The forest felt different tonight.

Maybe it was simply because her blinders had been ripped off, but her skin felt tight, goosebumps racing, lifting the fine hairs of her arms crawling up and sending a shiver down her spine.

The moon poured through the canopy, casting a pale light across the moss and brambles with an almost deliberate softness, as if it knew all the secrets the Corven family had hidden over the centuries.

Selene paused just short of the clearing, the mist curling around her boots, her breath fogging in the cool air. Her pulse thudded in her ears, loud and uneven. She didn’t know why she’d come here, not really, at least not in any way that she could explain out loud. The dreams had become impossible to ignore, threading into her days as loose wires sparking under her skin, and there was only one person who might help her untangle them, even if she hated the answer.

Ellie, the elder, the witch, the healer. The woman who had always spoken in riddles and half-truths, her wisdom only worked if you chased it down and bled for it.

Selene closed her eyes for a beat. She could still see them, even in the dark behind her lids: fragments that didn’t feel like dreams anymore. They came across as memories. Or worse, warnings. Ancient scrolls. Sigils she couldn’t translate but somehow understood. Bodies, broken and left behind. Her father, not shouting, but whispering… whispering words that made her sick when she woke, and the Forgotten. Gods, she could feel their teeth still, sinking into her neck, taking something that was never theirs to have.

There were images of forced bonds, rituals that twisted the meaning of love into something cruel, binding pups to mates before they were even born. Her stomach turned. She opened her eyes, the breath catching in her chest like it didn’t want to be there.

Ahead, the clearing was shrouded in a low, blue mist that coiled along the ground as though it belonged to something older than time. Every instinct screamed at her to turn back.

She stepped forward anyway.

It had been pulling at her for days, that pressure under her ribs that no amount of running could shake loose. She wasn’t afraid exactly. Not in the way prey fears a predator. This sensation wasn’t panic. It was a knowing. Something was breaking. Something old, and she wasn’t ready, but she knew had to be.

Her boots sank slightly into the moss as she stepped through the mist. The temperature dropped sharply. The kind of cold that crept in through your sleeves and settled between your bones.

Then, movement.

“You’ve been uneasy,” came a voice. Calm. Steady.

Selene didn’t jump. She knew who it was before she saw her.

Ellie stepped into view, the moonlight catching in her braid as it hung over one shoulder. Her movements were as graceful as ever, as though time never dared touch her. And at her side, the white husky, Prometheus, stood silent, his icy, bright eyes fixed on Selene, acting as if he already knew what she was going to say.

“I didn’t know where else to go,” Selene admitted quietly.

“You never do,” Ellie said, not unkindly. “But you’re here now. That’s what matters.”

Selene moved closer, her arms folding across her chest to keep her heart from spilling out. “Something’s wrong. I feel it. Everything’s coming apart and I’m the only one who sees it.”

Ellie studied her, then placed a hand on her shoulder. “That’s because it is. The curse is starting to crack.”

Selene’s throat tightened. “So it’s all true. My family, my parents…”

“You already knew the answer to that,” Ellie said gently. “Your family tried to outsmart fate. And it worked… for a while. But nothing that unnatural ever lasts. Now the weight of that lie rests on you.”

She looked away. “How do I stop it?”

“You don’t.”

Selene froze.

“You let it break,” Ellie said.

Tears burned, hot and traitorous. She didn’t want to cry. Not here nor in front of someone who’d always seen too much.

“But Bastian—” she tried to argue.

“Will survive,” Ellie said, firm. “He was never yours to begin with.”

The words sliced deeper than Selene wanted them to. She’d always known. Somewhere beneath the comfort, the familiarity, she’d known it wasn’t real. Not the way it was supposed to be.

She’d grown up with Bastian. They trained together, bled for the same cause. He’d been her Alpha, her best friend, and yes, they’d slept together. It had been good. Familiar. Safe, but it hadn’t burned. Not the way all the stories said it would.

Her hands trembled, though she tried to hide it.

Ellie stepped forward, her voice low, her words deliberate. “When the moon rises, it doesn’t chase the sun. It doesn’t beg the day to stay. It just rises. Quiet. Whole. Selene, you weren’t made to follow someone else’s light. You will glow in your own sky.”

The words cracked something open inside her.

This bond she’d clung to had never been real. It was an anchor forged in bloodline, politics, and ancient power. A leash designed to keep the truth from being seen. To keep him from waking up to who he truly was.

She shook with the realization.

Her life, her choices, had never really been hers.

Her father’s ambition, her mother’s silence, the pack’s quiet compliance… it had all been part of one ugly, elegant lie.

Her father hadn’t wanted to be Alpha. He’d wanted to control the only bloodline that truly could be. Bastian’s. A descendant of the Originals.

And her family’s legacy? It wasn’t strength. It was sabotage dressed as tradition. Control masked as loyalty. They hadn’t built power. They had stolen it and wrapped her in it before she’d even drawn her first breath.

She swayed slightly, the weight of it all finally sinking in.

When she opened her eyes, Ellie was gone, as was Prometheus.

Only the mist remained, curling softly around her boots, and her breath hung in the air, sharp and unsteady, but something inside her had shifted.

She stood taller.

The bond may have tied her to Bastian, but it wasn’t hers to carry anymore, and neither was the lie. Selene turned from the clearing and walked into the darkness, neither afraid nor broken. Ready for whatever came next.