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Chapter 1 — The Queen's Last Breath
Navassa
I died on the night my son's coming-of-age ceremony was held.
Thirteen years earlier, a dying king without an heir had changed the fate of the Lycan Continent forever. Twelve Alphas had fought in the Alpha Trials for the chance to marry into House Moonfell, home of the last White Wolf bloodline.
The House Moonfell had the only two remaining female White Wolves, my sister Mallory and me.
All the strongest Alphas on the Lycan Continent yearned for marring us. Only in this way could they have a chance to be the Lycan King.
The Lycan Council believed the first Alpha to produce a White Wolf heir would establish a new royal dynasty.
The trial ultimately selected two victorious Alphas, Tiberius and Jareth.
When the priestess gave me and Mallory the right to choose our mates, she chose Jareth without hesitation.
I was quite surprised by this. Jareth's pack was virtually unknown, while Tiberius's was one of the strongest. Mallory loved power and wealth; no one could have imagined she would make this choice.
But no matter what, she always get what she wanted.
So I became Tiberius's mate. And We finally won the honor, because I bore him the first and only White Wolf heir.
Tonight, our son stood before the kingdom as living proof that they had chosen correctly. He is now thirteen and tonight will be his first public shift. The first time the kingdom is permitted to lay eyes on his white wolf.
Gold light poured from the chandeliers in trembling sheets, spilling across polished marble floors, crystal goblets, jeweled throats, and the proud faces of nobles who had traveled from every corner of the kingdom to celebrate the future of the crown.
I stood beside Tiberius at the heart of it all, dressed in white silk and diamonds, my crown woven into the pale fall of my hair. To the court, we were the image of triumph.
King Tiberius Blackmoor, powerful and adored, with his amber gaze and warrior’s build, and Queen Navassa, the White Wolf bride who had given him the impossible gift of heirs.
His hand rested at the small of my back, onlookers mistook it for devotion. They saw romance in the shape of his fingers against my gown. I felt ownership.
However, only I knew what lied hidden beneath this seemingly affectionate exterior: greed, incompetence, betrayal, and even violence.
Still, even that could not steal the softness from me when I looked across the ballroom and found my child.
Aurelian stood near the long banquet tables with his shoulders already too straight for a boy of thirteen, patiently enduring the praise of a councilman.
My child was admired tonight as miracle, as proof of bloodline and prophecy and divine favor, but to me he was simply mine, and also the only reason I had persevered until today.
“They love him,” Tiberius murmured beside me, his voice rich with satisfaction.
I glanced toward him. “He’s a child, not a relic for the court to worship.”
His mouth curved, though his eyes remained on the room. “He is both. That is the burden of being born royal.”
I said nothing because after thirteen years as his queen, I knew which arguments ended in silence and which ones ended with his hand tightening at my back.
Tiberius was never a good father. What he needed was a white wolf-lycan hybrid who could bring him power, not a cub to fawn over.
I let my gaze return to Aurelian, as if watching him closely enough could keep the world from reaching him.
Then the ballroom shifted. All the guests' eyes were drawn to the archway at the entrance.
My sister was standing there.
Mallory Moonfell had always known how to make an entrance. After all, she was also a white wolf, the other one besides me.
She wore deep blue silk tonight, a color that made her blue violet eyes appear almost luminous, and her pale blonde hair was pinned in a crown of braids threaded with sapphires. It was as if she were the true Luna Queen.
Tiberius noticed her too, his fingers pressing slightly against my back. “Your sister looks like she has come to ruin someone’s evening. We must get her out of here. I heard Ravenscar Packalready expelled her. A rogue shouldn't be here.”
“She is still my sister,” I said.
Mallory had hurt me several times, but I still remembered the whispers we used to share before bed as children.
He gave a quiet, humorless breath. “That has never stopped her before.”
Before I could answer, Mallory crossed the marble toward us with a smoothness that made the crowd part naturally around her.
“Navassa,” she said.
Not Your Majesty. Not my queen. Not sister.
Just my name, stripped bare.
“Mallory, I’m glad you came.”
Her smile was small. “Are you?”
Tiberius’s posture shifted beside me, irritation settling over him like armor. “If you came to quarrel, choose another night.”
Mallory’s gaze flicked to him, and for a heartbeat something bitter passed across her face. “Of course. The king must not be inconvenienced at his own celebration.”
“This celebration is for my child,” I said softly.
Her eyes returned to mine. “Yes. Your child. Your crown. Your palace. Your adoring kingdom. It is always yours, isn’t it?”
