Chapter 2

Before I left Blood Moon Pack, I decided to return everything that belonged to them.

When Rowan was twelve, he won his first junior-wolf combat tournament.

He shoved the medal into my hands afterward and told me a future Beta couldn't afford to lose the first honor he'd ever earned, so I had to keep it safe for him.

When I arrived at the training hall with the medal, Rowan was assembling a dorm bed frame for Lyra.

A new mattress, a desk lamp, blankets, and more than a dozen unopened boxes were piled beside him.

The moment he saw me, he smiled as if he'd been expecting me.

“I knew we weren't actually going to fall apart over something this small.”

I held out the medal.

“Take it back.”

Rowan froze.

“Why? Just keep it like you always have.”

“I'm leaving Blood Moon tomorrow. I may not get another chance to return it.”

He casually tossed the medal into a box of spare hardware.

“You're just going to Frostland early. It's not like you're disappearing forever. Stop making it sound like some final goodbye.”

Then he pointed toward the luggage near the door.

“Perfect timing. Help Lyra carry those boxes upstairs.”

“No.”

His expression stiffened.

For a second, he looked genuinely surprised that I had refused him outright.

Lyra immediately stepped in.

“It's fine. I'll do it myself. Aria's still angry with us.”

“This has nothing to do with me being angry.”

I looked at Rowan.

“You prepared her things. You carry them.”

I turned and walked away.

Behind me, Rowan's irritated voice followed.

“Since when won't she even help with something this small?”

That afternoon, I found Julian in Blood Moon's pack archives and placed the tactical competition manuscripts he'd stored at my house on the desk in front of him.

He didn't pick them up.

“Rowan said you gave his medal back too.”

“Yes.”

“And now you're returning these.”

His eyes studied me carefully.

“Aria, what exactly are you doing?”

“Getting rid of things that don't belong with me anymore.”

Julian's brows slowly drew together.

For the first time, he seemed to sense that something was wrong.

Before he could say anything else, Lyra walked over carrying her Moonvale enrollment forms.

“Julian, can you check my course schedule for me? I'm scared I'll choose the wrong classes.”

His attention shifted to her immediately.

“Let me see.”

Lyra sat down beside him.

Before Julian opened the forms, he glanced at me one more time.

“Stop using pointless gestures like this to make your displeasure known. We can talk after you've calmed down.”

He had already noticed that I was saying goodbye.

He just preferred to believe it was another performance.

Asher stopped me outside the pack manor.

As Blood Moon's future Delta, he had always been the most direct of the four.

“Good. You're back.”

He tossed a portable hard drive into my arms.

“These are all the videos we've taken over the years. Make Lyra an eighteenth-birthday montage.”

“I won't.”

“You're the best at editing.”

“That doesn't mean you get to volunteer me.”

Asher's patience disappeared almost immediately.

“Delete the parts where you're in the frame, add some photos of Lyra, and finish the video. What's so difficult about that?”

“She wasn't part of our childhood.”

“That's exactly why she needs the videos.”

They wanted to keep all eighteen years of memories.

They simply didn't care whether the person who had actually lived those memories with them was me.

I held the hard drive back out.

“Let her make memories of her own.”

Asher didn't take it.

“Keep it for now. Have the video finished by tomorrow.”

Then he turned and walked away as if my refusal had never counted as an answer.

That evening, Damian asked me to meet him at our usual restaurant.

He said we could finally make up for the formal first date we'd never had.

I went only because I still had one last thing to return.

Damian spent most of the evening looking down at his phone, replying to Lyra's messages.

I removed the obsidian ring I'd worn for two years and placed it in front of him.

When we were sixteen, Damian had passed his Alpha Heir Trial.

He'd given me the ring afterward and promised that one day, he would replace it with a Luna signet.

“Take it back.”

Damian finally put his phone down.

His expression shifted.

“Aria, we had one fight. You don't need to give this back.”

“I'm leaving Blood Moon tomorrow.”

“Going to Frostland early?”

“Yes.”

He picked up the ring, clearly still not taking my departure seriously.

“Fine. I'll put it back on your finger when you come home.”

After a brief pause, he added,

“Once Moonvale enrollment is finished, the five of us will come north to see you.”

By “the five of us,” he meant Damian, Rowan, Julian, Asher, and Lyra.

I didn't correct him.

I left before dinner was even served.

When I got home, I connected Asher's hard drive to my computer and backed up every original video to my private cloud storage.

Then I left every file exactly as it was.

Tomorrow, I would return the hard drive untouched.

I did not owe Lyra a stolen version of my childhood.

And I would not erase myself from my own past just to make it easier for her to take my place.