life could contain something different. Not trust. I wasn’t foolish enough for that. But the possibility of it.

Later, Kael summoned me to a private room adjoining the royal residence’s records chamber. He placed several reports on the table.

“I’ve been investigating the Hollowlands for years,” he said. “My younger brother developed an illness with symptoms similar to those appearing in infected wolves. The healers have found no cure.”

I opened the first report. Disappearances. Failed treatments. Attacks near abandoned research facilities. Several locations made my fingers go cold.

I remembered hearing rumors about those places in my first life.

Draven had dismissed them as irrelevant, insisting that Blackthorn’s resources belonged to immediate survival, not distant problems. By the time we understood how serious the crisis was, it had been too late.

The answers might have existed before the apocalypse even began. Kael watched me turn another page.

“You recognize these locations.”

I forced myself to look up. “I’ve heard of some of them.”

“You don’t seem surprised by any of this.”

“Would you believe me if I told you I’ve been having dreams about what’s coming?”

His expression gave nothing away. I told him the dreams were unusually specific. I described details that had already come true, carefully avoiding the truth that I remembered dying.

Kael didn’t look convinced. But he didn’t laugh or dismiss me, either.

“I’ll share what my investigators discover,” he said, “provided you continue helping me understand the infected wolves.”

I considered the reports again. We were both hiding things. I knew it, and I suspected he knew it too. Still, we had a common enemy.

“Agreed.”

For the first time, our alliance felt like more than an uneasy arrangement. As I gathered my things to leave, Kael’s gaze dropped to my hands.

They were trembling.

“Did the creature frighten you?”

A bitter laugh nearly escaped me. Of course it frightened me. I remembered the howls outside the shelter. The hunger. The helplessness. I remembered the people I had loved looking at me as if my life were a resource they could spend. I remembered dying.

“I’ve seen what hunger can turn people into,” I said quietly. “I don’t want to experience it again.”

Kael studied me but didn’t demand an explanation.

Instead, he ordered food brought to the room.

“I don’t need…”

“You cannot investigate a catastrophe on an empty stomach.”

The simple statement silenced me. A plate of warm food appeared moments later. I stared at it, embarrassed by how desperately my body wanted it. Kael didn’t comment. He didn’t tell me I owed him anything.

He simply waited.

I ate! And with every mouthful, something uncomfortable settled inside me. I had begun expecting every act of kindness to carry a hidden price. That was what betrayal had done to me. It had made suspicion feel safer than hope.

But one kind act didn’t make Kael trustworthy. He would have to prove himself, just as I would have to learn how to recognize goodness without mistaking it for a promise.

When I finally stood to leave, he stopped me.

“Veyra. Stay.”

Something in his expression had changed.

“I told you I recognized something unusual about you,” he said. “The infected wolf wasn’t the first time I’ve seen your face.”

My blood turned cold.

“What do you mean?”

“During my father’s final days, I had a vision.”

He paused, as though the memory itself disgusted him.

“I saw a woman standing among the ruins of a shelter beneath a Black Moon. Infected wolves surrounded her. Her hands were covered in blood, and she held a sword.”

I couldn’t breathe.

“She turned toward me,” Kael continued. “I remember her eyes.”

His gaze locked onto mine.

“They were yours.”

“That isn’t possible.”

“The vision was recorded years before we met.”

I gripped the edge of the table. “Do you think I caused the apocalypse?”

“I don’t know what I think.”

His voice lowered.

“But there’s something else I haven’t told you.”

I forced myself to meet his eyes.

“In the vision, I was standing opposite you. I held a bloodied sword, and you looked at me as though you’d just killed someone you loved.”

The room seemed to shrink around us. Kael’s expression was grim.

“I don’t know whether I saw a future that can still happen or a past neither of us remembers. But whatever connects us, Veyra, it isn’t an ordinary mate bond.”

I left the royal residence with his words clawing at my mind.

I had returned to the past to escape the people who killed me. Now I might be entangled with the one man powerful enough to change the coming catastrophe or become part of it.

~Bloodline.

The dying Hollowborn’s voice echoed inside my skull.

~You were never supposed to die here.

When I reached my room, I locked the door and leaned against it, trying to steady my breathing.

Then I saw the sealed message on my table. Someone had delivered it while I was with Kael. I recognized the handwriting immediately.

~Seren.

My fingers went numb as I broke the seal and unfolded the paper. There was only one sentence.

“I know about the baby, Veyra. And this time, I won’t let you keep it.”