The music continued above us, bright and careless, while the air between my sister and me grew thin. “Mallory, if something is
wrong, we can speak privately.”
“No.” Her voice did not rise, but something in it cut through me. “Tonight I want you to hear me where everyone can see what you made of me.”
“I didn’t make anything of you,” I said.
“You took everything from me! I’m a white wolf just like you, and I can give birth just the same. Why is it you standing here tonight?”
Mallory’s voice turned shrill. “When choosing mates, I should have chosen Alpha Tiberius. It was you and that good-for-nothing
Jareth who deceived me!”
I completely couldn’t understand why she would think that way.
"No one deceived you. You chose him first, even before the trial ended, you had already chosen him with your eyes, hadn't you?"
In all the years since our marriages, I had known she resented me. Tiberius and I had a pure-blooded child, while she and her mate Jareth were always at odds, and she never conceived.
I had known she envied the crown, the palace, the way the kingdom bowed when I entered a room. But envy had shape. This felt older than envy. Deeper. A root grown through bone.
Mallory laughed once, softly, and the sound scraped across every childhood memory I still had of her.
“Why do you think I chose Jareth? My mother found a seer before the trials. A witch. She told me that although at that time Tiberius's pack was much more powerful than Jareth's, Jareth would wear the crown. ”
Her eyes glittered with years of resentment.
“And I believed her.”
The words cracked out of her.
I frowned. This was the first time I had learned the truth about what happened back then.
Tears burned in her eyes. “She lied, and it cost me everything. You got the throne. You got the crown. You got Tiberius. You got the child. You got the life I was promised.”
Pain twisted through me.
She believed Tiberius Blackmoor was a prize.
Because she had no idea.
No idea that the perfect king she envied had spent thirteen years tightening invisible chains around me. No idea that every smile he gave me in public became control behind closed doors. No idea how many arguments and betrayals I had swallowed because peace mattered more than pride. No idea how often I had looked at the woman in the mirror and failed to recognize her.
She saw the crown.
She saw the palace.
She saw the man the kingdom adored.
She had never seen the cage.
“I did not steal your life,” I whispered. “Neither of us chose what happened.”
Mallory leaned closer, and the hatred in her eyes was no longer hidden beneath polish or pain. It was naked now, starved and shining.
“No, Navassa. You didn’t choose it. That is what I have hated most. You didn’t even have to want it. You simply existed, and the
world emptied its hands at your feet.”
Something moved at her side.
I saw the glint too late.
A dagger.
Small enough to conceal, sharp enough to end a life, its jeweled hilt gripped in my sister’s hand beneath the fall of her sleeve.
Then she drove the silver blade beneath my ribs, directly into my heart.
Pain tore through me so violently that the ballroom vanished for a heartbeat. There was only fire, pressure, and the impossible warmth of blood rushing between my fingers. The court that had worshiped me moments before became nothing more than a ring of pale faces and open mouths.
Tiberius held Aurelian tightly, preventing him from running towards me—he would not allow any harm to his heir to the throne.
I laid alone on the cold ground.
I could clearly feel my life slipping away. I was so tired.
Before I closed my eyes forever, I kept repeating one thought to myself:
"If the Moon Goddess gave me a second chance, I would never live like this."
Chapter 2 — Twenty-one Again
C
Navassa
I woke with my hand pressed to my chest, certain the dagger was still there.
For several long seconds, I could feel it so clearly that the absence of it made no sense. The silver blade should have been buried beneath my ribs, burning through flesh and bone while blood filled my lungs and son screamed from somewhere beyond the reach of my failing body.
Aurelian’s voice should have been raw from shouting my name.
But when I dragged in a breath, air filled my lungs.
Not blood.
Air.
I lay frozen in the dark with one hand clutching the front of my nightgown and the other braced against the mattress as if the bed might dissolve beneath me.
The pain was gone, yet the memory of it remained so sharp that my body still trembled from a wound it no longer carried. My pulse thundered in my ears while my eyes struggled to make sense of the ceiling above me.
This was not the ballroom.
There was no marble floor beneath my knees, no chandeliers dripping gold over a sea of horrified faces, no Aurelian being held back from running to me by his father.
No guards were dragging Mallory away while she looked at me with blood on her hand and satisfaction in her eyes. The world was too quiet for death, too familiar for heaven, and too cruelly peaceful to be anything my mind could accept.
For one desperate moment, I thought death had given me a dream.
Then I recognized the room.
The certainty came slowly, not as comfort, but as a series of small details that slipped through the fog of panic and struck with the force of memory.
