A month ago, moonlight had looked like this. Kayden and I were beside the lake. He'd kissed me, held me, claimed me. I'd thought I'd found my home, found love.
It had all been a beautiful lie.
A lie I'd paid everything to believe.
Ahead loomed a high wall. No—a cliff.
The Sacred Ground perched at the highest point of pack territory, forest on one side, sheer cliff on the other. The path to the dungeons skirted the cliff's edge.
I stared at that precipice, at the churning sea below frothing white in the moonlight, heard waves crashing against stone.
Let it end.
I couldn't bear this pain anymore. Couldn't face Kayden's cold eyes, the pack's hatred, my soul being shredded piece by piece.
"Wait." The word scraped from my throat, raw as broken strings.
The guards halted. "What?"
"Can I... look at the moon one more time?" I whispered, voice splintering. "Just once more."
The guards exchanged glances. "You'll be in the dungeons soon enough. Look all you want," one shrugged.
They released me.
In that heartbeat, I lunged for the cliff's edge and threw myself over.
"Layla!" A voice tore through the air behind me.
Kayden?
For the first time, he seemed to show raw emotion for my sake. Shock. Terror. Something else I had no time left to decipher.
But it no longer mattered.
My body hit the freezing water. The impact made every bone scream.
But before the sea swallowed my last thread of consciousness,Diana—silent for so long—whimpered out one final, devastating secret.
Layla. You're pregnant.
Chapter Four
Kayden
"Layla!"
My hand clawed at empty air, fingertips grasping nothing but void. Her figure plummeted before my eyes, white dress billowing like the wings of a broken butterfly.
"No—!"
I jolted awake to find myself not at that cliff's edge seven years ago, but on the leather sofa in the charity gala's VIP room.
That dream again.
I dragged a hand across my forehead. My palm came away slick with cold sweat. Breath ragged, heart hammering until it ached. Seven years, and still the dream came—always when I was most exhausted, most vulnerable.
Always the same: Layla at the precipice. No matter how I called, she never looked back. Just threw herself forward into the abyss.
