THE LUNA WHO STOLE TIME

Blood. It was everywhere.

Elara stood stock still amid a destroyed throne room, her toes bare and slippery with it. Her head was heavy with the crown, which squashed down upon her skull like an unwelcome growth. The moonlight that fell through shattered windows cast a deadly glow over the corpses. Her walls were bloodied. She had no idea how it came to be perched atop her.

A low moan caused her to turn.

Cassian.

He was standing against the stairs of the throne, his uniform of black torn and bloodied. His hand held tight over his side, trying to stem the life draining from him. His eyes-those storm-grays she knew so intimately-found hers amid the chaos.

"Elara...," he rasped. "Run."

She attempted to turn, but her legs would not obey. Her heart pounded furiously. Her palms were bloodied, but she had no idea whose. She couldn't even remember how the fight started-or how she'd gotten Luna's crown.

Footsteps were behind her.

She turned, already knowing what she would find.

A figure stood atop the stairs, its visage obscured by a silver mask. The Betrayer. They held a moonlit and blood-stained blade. Elara took a step back, unsure.

"Why?" she whispered, her voice small and shaking.

The Betrayer shrugged. "Because this is always how it ends."

The knife fell.

And all was darkness.

⸻

She sat up in a flash, gasping up from sleep.

Gone was the throne room. Gone was the blood. Her hands were tight in rough blankets, and stale herbs filled her lungs. She was in some small, dusty cottage-somebody's cottage. She looked about in a daze.

A broken mirror on the wall reflected at her. No crown. Just her-white, gasping for breath, with tangled dark hair and staring eyes.

She clung to the bed, panting for breath. Not again.

Outside, voices rose. Chickens clucked. Children laughed. It sounded like a village...a peaceful one.

A knock at the door startled her.

"Get up, Elara!" barked a sharp voice. "You're late!"

Jarrek.

Her stomach twisted.

She recognized this life now.

Jarrek was her opposite in this life-if you could even say that. A nasty Beta who never made her his never touched her but hurt her. She was only a weight to him. An omega without a wolf, without a position, without hope. In this life, she was nothing.

And yet, she remembered.

She remembered each death.

Each betrayal.

Each false face.

Elara pinched her fingers to her chest. The hourglass symbol there pulsed softly, reminding her of what she'd lost.

Three lives.

She'd died seven times. Each time, the symbol faded. Each time, she awoke in a different iteration of her life. A different husband. A different destiny. But always... always the same demise.

Betrayal. Blood. Death.

"I don't have time for this," Jarrek growled from the other side of the door. "If you're not outside in one minute, I'm locking the food cabinet again."

She swallowed her pride-and her fear-and pulled on the scratchy village dress folded on the end of the bed. The same routine. The same small, suffocating world.

But this time, she'd remember.

This time, she'd fight.

⸻

The village lay amid a forest, far from the capital. Plain houses, mud roads, and too many regulations. Elara kept her head down as she walked by the other omegas working alongside animals. No one here was fond of her. Not even the elders who governed the village.

"She's cursed," they'd murmur. "She doesn't even have a wolf."

They didn't know. No one did.

Her wolf wasn't dead.

It was trapped.

Trapped inside her by something-or someone. She didn't yet know. But each life held secrets. She just needed to live long enough to put them together.

"Elara!"

She held back a grimace and spun to see Jarrek's glare next to the well.

"Hurry up," he growled, dumping a bucket at her feet. "And if you spill this again, you'll have to lick the whole floor."

She spoke nothing. That was safest.

But within her, there was a seething.

She filled the bucket and pulled it towards the wash shed, her muscles crying out. The sun had just started to rise, the trees gold. It could have been lovely if she weren't hollow inside.

Then the howling began.

Low. Wild. Too close.

Elara froze. That was no ordinary wolf.

The other wolves glanced up, muttering.

"Rogues," one of them muttered.

Jarrek scowled. "Everyone in!"

The villagers ran. Elara let go of the bucket and ran, but the earth beneath her trembled. Out of the forest, black shapes erupted-wild wolves, eyes afire with craziness.

Screams pierced out.

A child stumbled. Elara ran forward and caught him up, taking the blow herself.

A rogue attacked, and she stood in the way-

But hurt her, she did not.

Steel crashed into flesh.

The rogue fell, a blade to its forehead.

Elara stood up-and saw him.

A warrior in black armor. Towering, deadlier. His sword shone in the sun as he killed another rogue with no hesitation.

Cassian.

He hadn't gazed at her initially. His attention was sheer carnage-killing the beasts with gruesome ease. But then his eyes came to rest on her. Her face. Her eyes.

He stopped.

His sword dipped ever so gently.

"Elara?" he breathed.

Her heart jumped into her throat.

He had recalled.

But before she could respond, a rogue struck her from the side. She did not see it until too late.

Cassian leaped forward in a flash-striking the creature in mid-air, and snapping its neck brutally.

And then everything was dark.

Someone called her name.

Then darkness claimed her once more.

She was in a bed-not her own.

Silk sheets are as light as air. The flame dance. The hint of spice and pine in the wind. She opened her eyelids and struggled to the surface.

An enormous room. Not a hut.

A palace.

Elara blinked in bewilderment.

The door slightly creaked open, and a healer peered in. "You're awake," she said with a smile."General Cassian brought you here. You're safe now."

Her heart was racing. She looked at her chest.

The hourglass mark twinkled a fraction brighter.

She didn't die this time.

Cassian saved her.

He remembered her.

Everything was changing.

But that meant-

Someone knocked at the door again.

"Elara?" sounded a familiar voice. Soft. Handsome.

Too charming.

She didn't move.

Prince Rhys.

Her mate is in another timeline.

The man who had kissed her, claimed her, poisoned her during the mating ritual.

He shouldn't be standing at the door.

"Elara," he spoke again. "May I enter?"

She looked at the door, shaking her hands.

Because if Rhys is here...

Then the game was already on.