The carved wardrobe near the wall had belonged to my mother. The vanity by the window still carried the faint scratch I had made with a hairpin when I was sixteen and furious at Cressida for locking away one of Mother’s old journals.
The rug beside the hearth was faded at one corner where Mallory and I had spilled blackberry tea as girls and bribed the maids into silence with an entire pouch of sugared almonds. Every corner of the room belonged to a life I had mourned without realizing I was mourning it.
Moonfell Manor.
My bedroom.
The room I had left behind thirteen years ago when I became Tiberius Blackmoor’s bride.
A sound left me before I could stop it, thin and broken in the quiet. I pushed myself upright too quickly, and the world tilted around me.
For a breath I thought I might be sick, but I forced my shaking legs over the side of the bed and reached beneath the loose fabric of my nightgown, searching with frantic fingers for the wound I knew should have been there.
Smooth skin met my touch. No blood. No torn flesh. No scar. Nothing but my own heartbeat pounding too hard beneath young, unmarked flesh.
This could not be real.
It was too cruel to be real.
Some hallucination, then. Some final mercy from a dying mind unable to accept the sound of its child screaming. I clung to that thought because the alternative waited behind it like an open grave, and I was not ready to step closer.
Then I saw the mirror.
I turned toward it slowly, already afraid of what I would find, and the girl staring back at me stole the last breath from my lungs.
She had my face, but not the face I had worn as queen. No years of royal ceremonies had sharpened the line of her mouth. No court politics had carved caution between her brows. No sleepless nights beside a man who mistook possession for love had dimmed the violet of her eyes.
Silver-white hair spilled loose around her shoulders in tangled waves, unpinned by attendants and untouched by the weight of a crown, while the skin at her throat remained soft and bare where jeweled collars once rested.
I knew that girl.
I had buried her beneath duty.
The realization hit so hard that I stumbled back from the mirror and struck the vanity with my hip.
A small leather-bound date book slid from the corner and fell open on the floor, its pages fluttering once before settling in the firelight. I stared down at it, unable to move, while dread gathered inside me with a patience more terrifying than panic.
My hands shook as I bent and lifted it from the rug.
The date stared back at me in neat black ink, and for a moment the room seemed to fall silent around it. Not truly silent. The fire still crackled. The wind still touched the windows.
Twenty-one.
I was twenty-one again.
Today was the day the Alpha Trials started.
The day the Lycan Council would stand before the kingdom, the dying king, and the gathered packs to announce the beginning of the trials that would bring the victors not only honor, but brides from House Moonfell and a chance to be crowned the next Lycan King.
The day everything began.
The date book slipped from my fingers and landed silently against the rug. I sank onto the edge of the bed because my knees could no longer be trusted, and the years came back all at once, not in order and not gently, but in flashes sharp enough to cut through bone.
Tiberius taking my hand at the altar with triumph hidden behind tenderness. Mallory smiling beside Jareth with envy already sleeping beneath her skin.
My son placed in my arms, impossibly perfect and impossibly doomed. The palace. The crown. The careful words. The locked rooms. The final celebration. The silver blade.
My son.
Grief opened inside me so suddenly I nearly folded beneath it. I was not dead, not in this life, not yet, and somehow that made the loss worse.
How was I supposed to mourn the child the world had not met? How was I supposed to grieve Aurelian’s solemn little smiles and clever mouth, when no one else remembered they had ever existed?
His name lived only in me now, fragile and unbearable, a ghost waiting in a future I did not know how to reach without walking willingly back into the cage that had made them.
I pressed both hands over my mouth to hold the sound in, but the sob came anyway.
It broke through me quietly, almost shamefully, because this younger body did not yet know how to carry a queen’s grief. It knew silk sheets, soft hands, sheltered halls, and the ordinary ache of being a daughter expected to obey.
It did not know the weight of a crown. It did not know childbirth. It did not know betrayal, blood, or the particular horror of watching my sister murder me while my child watched.
But I knew. I remembered all of it.
The realization settled slowly, colder than terror. I had not dreamed. I had not hallucinated. Death had not given me mercy. I had been sent back to the beginning, to the day the path first opened beneath my feet and led me, smiling and obedient, toward Tiberius Blackmoor.
My fingers curled into the blankets until my knuckles ached. Somewhere beyond my bedroom walls, Moonfell Manor still slept, innocent of the future pressing against its doors.
My father would wake soon believing this day was an honor. Cressida would dress Mallory in something lovely and pretend motherly pride had not always looked better on her than actual kindness.
Mallory would prepare for the trials with eyes bright for Jareth.
The thought slid through me like ice.
