Reborn To Save My Alpha, But His Enemy Is My True Mate

The first scream came from the west side of the palace.

Hannah Mercer dropped the stack of clean towels in her arms.

A second scream followed, lower and cut short. Then the alarm began.

For one stunned second, everyone in the service corridor stopped moving. Ruth did not.

“Kitchen cellar,” she snapped at the younger maids. “Go. Now.”

The old housekeeper caught Hannah by the wrist before she could follow. Her fingers were strong despite the tremor in them.

“You too.”

A crash shook dust from the ceiling. Hannah smelled blood.

Not the thin metallic scent of a cut finger or a kitchen accident. Too much of it. Fresh, hot, mixed with sweat, smoke, and the wild animal musk of wolves shifting somewhere too close.

Her own wolf pressed hard beneath her skin.

“What’s happening?”

Ruth’s mouth tightened. “Nothing you can fix.” Another impact struck the building. This one came with snarling. Hannah looked toward the stairwell.

The palace had always seemed impossible to break. Stone, reinforced doors, guarded grounds on the highest stretch of Blackwater territory. She had spent years polishing its floors, carrying linens through its halls, learning which doors stuck in wet weather and which stairs creaked under a heavy step.

Now something slammed into the outer wing hard enough to make the lights flicker. People were running upstairs.

Warriors were running toward the noise.

Staff were running away from it.

Hannah saw blood on the banister.

“Ruth.”

“I said cellar.”

Ruth released her and turned to shove another servant toward the back stairs. Hannah should have obeyed.

She had built a life out of obeying sensible instructions. Keep her head down. Work hard. Be useful. An Omega maid survived by noticing everything and making herself a problem for no one.

Then a wounded warrior stumbled through the door at the end of the corridor.

He caught himself on the wall, leaving a red handprint behind. Hannah moved before she thought.

She reached him as his knees buckled.

“Sit down.”

“I need—”

“You need to stay conscious.”

She got his arm over her shoulders. His weight nearly folded her, but Ruth was there a moment later, helping lower him against the wall.

The warrior clutched his side. Blood soaked through his shirt between his fingers.

“Pressure,” Hannah said, grabbing one of the towels she had dropped. She shoved it into his hand. “Hard.”

Ruth looked at her.

That look said everything it had said a hundred times before. Stubborn girl. Hannah almost smiled.

The front of the palace erupted in noise. Glass shattered. Someone shouted for the Alpha.

Every part of Hannah went still. Brandon. She stood.

Ruth caught at her sleeve. “Don’t.”

Hannah heard another roar from above. Not just a wolf. An Alpha.

Even through stone and chaos, the sound carried a weight that made her wolf crouch instinctively. Brandon Hale was somewhere on the main floor. Alive. Fighting. Hannah pulled free.

“I’m only going to look.”

“That is a lie, and not even a good one.”

But Hannah was already running.

She knew the palace better than most warriors knew it. Not because anyone had taught her its defenses. Because she had scrubbed its corners.

She took the narrow service stairs instead of the main staircase and came out behind the long dining hall.

A table had been overturned across the doorway.

One of the tall windows was gone.

Beyond it, night had swallowed the grounds.

Inside, two wolves crashed across the floor in a blur of fur and teeth.

Hannah stopped so fast her shoulder hit the wall. One wore Blackwater’s scent. The other did not.

The strange wolf twisted, jaws closing on the Blackwater warrior’s shoulder. Wood splintered beneath them. Hannah backed away.

She was not a fighter. She could shift. She could run. She could bite if cornered.

That did not make her stupid enough to throw herself between trained warriors.

A human shout came from the central hall.

Hannah slipped through the side passage. Then she saw Brandon.

He was barefoot, shirt torn at one shoulder, blood streaked down one forearm. He stood between the attackers and the people retreating toward the inner rooms. Three wolves circled him. He did not retreat.

Hannah had watched him for years without ever being noticed.

She had watched him stop beside injured patrolmen when other Alphas might have gone straight to command. She had watched him send stronger fighters home to recover instead of spending them because he could. She had watched him stand alone after funerals and remember every name.

She had loved him quietly because quiet things were the only things she had ever believed she was allowed to keep.

Now there was nothing quiet about him. One wolf lunged. Brandon shifted.

Bone and muscle changed in a violent rush, and the man was gone. Brandon’s massive wolf hit the attacker in midair.

The collision cracked against the floor. Hannah forgot to breathe.

Brandon tore free, turned, and drove another wolf backward before it could reach the retreating staff. Even now.

Even with blood on the floor and enemies inside his home, he was holding the line so other people could escape. Of course he was.

“Hannah!”

Ruth’s voice snapped through the hall. Hannah turned. Ruth had followed her. Anger hit first. Then fear.

“What are you doing?”

“Coming after the idiot who thinks ‘only going to look’ means anything useful.”

Something moved behind Ruth. Hannah saw fur. Teeth.

“Ruth!”

Ruth looked over her shoulder. Too late.

The wolf struck her from the side.

Hannah heard the impact more clearly than the screaming around them. Ruth went down. Hannah ran.

