Not as a refusal, not as something kept outside the door.
It felt more like sleep had left the world entirely, packed up and gone somewhere Lyra could not follow.
She stayed on the floor where she had collapsed, her back pressed against the side of the heavy bed, knees drawn close.
The rug beneath her was soft, expensive, the kind meant to swallow sound and discomfort, yet her spine still found every thread through the thin linen of her tunic.
The room, once overwhelming in its richness, had shrunk into a few fixed points in the dark: the pale shine of the window, the darker mass of the hearth, the door standing at a distance like a closed mouth.
She tried to think.
Her mind had always been orderly. Quiet.
A place where thoughts lined themselves up and waited to be examined.
Now it felt like the aftermath of a battle that had been abandoned halfway through.
Nothing resolved. Craters still smoking.
Pieces of thought scattered where they had fallen.
True Mate.
The words returned, heavy and misshapen.
They weren't a designation. They were a verdict.
Something that stretched forward without end. Fixed. Prewritten.
As inevitable as the slow turning of stars overhead.
How could he say it like that. How could the room accept it without protest.
She looked down at her hands in the dimness.
Pale. Unremarkable.
The hands of a girl who tended books and gardens, not destiny.
There was nothing in them that spoke of permanence, nothing that marked them as belonging to a gold-eyed predator with an ancient bloodline and a claim spoken aloud.
Sion.
Even thinking the name tightened something low in her body.
The Sion in the hall had been distant, ceremonial, power worn like armor.
Possession made visible.
The Sion in the vision had been bloodied, desperate, turning toward her as she fell into mud and pain.
Which one was real.
Both, she suspected, and the knowledge left a dull ache behind her eyes.
He was a stranger who owned her by declaration, and a ghost she had once chosen to die for.
The room still carried his scent, clean and sharp, pine and frost soaked into fabric and stone as if the space itself had been claimed without effort.
The memories pressed in next.
They were not memories in the way she understood them.
They had no shape, no order.
They were shards, sharp and colored, driven into her skull.
When she closed her eyes she could see three moons suspended in the sky, feel the heat of fire against her face, the drag of armor on her shoulders.
She knew the texture of leather gloves.
But there was no sequence. No beginning, no end.
Only flashes of fear, pain, and that strange, unarguable trust.
How did you trust someone with your life in one existence and recoil from them like prey in another.
What did that say about her. About her mind.
Her fingers drifted to her collarbone.
The scar was warm beneath her touch, raised and intricate.
Real enough to silence doubt.
Either she was not mad, or her madness had learned how to carve proof into flesh.
She tried, deliberately, to summon the vision again.
The spear. The mud. The face of the man whose eyes had filled with horror when he realized what he had done.
Nothing came.
Only the echo remained. Phantom pain deep in the bone.
A hollow sickness in her chest where betrayal had lived.
The memory would not obey. It surfaced only when it chose to wound.
And beneath that, the power.
It had erupted from the memory, raw and violent.
Now it felt withdrawn, not gone, just coiled low, like an animal hiding along her spine.
She could feel it there if she stayed still long enough. Latent. Waiting.
The air around her body felt charged, like the moment before a storm breaks.
She did not know how to call it.
She did not know if she wanted to.
It came with pain. With the spear. With the taste of betrayal.
What kind of power asked for that price.
Kael.
The thought arrived softly and cut deeper than the rest.
His face in the hall, pale and helpless.
The winter garden. The pressed flower tucked between pages.
Talk of irrigation systems and artisan guilds, plans built from small truths and patient curiosity.
A connection never declared, only assembled over time.
That world belonged to someone else now.
To a Lyra who had ceased to exist the moment Sion said She is mine.
Kael was on the other side of a wall she could not climb.
He was a Beta. She was something owned. The True Mate of an heir.
There was no path back to the winter garden.
She pressed her face into her knees.
Exhaustion weighed on her, thick and heavy, but every time her eyes closed the images surged back.
Blue hall-light. Gold eyes. A spear catching moonlight.
