Death does not hurt the way people think it does.
It is quiet.
Cold.
And unbearably intimate.
Lyra remembers the exact moment the blade pierced her heart. Not the scream—hers or his—but the hesitation before it. The tremor in his hands. The way his breath stuttered as if his body was begging him to stop.
Please, she had whispered. Not for mercy.
For truth.
Caelan's eyes had been silver with agony as he drove the knife in anyway.
She wakes screaming.
Her body arches violently against the stone slab, lungs dragging in air as if she has been drowning for centuries. Magic hums beneath her skin, sharp and invasive, burning new life into old bones.
Voices shout. Hands restrain her.
"The soul has returned," someone says reverently. "The bond remains intact."
Lyra chokes on a laugh that sounds too much like a sob.
Of course it does.
She gasps again, blinking against the blinding torchlight above her. The chamber is carved from ancient stone, walls etched with symbols meant to guide souls back to flesh. She knows this place.
The reincarnation hall.
Her fingers curl against the slab. They are smooth. Unscarred. Younger. This body is not the one that bled out beneath the trees.
"How long?" she rasps.
The woman in ceremonial gray hesitates.
That pause tells her everything.
"Thirty-seven years," the woman says softly.
Thirty-seven years since Caelan killed her.
Lyra turns her head slowly, staring at her hands as the truth settles into her bones. He is still alive. The bond would not exist otherwise. It would not be clawing awake inside her chest like something furious and unfinished.
Her mate lives.
Her murderer breathes.
And fate has dragged her back to him.
They dress her in simple clothes and leave her alone to recover. Reincarnated wolves are rare. Reincarnated wolves who return with memory are dangerous.
Lyra stands before a polished obsidian mirror, studying her reflection. Dark hair. Sharp eyes. A face untouched by time—but her soul feels ancient, cracked, and heavy with rage.
She presses a trembling hand to her chest.
There.
The bond.
Muted, distant—but unmistakable.
It pulls east. Toward mountains. Toward power.
Toward an Alpha.
Her lips curl in disgust.
"He chose them," she whispers to the empty room. "He chose obedience over me."
She remembers the council's decree. The rebellion. The threat delivered in calm, merciless tones: Kill her, or we slaughter your pack.
Caelan had looked at her then, eyes breaking.
And still, he had lifted the blade.
By nightfall, Lyra learns the name he has earned for himself.
Alpha Caelan of Blackridge.
Hero. Peacemaker. Executioner.
The rebellion was erased. The traitors silenced. Peace restored.
Her name is nowhere in the records.
Officially, she never existed.
Lyra laughs softly, bitter and sharp. "How convenient."
When they ask her what she will be called in this life, she answers without hesitation.
"Lyra."
A lie.
A shield.
A weapon.
At dawn, they tell her where she is being sent.
Blackridge Pack territory.
Directly into the arms of the man who ended her last life.
The bond pulses, hot and cruel, as if celebrating the irony.
Lyra straightens her spine.
"Good," she says calmly.
If fate wants to drag her back to her executioner, she will walk into his territory with her eyes open and her hatred sharpened.
This time, she will not die begging.
Far away, Alpha Caelan wakes with blood on his hands.
Not real blood.
Dream-blood.
He scrubs his palms beneath icy water, jaw clenched as the familiar guilt coils tight in his chest. Another faceless dream. Another night of violence without memory.
A knock sounds at his chamber door.
"Alpha," his advisor says. "A political emissary arrives today."
Caelan exhales slowly. "From where?"
"A minor territory," the man replies. "Her name is Lyra."
Something twists violently beneath his ribs.
The water runs red.
Caelan stares at his hands, heart pounding, wolf snarling awake for reasons he does not understand.
"I'll receive her," he says.
He does not know why the name feels like a wound reopening.
He does not know that death has already crossed his border.
And it remembers everything.