CHAPTER 2 – Two Years Earlier

I woke up gasping, my hands clutching a flat stomach that had been swollen with child three seconds ago.

The first thing I noticed was the silence inside me. My wolf was loud again – snarling, pacing, furious. After eighteen months of near-silence, her presence was so overwhelming I pressed my hands to my temples.

WRONG WRONG WRONG, she howled. GET AWAY FIND THE RIGHT ONE.

Her voice was clearer than it had been in months – sharper, like she was finally awake after a long drugged sleep. She couldn't tell me facts, but she could feel the truth. And this was wrong.

I sat there, hands pressed to my flat stomach, trying to reconcile the phantom weight of pregnancy with the reality of nothing. The baby I'd carried – the daughter I'd felt kick just once – was gone. Not dead. Never conceived. The absence was its own kind of agony.

My wolf wouldn't stop howling – a sound of pure rage that made my skull ache.

"Stop," I whispered. "I need to think."

But thinking required knowing when I was. Where I was.

The room spun as I sat up. My hand knocked against a picture frame on the nightstand – Lena and me at nineteen, grinning in training gear. This photo had been in storage for years. I'd packed it away when I moved to Asher's pack house.

Why was it on my nightstand?

I looked around slowly. This wasn't Asher's bedroom with its careful grays and whites. This was my childhood bedroom in my father's pack house. Pale blue walls. My old desk crammed with romance novels. The window overlooking the eastern training grounds instead of Asher's western forest.

I stumbled to the mirror and froze.

The face looking back was younger. Not much – maybe two years – but I could see it in the softness around my eyes, the absence of fine lines that had formed from too many sleepless nights. My hair was longer, falling past my shoulders instead of the shorter cut I'd chosen six months into my pregnancy.

And my neck – I turned my head, craning to see the left side of my throat.

No mark. No crescent moon. No burned and blackened brand that had killed me.

Just smooth, unmarked skin.

My wolf howled in triumph and terror.

I grabbed my phone with shaking hands – older model, cracked screen protector. The date glared up at me: August 14th, 2023.

I stopped breathing.

August 14th. The day before my mating ceremony with Asher.

I'd died on October 29th, five months pregnant. That had been just over two years from now.

Not a dream, my wolf cut in, sharp and certain. We're back. Before. Before the wrong mate, before the false mark, before everything.

"That's not possible."

But I was already moving to my desk, yanking open drawers. I found my planner and flipped it open.

There, in my own handwriting:

June 14 – Oracle confirmed bond with Asher

August 15th – Mating Ceremony. New life begins!

Excited notes in the margins. Two months between confirmation and ceremony. Around the time Dad started looking tired.

Past-me had been so excited. So sure. So catastrophically wrong.

I sank into my desk chair, the planner falling from my nerveless fingers.

I'd died. Felt my baby slip away. Understood in my final moments that everything had been a lie.

And then I'd woken up here. Before any of it happened.

I could stop this. Refuse Asher. Save myself and the baby that wouldn't exist for months yet.

But my wolf snarled a warning: The father. Remember the father.

My relief died.

In those final months, my father had looked wrong. Thinner. Grayer. Moving like every step hurt. And he'd never quite met my eyes.

I bolted from my room and followed familiar hallways to his study. The door was open. He was bent over his desk, reviewing territory maps.

"Dad?"

He looked up and smiled, but I had to lock my knees to keep from staggering.

He was paler. Thinner through the face. Shadows under his eyes that shouldn't have been there. And when he smiled, it didn't quite reach his eyes.

My stomach lurched. The room tilted sideways. I'd seen this before – watched him waste away over eighteen months, never understanding why. In my original timeline, he'd died six months after I did. Heart failure, they'd said. Natural causes.

Nothing about this was natural.

I gripped the doorframe, fighting the wave of nausea. A flash of memory: his funeral. The way his body had looked in the casket – gaunt, gray, those same black veins visible even through the mortician's makeup.

"Morning, little wolf. Big day tomorrow. You ready?"

I couldn't speak. I was staring at his wrist where his sleeve had ridden up.

