Chapter 2. Dreams of the Past

The wolves didn’t move.

Neither did she.

Neriah stood amid the smoking leaves, the pendant clenched in her fist, every breath raw in her chest. Her feet were bare. Her skin buzzed where the flame had been, like embers still smoldered just beneath her ribs.

And then her knees gave out.

She fell hard to the forest floor. The world blurred—sky, trees, breath. Her head hit the dirt, and stars bloomed behind her eyelids. She didn’t have the strength to rise again.

The last thing she saw before the dark took her was one of the yellow-eyed wolves stepping forward—silent, curious, its gaze fixed on her like it remembered something she’d forgotten.

Then—

Nothing.

No pain.

No cold.

Only white.

Blinding, soundless, endless white.

She was no longer in the forest. She was nowhere.

Neriah floated—weightless, breathless. Her fingers twitched, but she had no body. Only awareness. Consciousness without form. A dream.

But it didn’t feel like sleep.

It felt like being summoned.

The silence broke like glass.

A voice rose—not heard, not spoken. Sung. It shimmered in the air like moonlight on water.

“Daughter of ash. Child of flame.”

Neriah turned—or thought she did. Her sense of direction was all wrong here. Like her mind had been unstitched from her flesh.

A figure took shape before her.

A woman, tall and veiled, woven of stars and shadow. Her hair flowed like ink in water. Her skin was the pale, impossible silver of the full moon. Her eyes—if she had eyes—were twin crescents, glowing with a soft, merciless light.

Neriah didn’t need to ask who she was.

Her knees hit the white beneath her—reflexive, instinctive. Her hands trembled against whatever passed for ground here.

The Moon Goddess.

The wolfmother. The Fate-weaver.

The one the packs prayed to.

And the one who had watched her burn.

Neriah opened her mouth, but no sound came.

The Goddess moved forward. Her presence rippled the space around her, like gravity itself bent to her will. And yet—when she spoke again, her voice was quieter. Not gentler. But closer.

“You were not meant to live again.”

Neriah flinched.

“But flame clings to what should die. And you—” the Goddess tilted her head, something like curiosity rippling through the vastness of her form—“you lit the pyre before it was built.”

“I didn’t ask to come back,” Neriah rasped. Her voice barely existed here, thin as smoke.

“No. But you did not refuse.”

The white around them shifted, pulling back like a curtain. Neriah staggered upright as the void dissolved into images. Not memories. Not quite.

They were scenes she’d never seen, and yet knew like breath.

A girl kneeling in chains.

A man with gold eyes and cold hands rejecting her with a voice that didn’t waver.

Pack members turning their backs one by one.

And the fire.

The fire always returned.

“You remember everything.” The Goddess circled her now, slow and effortless. “And still you do not beg. You do not pray. You do not ask why.”

“I already know why,” Neriah whispered. “They hated me. I was an Omega. I was nothing.”

“You were small,” the Goddess agreed. “But not nothing. You were the key. You were meant to burn so others could see the light.”

Neriah turned, defiant. “They didn’t see anything.”

The Goddess stopped moving. “Then this time, make them.”

A long silence passed.

And then—something cracked.

The white sky above split down the middle like ice. Through the crack poured shadows—dozens, hundreds. Wolves, human shapes, faces she recognized. Some that filled her with grief. Others with fury.

One of them stepped forward.

He wore a crown of silver thorns.

His eyes were molten gold, his hair black as night. His mouth was the same mouth that had once kissed her wrist in secret and then, ten years later, ordered her death.

Caius.

Her mate.

The one who had betrayed her.

He stared straight at her—expression blank. Not cruel. Not angry. Just... detached.

As if she had never meant anything.

As if she were a tool, broken and discarded.

The sight of him cracked something open in her chest. Something raw. Something unforgiven.

The Goddess spoke again—voice like frost this time. “He has not yet chosen. You may still change the path.”

Neriah’s nails dug into her palms. “And if I don’t?”

“Then this world will burn. You will burn it. And I will not stop you.”

She blinked, startled. “You’d let me destroy it all?”

The Goddess didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe. “Fire has no loyalty. It consumes what starves it. It remembers who struck the match.”

Neriah felt the weight of those words settle into her bones. Her gaze returned to Caius. He still hadn’t moved.

“I won’t beg for his love again,” she said softly. “I won’t make that mistake.”

“You must not.”

“I won’t save them. Not if they betray me again.”

“You must.”

Her head snapped up.

The Goddess’s eyes burned brighter now. “Not to protect them. Not to forgive. But to shape what comes next. You are flame. You are change. You are consequence.”

The images swirled faster now—packs rising and falling, wars igniting, bodies burning. Her own face flashed again and again, older, younger, wreathed in smoke.

Neriah covered her ears. “Enough!”

The vision shattered.

Silence returned.

The Goddess stepped close—closer than before. Her voice dropped to a whisper, barely audible.

“He will feel the bond again. He will not understand. He will try to control what he cannot undo.”

“I’ll kill him if he tries,” Neriah growled.

“You might. Or you might love him still.”

Neriah didn’t answer.

She didn’t know the answer.

The Goddess extended a single, star-flecked hand and placed it against Neriah’s chest. It burned—ice and fire at once.

“The Ashen Flame is not a gift,” she said. “It is what remains when there is nothing left to give.”

Then—