Her body remained locked tight, every muscle drawn as if expecting impact.
Outside, the night deepened.
The full moon rose higher. Fenrir's Moon.
Cold light spilled through the arched window, laying a bright band across the rugs and reaching the bed where she crouched.
It was an unforgiving light, leaving no corner untouched.
Lyra stared at it.
The moon looked like a scar carved into the sky.
Then the howls began.
They rose from the forbidden forest below the ravine, distant but unmistakable.
Long, ascending notes, mournful and wild, carried on the night wind.
Not the sharp barking of dogs.
These were deeper. Older. Heavy with hunger and something like grief.
Wolves.
Or perhaps not.
The thought was instinctive rather than logical.
In a place ruled by Alphas and ceremonies, howls on such a night could mean anything.
Celebration. A hunt. A declaration of dominance.
She thought of Sion beneath that moon.
His body giving shape to that sound.
The image of him transformed, primal, howling skyward with eyes bright as struck gold unsettled her in a way she could not name.
The clock on the hearth continued its steady ticking.
A heavy oak construction of gears and weights. Each second fell with quiet persistence.
She watched the hand move.
One hour.
Then another.
By three in the morning the world reached that strange point where it was both silent and alive.
The moon began to descend.
The howls faded.
Only the pale stripe of light remained, and the faint glow of her scar when she looked down, a ghostly star set into her skin.
That was when she heard it.
Not a howl. Not the clock.
A soft sound, almost nothing. Friction against wood.
From the door.
Lyra froze. Her breath caught.
Her heart, slowed to a tired rhythm, struck hard against her ribs.
Someone was outside.
It was not Sion. There were no heavy boots, no decisive presence.
This was lighter. Careful.
She had not heard footsteps approach, only the subtle slide.
She pressed herself closer to the bed, eyes fixed on the dark gap beneath the door.
For a moment nothing happened. The ticking of the clock grew loud enough to hurt.
Then something appeared.
An envelope, pale and thin, slid under the door and came to rest at the edge of the moonlight.
Lyra did not move.
Her thoughts went blank, narrowed to that single shape.
A trap.
A test.
A message from Sion.
No. He would not hide.
Kael.
Hope flared, followed immediately by fear sharp enough to sting.
If it was him, the risk was enormous.
Being caught reaching out to the heir's True Mate—
Time stretched. The corridor remained silent.
The envelope waited.
At last instinct overcame fear.
Moving slowly, as if underwater, Lyra lowered herself to all fours and crossed the rug, keeping to the shadows.
The floor was cold beneath her palms.
She picked up the envelope.
Smooth paper. Fine quality. No name. No seal.
Sitting with her back against the door, she opened it carefully.
Inside was a single folded sheet.
No greeting. No signature.
Just familiar handwriting, steady and slanted, ink dark in the moonlight.
The flower survives beneath the snow because its roots remember summer.
Yours remember too. Trust them.
The winter garden is still yours.
— K
It was him.
Foolish. Brave. Reckless.
She pressed the paper to her face, breathing in imagined ink and dust and quiet library air.
The words were a code. A thin line of hope thrown into the dark.
Then she noticed the second line, written below in a hurry.
Do not drink the water in the jug. Elara is not your friend.
Cold spread through her veins.
Her gaze lifted to the marble washstand where the water jugs gleamed softly in the moonlight.
The water Sion had said was safe.
Fear settled into something precise.
Someone wanted her harmed. Poisoned. Kael knew. He was warning her.
The envelope in her lap became more than a message.
It was a lifeline. And a warning shot.
She folded the paper with hands trembling for a new reason and hid it inside her tunic, against her skin, near the burning scar.
The night remained dark. The moon still shone.
But Lyra was no longer only a girl folded into despair.
She sat with her back to the door of her cell, a secret pressed to her chest and danger finally given shape.
The first despair had passed.
In its place, something colder began to form.
Sharper. Fed by unexpected loyalty and the clear knowledge that survival would require more than waiting.
Morning was coming.
And this time, she would be ready.