Chapter 5

SIMONE

Two weeks had passed since I'd agreed to be Leo's date for the Crescent Festival two weeks of training soldiers under a excuse of "border unrest," two weeks of smiling at Leo while I quietly rebuilt everything I hadn't thought to build the first time.

Tonight, all of it led here.

I walked into the hall, and nothing had changed.

The same crystal chandeliers hung glittering overhead, the same smoky incense curled through the air, the same marble floor stretched beneath my feet like it remembered me even if I wished it didn't.

Wolves from packs across the region filled the room, their voices a low murmur beneath the string quartet.

I walked the red carpet exactly as I had in my past life; chin high, spine straight, gown trailing behind me like a whisper.

Except this time I knew what waited at the end of it. I knew the shape of the trap even if I didn't yet know every hand that had built it.

The moment I crossed the threshold, heads turned.

The ceiling had been left open to the sky, and moonlight spilled down in silver sparkles, catching the deep red of my gown as I moved.

The first time, I'd assumed the stares were about the dress.

I knew better now, I remembered what came next, remembered kneeling and gasps and a name I hadn't understood the weight of until it was already too late to matter.

I turned slowly, easing my mask down enough to see clearly, and found her.

Olivia.

Mascara streaked down her cheeks in dark, ruined lines, her eyes fixed somewhere past me, glassy with grief too raw to hide.

I remembered this part too, the moonlight overhead wasn't decoration.

It was the moon goddess's gift, the rare light that let a wolf finally see their fated mate standing in front of them.

I'd learned what that meant only after I'd died the first time, whispered secondhand in memories that came too late to use.

Seeing it happen now, in front of me, still landed like a blow.

Leo had rejected her, the most striking wolf I'd ever seen, born into a bloodline any Alpha would have killed to bond with, so he could chase power through me instead.

He'd looked at everything the moon goddess handed him and thrown it away because I came with a pack and a birthright he wanted more.

The spotlight swept the hall and landed on me.

Leo crossed the floor toward me, every step deliberate, his smile calibrated to look effortless.

He knelt.

My heart still lurched, an old instinct my body hadn't unlearned even after everything.

I let it.

I'd decided two weeks ago that I would let it, that I would stand here and say yes exactly as I had before, because the only way to bring this down around him was to stay close enough to find the proof I hadn't known to look for the first time.

"Will you be my bond mate next week, Simone?"

The hall exploded into gasps.

I watched the shock ripple through the crowd and understood what none of them had said aloud yet that Leo had just publicly humiliated a fated mate standing thirty feet away, in front of everyone who mattered.

That alone was worth more to me than he knew.

Packs didn't forgive an Alpha who spurned the goddess's gift. Not once they'd seen it with their own eyes.

"Yes, I will"

I said it steady, the same breathless warmth I'd worn once before, and it cost me nothing to say and everything to mean.

Leo rose and pulled me into his arms, every motion warm, convincing, believable even to a woman who'd already died once at his mate's hands.

He was a good liar.

I let myself remember, coldly, exactly how good and let that memory be the only thing I felt for him now.

The celebration that followed was suffocating, forced smiles, wolves clinking glasses while tension sat thick enough to choke on.

I drifted through it, nodding at congratulations I didn't want, until I saw Olivia sitting alone near the back, a glass of wine untouched in front of her.

I went to her anyway.

If she was going to be the blade that killed me once, I wanted to know her face before it happened again, and there was no better time to start learning my enemy than while she thought she'd already won.

"Are you alright?" I asked, keeping my voice soft. She didn't answer, didn't blink. "What's your name?"

The silence stretched long enough that I nearly turned away. Then she spoke.

"Wow." Her voice was low, almost amused, and when she finally lifted her eyes to mine, her mouth curled into something far too sharp to be a smile. "You did it again, Simone."

I went still.

Every hair on my arms rose at once.

"Again?" I kept my voice level, though something cold had already started climbing up my spine.

"I killed you before." She rose slowly, smoothing her dress like she hadn't just said the most horrifying sentence I'd ever heard spoken so casually. "Right here, in this life. Do you understand what that means, or are you still catching up?"

The floor seemed to tilt beneath me.

I had assumed, I had needed to assume that I was the only one who'd carried anything back across that threshold.

That whatever had sent me spinning back five years was mine alone, a private, hard-won advantage.

If Olivia remembered too, then every quiet move I'd made these past two weeks, every calculation I thought was mine alone, might already be old news to her.

"And I won't hesitate to do it again," she said, and walked away without another word, leaving me standing frozen in the middle of a celebration I could no longer hear over the roaring in my own ears.

She remembers.

The realization crashed over me like ice water, drowning out the music, the laughter, Leo's hand finding mine again somewhere behind me.

I forced my face back into a smile before he could see it slip, but underneath it, one question kept circling, sharper and colder each time it came back around.

If Olivia had been given a second chance too, how much further ahead of me was she already?