Luna's POV
Five years ago, Kian Voss stood in front of the whole pack and said the words that ended me.
"I reject you as my mate."
I remember the silence after my knees wanted to give out, and I didn't let them. I heard the sound of his mother crying somewhere in the back of the crowd, but I remember walking out of that circle with my head up, even though inside I was bleeding out with every step.
I was seventeen years old, and he was my fated mate, but he chose the pack's rules over me because I'm not that girl I used to be.
Tonight I stand at the edge of Blackthorn territory, wearing another woman's name like armour. Rhea. Just a diplomat from Ashwood, here to look into some border trouble. Nothing more. Nobody here should know my face, my scent, or the sound my heart makes when it breaks.
"Are you sure about this?" Maren's voice comes through my earpiece, low and careful. She has asked me this question in six different ways over the last three days, and each time I've given her the same answer.
"I'm sure," I say, even though my stomach is doing something that feels like drowning.
"You don't have to prove anything to him, you know that, right?"
I'm not doing this for him because the part is true. The other part has been troubling me since Ashwood's Alpha first informed me about the border attacks. That past is all about Kian Voss, and the man who broke me five years ago is worth saving.
I cross into Blackthorn, but the trees here are the same trees I grew up under, with the same moss growing on the north side of the trunks and the same way the wind moves through the branches, like they're alive. The ground feels different beneath my boots, though, as if it remembers me and isn't happy about my return.
The packhouse comes into view around the bend, tall and stone-built, lit up gold from every window. I used to think it was the most beautiful building in the world. I spent three years dreaming about living there permanently, about Kian's hand in mine, and about a future that got rejected the same moment he did.
Now I think it's a cage with better lighting.
A guard steps into my path before I've gone ten feet further. He's big, built like a wall, scarred across one eyebrow, arms crossed like he's daring me to do anything but comply.
"State your business," he grunts.
"Rhea Sorensen. Ashwood liaison. I believe your Alpha is expecting me." I keep my voice flat and professional, the way I practised in the mirror for two weeks. Inside, my wolf is pacing, restless, like she smells something she used to know. Like she's woken up from a long sleep and remembered she has claws.
The guard studies me for a moment, then nods and turns to lead me inside. That's when I felt that everything had gone wrong.
A pull, low in my chest, sharp enough that I almost stumble. It's like someone reached into my ribs and yanked something open that I spent five years stitching shut. My wolf goes still and then alert, ears up, the way she used to get around only one person in this world.
,
No, it can't be. He can't be here; he's probably in some other pack territory now, living the life he chose over me, mated to someone else, someone the elders approved of, someone born to the right family, someone not broken by rejection.
I follow the guard through the front hall, telling myself it's nerves; it's the smell of home messing with my head; it's anything except what I know it actually is.
Then I see him.
Kian Voss stands at the top of the main staircase, and five years have not been kind to my ability to stay numb around him. He's broader now, harder somewhere deep behind the eyes, and dressed in the kind of clothes an alpha wears, expensive, dark, and built to intimidate. He looks like he's been carrying something heavy for a long time and forgot how to set it down.
He looks like he's been suffering.
His gaze finds me, and something in his face shifts, just barely, like a man catching a scent he can't identify. I watch his wolf move closer to the surface and watch his hands curl slightly at his sides, and I know that pull I felt wasn't just me.
He felt it too.
My heart is doing something traitorous and loud, and I hate it.
"Ms Soren", his voice hasn't changed, and that's the cruellest part, but it still sounds like home. "Welcome to Blackthorn."
He doesn't know me. Of course he doesn't. Coloured contacts hide my eyes; five years have changed the shape of my face, and the last thing his mind would ever expect is to find the girl he threw away standing in his front hall, dressed in another pack's colours, wearing another woman's name.
"Thank you for having me, Alpha," I make myself say evenly. I make myself hold his gaze as it costs me nothing. Like my whole body is not screaming at me to run or to fight or to do something other than stand here pretending to be someone else.
He comes down the stairs slower than a man in a hurry would. When he reaches the bottom step, he stops two feet from me, and I watch his jaw tighten like he's fighting something his body won't let him control.
"Do I know you?" he asks quietly, and the question lands between us like a blade, and that makes my whole body get cold.
"I don't believe so, Alpha." I hold my ground; I've been trained for this moment for five years. I won't break, and also, "I've never been to Blackthorn before."
That is the first lie I tell him; it won't be the last.
He nods slowly, but his eyes don't leave my face, and behind them I can see a wolf just as confused but as alert as mine. The air between us goes heavy, charged, like the sky before a storm. For one long second neither of us breathes right.
Then a voice cuts through the moment, sharp as a blade.
"Alpha, one more word now."
I turn to see a woman standing in the hall archway. Older, maybe fifty, dressed in dark green velvet, watching me the way a predator watches wounded prey. Everything about her screams authority and control. I don't know her name yet, but something in my gut tells me this woman is dangerous in a way that has nothing to do with her wolf.
Kian steps back from me, and something in his face closes like a door slamming shut.
"Excuse me," he says, his voice formal now, empty. "Declan will show you to your rooms."
He walks away before I can answer, and I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding.
I came here to see the evidence and also to clear my pack's name and walk out with proof that would destroy whoever's been staging attacks on our borders.
I came here to be invisible, to do a job, so that I could leave this place the same way I left it five years ago, alone and damaged and asking myself why I wasn't good enough.
I did not come here to feel his eyes on me like that again.
Behind me, the woman in green is still watching. When our eyes meet, she doesn't look away, and there's something in her face that makes my skin crawl.She knows the worst, and I have a terrible feeling that she already knows exactly who I am.