Mallory.
She would be sleeping down the hall with clean hands and no memory of what she had done, still the younger sister I had once tried so hard to love.
I looked toward the window where dawn had begun to pale the mountains beyond the glass. The same mountains. The same manor. The same day that had once seemed like the beginning of a grand destiny and now looked exactly like what it was.
A trap wearing flowers.
Beyond the trials, the mating ceremony waited for me. Tiberius waited for me. Mallory waited for me.
And somewhere beyond all of it, a future full of blood and crowns and my son who existed only because I had survived long enough to love them was reaching for me with both hands.
My reflection watched from the mirror, young and wide-eyed and trembling, but the woman behind those eyes had already died once.
I drew in a breath that shook all the way down.
No.
Not again.
Chapter 3 — The Opening Ceremony
Navassa
By the time the sun rose fully above the mountains surrounding Moonfell Manor, I had managed to stop crying.
That did not mean the grief was gone.
It lingered beneath my skin like a second heartbeat, pulsing through every breath and every thought. No amount of cold water, deep breathing, or desperate attempts at composure could erase the memory of my son.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him. Aurelian standing too straight because he thought responsibility meant never slouching. Rolling his eyes while secretly smiling. Climbing into my lap on hard days because he still believed mothers could fix everything.
The ache of his absence followed me into the dressing room. It followed me as maids brushed my hair. It followed me as they fastened the pale blue gown chosen for the opening ceremony.
Most of all, it followed me when I looked into the mirror and found the face of a twenty-one-year-old girl staring back instead of the queen who had died on a ballroom floor.
“You look beautiful, my lady.”
The maid smiled as she adjusted the final pin in my hair.
Beautiful.
The word almost made me laugh. Beauty had once seemed important. Now it felt like the least interesting thing about me. I thanked her anyway.
The habit of politeness had survived death. Unfortunately.
When I finally stepped into the corridor, the manor already buzzed with activity. Servants hurried through the halls carrying baskets, garment bags, and trays of food while distant voices echoed from below. Everyone was excited.
Why wouldn’t they be?
Today marked the beginning of the Alpha Trials. The entire kingdom had spent months anticipating the event.
To them, it was history in the making. To me, it was the first step toward a future I already knew.
The dining room doors stood open when I arrived.
Father sat at the head of the table, dressed in formal black trimmed with silver. Time struck me harder than expected at the sight of him. In my memories, the years had begun settling across his shoulders long before my death. His hair had grayed. The lines around his eyes had deepened. Responsibility and regret had carved themselves into him piece by piece.
But not yet.
Here, he still looked strong. Still looked healthy. Still looked like the father I remembered before the kingdom started taking pieces of him.
“Good morning, Navassa.”
I forced a smile. “Good morning, Father.”
Across from him sat Cressida. Beautiful as ever. Perfectly composed. The woman who had spent years pretending affection while never quite managing warmth.
“You’re running late,” she observed.
“I slept poorly.”
A perfectly reasonable explanation. After all, nobody expected a woman who had died yesterday to show up rested.
Mallory sat beside her. The sight of her nearly stopped me in my tracks. Not because she looked different. Because she didn’t.
The same face I had spent years loving before learning how deeply hatred could hide behind beauty. Yet sitting there now, she looked impossibly young.
Not a murderer. Not a woman consumed by resentment. Just my eighteen-year-old half-sister.
For a brief, painful moment, I remembered what it felt like to love her.
Then the memory of a silver dagger buried itself beneath my ribs.
“Navassa?”
I blinked.
Father frowned slightly.
“Are you feeling unwell?”
“No.”
The lie came easily.
“I’m fine.”
The concern faded from his expression.
“Good. We’ll be leaving shortly.”
I nodded and took my seat.
Breakfast passed in a blur of conversation I barely heard. Father discussed travel arrangements. Cressida complained about crowd sizes. Mallory seemed unusually animated, asking question after question about the competitors expected to participate.
The first time around, I had found her excitement infectious.
Now I simply listened.
And remembered.
Remembered her leaning over balconies to watch the competitors train.
Remembered her whispering about handsome Alphas.
Remembered exactly which competitor had held her attention from the very beginning.
Jareth Ravenscar.
The memory surfaced so naturally that I almost smiled.
Almost, until I remembered her screaming a witch lied to her about who would be king.
By midmorning, the royal arena grounds overflowed with people.
Nobles occupied raised viewing platforms draped in banners while thousands of spectators filled the lower stands. Pack colors flew everywhere. Music echoed through the enormous stone arena. Excitement rolled through the crowd in visible waves.
