At first, she thought she was dreaming. The chamber was unfamiliar—walls paneled with dark oak, a fire burning in the hearth, its warmth mixed with the scent of lavender oil. Her reflection, caught in a tall mirror near the bed, startled her. Auburn hair spilling past her shoulders, eyes rimmed with faint shadows of exhaustion, a body shaped by motherhood and gentler living. She reached for her face, then her stomach, and felt the tug of an unfamiliar gown.

There was movement behind the door—quiet footsteps, the soft whimper of a child.

A little boy no older than three slipped inside, dragging a faded stuffed rabbit. “Mama?” the child asked, voice small and uncertain.

Her breath caught. The word tore through her numbness like a spark. Mama. The boy's eyes were wide and trembling; he looked at the woman before him as though afraid she might vanish. Instinct overrode confusion—she knelt, opened her arms, and the child ran into them without hesitation. Warmth. Weight. A heartbeat pressed against her neck. It was enough to make her chest ache.

'What is going on?!'  At that moment many people were bursting in after the boy did minutes prior. She looked at every one bewildered but starting to panic. Quickly asking who they were, and finding out they were servants and the boy her son.

She finally convinced a servant to explain more in depth, the pieces began to form: she was Lady Vina Rosethorne, a minor noblewoman living on the outskirts of the capital, widowed in name though never truly married. Her betrothed, a merchant’s son elevated by fortune, had fled when he discovered her pregnancy. Scandal followed, but her father’s title kept the wolves of gossip at bay—barely.

Vina estate was modest compared to the grandeur of the city’s great houses. She spent her days balancing accounts, tending to her son, and appearing at seasonal gatherings only because absence would fuel rumors. Among those glittering crowds of nobles, her presence drew whispers—a single mother, unguarded yet unbroken, whose beauty carried the faintest trace of defiance.

The Duke of wolfshire had seen her at such occasions, though they had never spoken. He was older, rarely smiled, and his reputation for severity made courtiers step aside when he entered a room. Once, she had caught his gaze across a ballroom—steel-gray eyes glinting beneath candlelight, a nod so brief she thought she’d imagined it. Later she overheard others muttering about his estranged wife and the way he never danced.

Vina didn’t dwell on it. Her life had no room for fantasies anymore. Each morning began with her son’s laughter echoing down the corridor and ended with ledgers spread across her writing desk. The loneliness between those hours was something she endured quietly.

Sometimes she would stand by the window after midnight, looking out across the fields dusted with frost, and wonder why her heart still beat so restlessly. Perhaps it was the old hunger she carried—the need to belong to someone, not as a possession, but as a promise unbroken by fear.

The servants whispered that the Duke’s estate was plagued by wolves. That, too, she dismissed as gossip. Yet on certain nights, when the wind howled low through the forest and the horses grew uneasy, she would feel something watching from beyond the trees—a gaze that stirred both dread and a strange, unspoken yearning. Those were the only memories she could see from Vina mind, somehow she is living inside Vina's body.