The gates were closing.
Selene's cloak whipped around her legs as she sprinted down the narrow causeway, the echo of drums and howls still rattling through the fortress behind her. Her lungs burned, her boots scraped against the uneven stone, but she didn't dare slow down.
Not while his voice still curled through her chest.
Not yet.
The words wouldn't leave her. They clung to her skin like smoke, like heat, like claws raking her from the inside out. She rubbed her wrist where he had held her, the skin there tingling, raw. It wasn't bruised. It wasn't broken. But she could still feel him.
Golden eyes burned in her mind's eye. The memory of his body blood-streaked, firelit, towering, rose every time she blinked.
Selene hissed under her breath and forced herself forward, slipping into the stream of villagers and low-born wolves who hurried from the courtyard before the gates sealed for the night. They didn't look at her. They were too drunk, too distracted, too eager to be gone.
Good. Let them ignore her.
Her hood was still low. Her cloak still shadowed her face. To anyone else, she was just another coward fleeing the ritual before the fighting spilled beyond the circle.
But inside, she shook.
Her stomach churned. Her pulse raced. Every step further from the fortress should have eased her, but instead the weight on her chest grew heavier.
Selene forced her gaze straight ahead, past the looming towers, past the torches that painted the fortress in blood and gold. She told herself she would never come back. Not for the rituals. Not for the goddess. And certainly not for him.
The road curved into darkness, the forest stretching wide and endless on either side. The night air here was cooler, damp with pine and moss. She drank it in, desperate to wash the fortress from her lungs, but the scent of smoke and iron lingered stubbornly.
Behind her, the gates groaned shut with a sound like the world slamming a door.
Selene staggered to a stop at the tree line, bracing herself against the rough bark of a pine. Her chest heaved. Her hands shook. She wanted to sink to her knees, to curl into herself, to claw away the memory of his voice whispering at her hood.
Instead, she pressed her forehead to the bark and whispered, "You don't own me."
The forest swallowed the words whole.
She didn't believe them.
The village was still awake when Selene slipped back into its narrow lanes. Smoke curled from clay chimneys, the smell of broth and wet earth mingling with the sharper tang of mead. Wolves lingered in doorways, drunk from the ritual, their laughter cutting sharp in the dark.
She tugged her cloak tighter and hurried toward the small cottage at the edge of the settlement. The shutters were drawn, the roof patched with moss, but a single candle burned inside.
Nyra was waiting.
The door creaked open before Selene's hand even touched it. Her cousin stood framed in the light, arms crossed, dark braids falling over her shoulders. Her eyes, sharp and unyielding, narrowed the moment she saw Selene's face.
"You went," Nyra hissed.
Selene slipped inside quickly, shutting the door against the night. "Keep your voice down."
Nyra's glare could have cut stone. "Do you have a death wish? The Moonfire is for the dynasties, not for us. If the guards had caught you—"
"They didn't," Selene snapped, more sharply than she intended. Her chest still heaved from the run, her skin still prickled where Dorian's hand had caught her. She pulled her hood down, tossing it onto the table, and rubbed her wrist.
Nyra's gaze flicked there instantly. "What happened?"
Selene froze.
Her cousin's expression hardened. "Don't lie. Something happened."
For a heartbeat, Selene saw it all again—the firelit circle, the blood spray on stone, the crowd bowing as golden eyes cut across them, and then that impossible moment when those eyes found her. She swallowed her throat tight.
"It was nothing," she whispered.
Nyra slammed her hand on the table. "Nothing? The whole village is already buzzing. Someone swore the heir looked at a cloaked girl. That he spoke to her. Do you understand what that means? If anyone realizes it was you—"
"Then I'll deny it," Selene cut in. Her voice was steady, but inside she trembled. "They'll forget it by morning."
Nyra stared at her, searching her face, then shook her head. "You're cursed, Selene. Just like the rest of us. But don't drag me down with you."
Selene's chest twisted. "I didn't ask to be born into this bloodline."
"No," Nyra said softly, anger bleeding into fear. "But you'll die for it if you're not careful. And the Veyraths will be the ones holding the blade."
Silence stretched between them, broken only by the hiss of the candle flame. Selene turned away, her hand still rubbing the ghost of his grip on her wrist. She didn't want to admit it not to Nyra, not to herself, but the truth clawed inside her chest all the same.
She was already marked.
Nyra blew out the candle, plunging the cottage into shadow. Only the moonlight through the shutter cracks lit her face, hard and pale.
"You don't understand," she said quietly, as though speaking the words too loudly might wake the dead. "Our line was never meant to survive. We're not wolves. We're offerings. That's what the goddess made us."
Selene's chest tightened. She had heard the whispers before, growing up on the edges of every gathering, the pitying looks, the cruel names. But hearing it from Nyra's mouth made the old sting sharper.
"That's an old story," Selene muttered, tugging her cloak tighter. "A tale to keep us small."
Nyra shook her head. "It's truth. Our mothers carried it. Their mothers before them. Don't you remember how they spoke in hushed voices about the blood moon? About how the goddess marked us as her sacrifice line?"
Selene's throat ached. She remembered. She remembered her mother's hollow eyes, her trembling hands every ritual night, the way she never spoke of the fortress but always wept after the howls faded.
Nyra's voice sharpened. "And you go and put yourself in the heir's path? You might as well have thrown yourself into the fire circle."
"I didn't mean—"
"You never mean to," Nyra cut her off. Her fists clenched at her sides. "But it always finds us. The goddess, the bloodline, the curse. We can't hide from it, Selene. And now…"
She trailed off, eyes dropping to Selene's wrist where the skin still flushed faintly.
"Now you've been seen."
Selene wrapped her arms around herself, as though she could fold inward and disappear. But the truth pressed against her ribs like claws.
She had been seen. Not just by the crowd. By him.
Golden eyes that had stripped her bare. A voice that still echoed inside her, low and final.
Not yet.
Her stomach twisted. She didn't want to believe Nyra's words. Didn't want to carry the curse like a brand. But deep inside, beneath all her denial, something whispered: the bloodline had finally caught her.
When Nyra finally drifted into uneasy sleep, Selene lay awake on her cot, staring at the ceiling beams of the cottage. The fire in the hearth had burned down to embers, but heat still rolled under her skin.She threw her cloak aside, tugged at the ties of her tunic, but the air remained stifling. Sweat prickled at her neck, her chest, her stomach.
It wasn't just heat. It was wrong.
Her body throbbed, restless, as though something inside her shifted, stretched, rewrote itself. She pressed a hand to her stomach, fingers trembling. No wound. No bruise. And yet… a heaviness lingered, alien and alive.
Selene's throat tightened.
The smoke from the ritual, She told herself. The blood in the air. That's all.
But her heart knew better.
She had felt strange since the moment Dorian's gaze pinned her, since his voice brushed her skin. As if the goddess herself had marked her through him.
Selene sat up, curling forward, clutching her knees. Her stomach roiled, her temples pounded, and still the ghost of his hand lingered on her wrist.
"You don't own me," she whispered into the darkness. But her body shivered, as if it knew the truth her mind refused to name.