Black veins. Thin as spider silk, spreading from a single point on his inner wrist.

Already, my wolf howled. It's already started.

"Kira? Sweetheart, what's wrong?"

"Your wrist." I moved into the room, forcing my legs to work. "Dad, let me see your wrist."

"It's nothing. Just a rash. Seraphine says it's – "

Seraphine.

The name hit me like a physical blow. The healer who'd been there when I died. Who had smelled like grave dirt under the lavender and sage.

"Let me see it," I said, using my Alpha daughter voice.

He sighed but extended his arm. "See? Just a rash. She's been treating it with a salve."

I took his wrist in both hands. Up close, the black veins formed a pattern radiating from what looked like a tiny puncture wound. Not a rash.

Something had been injected into him.

Curse, my wolf confirmed. Binding. Poison. He's dying and he doesn't even know it.

"Dad." I kept my voice level. "What do you think of Seraphine?"

He opened his mouth to answer – and stopped. His eyes went distant. His hand trembled.

Then his face went pale. He swayed, grabbing the desk for support.

"Dad! What is it?"

"Just..." He shook his head. "Heartburn. I'm fine."

But he wasn't fine. I'd watched it happen. He'd tried to answer my question about Seraphine, and something had physically stopped him.

The curse monitors intent, my wolf said grimly. He can't speak against her without it hurting him.

"When did the rash start?"

"About six months ago. Nothing to worry about. Seraphine has it under control."

Six months. Before my mating ceremony, before the false bond, before everything.

This had all been planned.

A knock at the door made us both turn. A woman in white healer's robes stood there – silver hair pulled back, ice-blue eyes assessing us with false concern.

Seraphine.

She looked exactly as she had in my dying moments. Not a day older.

"Alpha Davian," she said warmly. "And Kira! I wanted to check on you before tomorrow's big day."

My wolf was screaming. Every instinct told me to shift, to attack, to tear her throat out.

But I couldn't. Not without proof, without allies, without anything except knowledge from a timeline that hadn't happened yet.

So I smiled. "That's kind of you."

She moved into the room, placing a cold hand on my shoulder. She smelled exactly as I remembered – lavender and sage, and underneath, grave dirt.

How had I never noticed before?

"Any nervousness? Cold feet?" Her hand felt like ice through my shirt. "It's perfectly normal before a mating ceremony."

My wolf threw herself against my control, desperate to make me jerk away.

"Just excited," I lied. "Asher is everything I could want in a mate."

Everything except real. Everything except mine.

Seraphine smiled, and there was something hungry in it. "The Moon Goddess has blessed you both. I can feel it. The bond between you is strong."

My father nodded along, oblivious. His cursed wrist was hidden beneath his desk.

"I should let you rest. Big day tomorrow." But she didn't move her hand from my shoulder. Her grip tightened. "You'll want to be well-rested."

She leaned in closer. Her breath was cold against my ear as she whispered, too low for my father to hear:

"Sleep well, Kira. And remember – the Moon Goddess is watching."

Then she squeezed my shoulder once, hard enough that it would bruise.

She stepped back, smile still in place. "I'll see you both tomorrow."

She glided out like death dressed as a healer.

I waited until her footsteps faded before letting out my breath.

My father was looking at me with concern. "If you're having second thoughts about Asher – "

"I'm not." I couldn't tell him the truth. Couldn't explain that his healer was killing him. If I tried, the curse might stop his heart.

"Just nervous. Normal jitters."

"You can always talk to me. About anything."

Can I, though? I wanted to scream.

Instead, I squeezed his hand. "I know, Dad. I love you."

"I love you too, little wolf. You're going to make a beautiful mate."

I left his study and made it halfway down the hall before my legs gave out. I caught myself against the wall, trying to breathe through the panic.

Tomorrow, I was supposed to let Asher mark me. Let a false bond settle into my skin that would kill my unborn child and me.

I had no allies. No proof. No way to explain any of this.

And a witch who'd just delivered a threat: The Moon Goddess is watching.

Translation: So am I. Step out of line, and I'll know.