Chapter 4

Elara's POV

"Come here," he murmured.

I hesitated.

"No, I can't," I cried, shaking my head. "I belong to another Alpha."

Something shifted in his expression — a kind of understanding settling over him, quiet and immediate, like a piece finally sliding into place.

"Then where is he?"

Tears filled my eyes before I could stop them. "He said I was ugly. He didn't want me anymore." My hand flew to my veil on instinct. "And if you see me... you won't want me either."

Whatever anger had been in him vanished at once.

"Silly girl," he murmured, brushing his thumb along my cheek through the fabric. "You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."

"No. I don't believe you." I shook my head, tears spilling now. "You'll turn away too. The moment you see my face. The burn covering half of it will make you sick."

He raised his hand toward my cheek instead of pulling away, and his voice dropped low, steady in a way that made something in my chest ache.

"Listen to me. I won't take off your veil. But I'm going to touch your face, and you're going to see that nothing terrible happens. That I don't care about a scar." His thumb hovered, waiting. "You're the most beautiful thing the Moon Goddess has sent me."

His fingers brushed the damp skin of my neck, gentle and certain. "You're with me now. Let me take care of you."

I nodded, looking up at him. "This... this would be my first time."

He went completely still.

"Never?"

I shook my head, embarrassment burning through me. But I couldn't hold back anymore, and whatever restraint I'd been clinging to slipped away entirely.

He leaned closer and whispered against my veil, right where my lips were.

"I'll be very gentle. I promise."

Slowly, he lifted the bottom edge of the veil, just enough to uncover my lips — nothing more, exactly as he'd promised. He gave me every chance to stop him, waiting one endless second with his hand still hovering there, close enough that I could feel the heat coming off his skin.

I didn't push him away. I wanted him desperately.

I put my arms around his neck and pulled him toward me, and he came undone in the same instant.

He closed the distance and kissed me.

My lips parted on a soft, startled sound the moment his mouth touched mine, and something inside me came completely undone in return. He kissed me slowly at first — careful, like he thought I might still bolt — until my fingers curled into his chest and pulled him closer instead. He hauled me the rest of the way against him, the last of his restraint gone, his whole body pressing into mine until there was nowhere left for either of us to go.

***

I had never felt so peaceful.

After everything — the fall, the cold, the fear, the pain — my body had finally gone quiet. I remembered falling asleep in his arms, my cheek against his chest, my veil still covering my face. I hadn't taken it off. I couldn't. Maybe morning would change everything. Maybe he would look at me in daylight and realize he'd made a mistake.

But that thought felt very far away now, because I was somewhere else entirely.

At first there was only darkness — not the ordinary darkness of a room at night, but something older and deeper, without walls, without a floor, without any sky above me to give the emptiness a shape.

When I took a step, something solid met my bare foot anyway, and a faint silver shimmer spread beneath it. I looked down. Three thin circles rippled outward across the black like moonlight disturbed on still water. One vanished almost immediately. The second trembled, uncertain. The third held its shape and stayed.

I wasn't alone. Something was breathing in the darkness, slow and deep, too heavy and too patient to belong to anything small. I followed the sound and found a wolf curled tightly in on itself — gray fur, enormous paws, sleeping the way something sleeps when it's been sleeping for a very long time. It didn't stir when I knelt beside it. Its breathing came too slow, too far apart, like each breath had to be earned.

"His time hasn't come yet."

The voice came from everywhere at once. I spun around and found no one — until a silver glow bloomed somewhere in the distance and grew, steady and unhurried, until a woman stood inside it. Pale hair drifting in a wind that never touched me, and behind her, filling the whole horizon of that dark, hung a moon too bright to look at directly and too vast to belong to this world.

"Who are you?" I whispered, though some small, cold part of me had already guessed.

"Who do you think I am?"

My breath caught. "The Moon Goddess doesn't appear to ordinary werewolves. Only priestesses can speak to you."

A soft laugh moved through the dark, low and rippling. "Then perhaps I should leave, and wait until you find one."

"No — please."

The light steadied. I glanced back at the sleeping wolf. "Is he my wolf?"

She was quiet so long I thought she wouldn't answer at all. "Not yet. I am keeping him for you."

"Keeping him?"

"Some things must find their way back to you on their own." Her gaze dropped to him, something almost sorrowful crossing her face. "He has lost too much. Strength. Time. Pieces of himself."

I didn't understand any of it. I looked down at the three silver circles beneath my feet again, and for one dizzying moment, I thought I saw something moving inside them.

"What does any of this mean?"

The Goddess didn't answer.

"Will I remember this?"

"Elara, all you need to do now is wake up."

"But I don't—"

"Wake up! Now!" The shout tore through the darkness. For one confused second, I thought it was the Goddess.

Then the dream shattered.

I woke with a start, the cabin swimming into focus around me—gray morning light leaking through the shutters, the fire burned down to embers, the room colder than it had been hours before.

And the voice hadn't come from the dream.

A man I didn't know was standing beside the bed.

I jerked upright, clutching the blanket to my chest, and looked around wildly for the Lycan who had been with me last night.

He was gone.

The other half of the bed had already gone cold under my palm.

"Get dressed. You're leaving." The man tossed my dress onto the bed without so much as a glance at my face, as if the sight of me half-covered meant nothing to him one way or another.

"Where is he?"

"He's not coming back."

My stomach tightened into a hard, cold knot. "What's his name?"

"You don't need to know."

"And yours?"

"Doesn't matter." He nodded toward the door, already turning away, as though the conversation had used up more of his patience than he'd budgeted for. "There's a car waiting. It'll take you wherever you want to go."

My eyes dropped to the sheets.

Blood.

My face burned, and I yanked the blanket higher, as if that could undo what he'd already seen, what the whole room already knew. Of course.

I'd been stupid enough to believe last night meant something. To him, I'd been exactly what Lucian had always said I was good for.

I pulled on my torn dress with hands that wouldn't stop shaking, the fabric stiff and cold against my skin, and followed the stranger out into the pale morning. The forest around the cabin looked nothing like it had the night before — no fire, no fear, just bare trees and frost silvering the ground, and the quiet felt worse than the chaos had.

As we crossed toward the car idling at the edge of the clearing, something moved beyond the cabin — a flash of a woman's dress disappearing between the trees, there and gone in the space of a blink.

I stopped.

"Did you see—"

"Get in."

I looked again, scanning the tree line, my pulse ticking too fast in my throat.

No one was there.

He held the car door open, and I climbed in on legs that still didn't feel entirely mine, the leather seat cold beneath me. Then he leaned down and handed me a thick envelope of cash and a business card for one of the best private clinics in the city. His face gave away absolutely nothing.

"If last night has consequences, deal with them quickly."

I stared at him. His expression didn't change.

"He doesn't need bastards."

The words hit harder than they should have, landing somewhere low in my chest and staying there.

I climbed the rest of the way into the car and shut the door, the sound of it sealing me off from the cold and from him at once.

The driver glanced at me in the mirror. "Where to?"

I wanted out of here. I wanted to put as much distance as possible between myself and everything that had happened—to disappear so completely that none of it could ever find me again.

But first, I needed to know.

My fingers closed around the card until the edges pressed white lines into my palm.

"A clinic."