The kingdom had gathered to witness its future.
Father escorted us to the Moonfell family’s reserved section near the front.
The moment I sat down, memories crashed into me all over again.
I had sat in this exact seat thirteen years ago. I had worn this exact gown. I had watched this exact ceremony unfold.
Only this time, I knew how the story ended.
The realization made my stomach twist.
A trumpet sounded.
The crowd erupted.
Conversation vanished beneath thunderous applause as members of the Lycan Council entered the arena floor.
One by one, dignitaries followed.
Council members.
Military commanders.
Regional leaders.
Then the king.
The applause doubled.
I stared as the dying Lycan King appeared beneath the royal banner.
Silver Rot had already begun claiming him. I could see it now that I knew what to look for.
The slight weakness in his movements. The unnatural pallor beneath his skin. The careful way he conserved his strength.
In my first life, I had missed those signs entirely.
Now they seemed impossible to ignore.
When the king finally took his seat, silence gradually settled across the arena.
A councilman stepped forward.
“The Alpha Trials begin.”
The announcement sent another wave of excitement through the crowd.
Mine was not among it.
I already knew what these trials would cost.
One by one, the competitors were introduced.
Twelve Alphas.
Twelve warriors.
Twelve men competing for the greatest prize in the kingdom— mine and my sisters hand in marriage and along with it, an opportunity to be crowned the Lycan King.
Some names I remembered. Others had faded over the years.
The crowd cheered politely for most of them.
Then Tiberius Blackmoor entered the arena.
The reaction was immediate.
Thunderous.
Deafening.
Thousands of voices erupted at once.
Even now, it was easy to understand why.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, and effortlessly commanding. Confidence radiated from him without arrogance. He carried himself like a man who already knew exactly where he belonged.
Like a king.
A strange knot formed in my stomach.
The first time I saw him, I had been impressed.
This time, I felt only discomfort. Because I no longer saw the future king.
I saw the husband who had spent thirteen years loving me in all the wrong ways, if you could call it love.
Beside me, movement caught my attention.
Mallory had leaned forward slightly.
Her eyes remained fixed on Tiberius as he crossed the arena floor.
Interesting.
I frowned faintly.
The first time around, she hadn’t cared about Tiberius. He’s thirteen years older than her. She called him ‘old’ before.
Everyone knew he was powerful.
Everyone knew he was favored.
But Mallory’s attention had belonged elsewhere.
The memory remained crystal clear.
She had spent the entire opening ceremony asking questions about another Alpha.
Watching another Alpha.
Smiling at another Alpha.
My gaze drifted back toward the arena entrance.
As if summoned by the thought itself, the announcer called the next name.
“Jareth Ravenscar.”
The applause wasn’t nearly as loud.
Not because he lacked presence.
Because most people didn’t yet understand what they were seeing.
Jareth stepped into the arena with the same quiet confidence I remembered. Dark hair. Storm-gray eyes. Broad shoulders earned through hard work rather than privilege. He didn’t wave to the crowd. Didn’t seek attention. Didn’t perform.
He simply walked forward like a man with nothing to prove.
Even before the trials began, there had been something different about him. While the other Alphas acknowledged the roaring crowd, Jareth seemed completely uninterested in being admired. His focus remained on the arena ahead, as though the competition itself mattered more than the attention that came with it.
The first time I witnessed that entrance, Mallory had practically stopped breathing.
I remembered it vividly.
The smile.
The excitement.
The immediate fascination.
Slowly, I turned toward her.
Nothing.
No smile.
No widened eyes.
No whispered comment.
Mallory barely looked at him.
Instead, her attention returned to Tiberius.
A small crease formed between my brows.
That was…
Strange. For the first time since waking, I found myself questioning my own memories.
Had she not actually been drawn to Jareth immediately?
Did her admiration actually come later than I had remembered?
For several moments, I watched her from the corner of my eye.
Mallory continued tracking Tiberius’s movements across the arena floor while Jareth took his place among the other competitors.
An uncomfortable feeling settled low in my stomach.
Memory wasn’t perfect. Thirteen years was a lifetime to ask the mind to preserve every glance and every conversation. Perhaps grief was rewriting details that had once seemed insignificant.
Yet as the ceremony continued, I found myself watching my sister far more than the competitors.
Because something felt wrong.
Not dramatically wrong.
Not obviously wrong.
Just different enough to make me uneasy.
And as the final introductions concluded and the crowd erupted into celebration once more, I found myself staring at Mallory’s profile and wondering why the story already felt different than I remembered.
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