All Chapters of Reborn to Rewrite My Fate : Chapter 1 - Chapter 8

I said "I do" to a lie, and the whole pack howled like it was the truth.The sound rolled over Blackmoor Hollow, bouncing off the pines, and I stood there in my mother's altered wedding dress with my hand locked in Kael's and I smiled so wide my cheeks ached. Nobody could tell the difference between a woman in love and a woman performing one. That was the first thing I learned that day. It would not be the last."You may seal the bond," the officiant said.Kael turned to me. Up close his eyes were the color of a winter lake, pretty and cold, and for one stupid second I let myself believe the warmth in them was real. His thumb brushed my knuckles. My stomach dropped the way it does when you miss a step in the dark."Luna Everly," he said, low, just for me. "Mine."Not *my mate*. Not *my love*. Mine, like a plot of land, like a hunting right. I didn't catch it then. I was too busy drowning in the roar of two hundred wolves shifting to their human forms at once, all of them clapping, all

Pain has a color. I didn't know that until it happened to me.White, first, blinding, when her claws tore through my side. Then red, deep and spreading, warm in a way that felt obscene against the cold night air. I hit the ground and the impact knocked whatever scream I had left right out of my lungs."No," I heard myself say, or maybe I only thought it. "No, no, no."Selene stood over me, chest heaving, her hand dripping red in the moonlight, and for one strange suspended second she looked more horrified than I felt. Like some part of her hadn't actually believed she'd go through with it until her claws were already wet."I didn't," she whispered. "I didn't mean, I mean I did, but I didn't think, oh Goddess, Luna—"I couldn't answer her. Couldn't do much of anything except lie there and watch the stars smear sideways above the pine branches, my own blood soaking into the dirt beneath me, warm and then, horribly, not warm at all.My body wasn't working the way it should have. I tried

He walked in wearing the same smile he wore at my funeral, if wolves had funerals, if anyone had bothered to grieve me properly instead of just filing paperwork.Kael Draven filled a doorway the way I remembered, broad shouldered, dark haired, that easy confidence that used to make my chest flutter before I understood what it actually was. Not warmth. Just certainty. The certainty of a man who had never once been told no and didn't expect to start now."Marcus." He clasped my father's hand, all charm, the picture of a respectful suitor. "Thank you for seeing me on short notice.""Kael." My father's voice was careful, neutral, the tone of a man juggling politics he hadn't fully explained to his daughter yet. "You said this was important.""It is." Kael's gaze slid to me, and there it was, right on schedule, the smile that used to undo me completely. "Luna. You look well."*I'm dead in another life because of you,* I thought, and smiled back with nothing behind my eyes at all. "Kael."W

She was waiting for me outside the tea house, and my whole body went cold before I even registered why.Three days after the Gathering, and I'd finally convinced myself the tight knot in my chest was easing, that maybe refusing Kael hadn't set anything irreversible into motion yet. Then I stepped out into the afternoon light with a bag of loose leaf tea for my mother, and there she was, leaning against the brick wall like she had nowhere else to be.Selene.Younger than I remembered her from the clearing where she killed me, softer around the edges, none of that raw, unraveling grief carved into her face yet. But her eyes found mine with an intensity that made my stomach drop straight through the pavement, the same sharp, assessing look she'd worn right before her claws found my side."You're Luna Everly," she said. Not a question."I am." I kept my voice even, though my pulse had kicked into a gallop. "And you are?""Selene Veyra." She pushed off the wall, unhurried, and something ab