She did not think about rank or strength or the fact that the attacker was twice her weight. She grabbed the nearest thing within reach—a broken chair leg—and swung with both hands.

Wood cracked against the wolf’s muzzle. It bought her one second. Only one.

But a Blackwater warrior slammed into the attacker from the side, and both wolves disappeared into the wreckage of the dining hall. Hannah dropped beside Ruth.

“No. No, no.”

Blood spread beneath Ruth’s body. Too fast.

Hannah pressed both hands over the wound because hands were what she had. Because pressure was useful. Because doing something was better than understanding. Ruth’s eyes found hers.

“Cellar,” she breathed.

“Stop talking.”

“Hannah.”

“Don’t.”

Ruth’s hand lifted.

For a moment, it rested against Hannah’s cheek. Then it slipped.

Hannah caught it before it hit the floor.

“Ruth?”

The old housekeeper did not answer. Hannah pressed harder.

“Ruth.”

Nothing.

Around her, the palace kept fighting. A wolf screamed. Someone shouted an order. Stone shook under another impact.

Hannah stayed on her knees with Ruth’s blood between her fingers until a shadow crossed the floor. She looked up.

An unfamiliar wolf was coming toward her.

There was no Blackwater warrior between them. Hannah rose. Her legs shook.

She still had the broken chair leg. Ridiculous weapon. She tightened her grip anyway. The wolf sprang. Hannah moved sideways. Not fast enough.

Claws ripped across her side and threw her into the wall.

Pain flashed white through her body.

She hit the floor hard enough to lose the chair leg. The wolf turned. Hannah tried to stand.

Her left leg folded beneath her.

Across the hall, Brandon fought another attacker near the open doors. He was still alive.

That was the only thought that made it through the pain. Brandon was still alive.

The wolf in front of her lowered its head.

Hannah searched the floor for anything she could use. Broken glass. A fallen serving tray.

Ruth’s hand, motionless only a few feet away. Hannah crawled toward the tray.

The wolf hit her before she reached it.

This time the pain went deep.

A brutal pressure under her ribs. Then heat. Her body stopped obeying her.

The attacker vanished from her narrowing vision as something struck it from the side.

Hannah could not turn her head far enough to see what. She heard fighting. She heard Brandon’s roar.

She heard someone calling for the wounded to be moved.

Her palm slid on the floor. Blood. Hers now.

She thought of all the mornings she had crossed these halls before dawn, when the palace belonged to servants and guards changing shifts.

She thought of Ruth complaining that Hannah folded sheets too tightly.

She thought of Brandon accepting a cup from her once without looking at her face. Such a small life. She had never minded that.

She had only wanted the people she loved to survive it. Her eyes found Ruth.

Then Brandon, a shape still moving through the hall.

Hannah tried to say his name. No sound came. The ceiling blurred. The noise receded.

Her last clear thought was not about the Moon Goddess. It was not a prayer.

It was a furious, useless wish.

If I had known this was coming, I could have done something. Darkness took her.

“Hannah.”

She opened her eyes.

Morning light lay across a familiar ceiling.

For one disoriented second, she could not breathe. Then someone gripped her shoulder.

“Hannah, wake up. You’ll be late.”

Ruth Bennett stood beside her bed. Alive.

Ruth was alive.

Hannah stared at her until Ruth frowned.

“What?”

Hannah reached up and caught her wrist. Warm skin. A pulse under her thumb.

Ruth looked down at their joined hands. “Did you hit your head in your sleep?” Hannah tightened her grip.

She had held this hand while blood spread beneath Ruth’s body.

She remembered the weight of it when Ruth could no longer hold on to her.

Now Ruth’s fingers flexed impatiently inside hers.

“Hannah.”

She let go.

“Sorry.”

Ruth studied her face.

Hannah forced herself to look away before the older woman saw too much. The room was wrong. No. The room was right. That was worse.

Her narrow bed stood against the wall exactly where it always had. Her work clothes hung from the chair. Morning light came through the window instead of smoke. There was no blood on her hands. Hannah looked down sharply. Clean palms. She turned them over. Her fingers started shaking.

She shoved the blanket aside. No torn clothing, no blood, and no wound in her side.

She pressed both hands beneath her ribs where the wolf had hit her. Nothing. Her skin was unbroken.

“Hannah?”

Ruth’s irritation was fading.

Hannah climbed out of bed too quickly and nearly stumbled.

The floor was cold under her bare feet. Cold. Solid. Real.

Her wolf was there too, restless beneath her skin but not injured, not fading with her.

Hannah went to the small mirror. Her own face stared back.

No blood at her mouth, and no grayness from dying. No mark from being thrown against the palace wall. She touched her cheek.

The woman in the mirror copied her. Twenty-four years old. Alive.

“Hannah, you’re frightening me.”

Ruth came closer.

Hannah looked at her reflection instead of turning around.

“What day is it?”

Silence.

Then, “You did hit your head.”

“What day?”

Ruth told her. Hannah stopped breathing.

“No.”

Ruth’s eyebrows drew together.

Hannah crossed the room and grabbed her phone.

The screen lit beneath her thumb. The date matched. She stared at it. Once. Twice. She opened the calendar. Same date. She checked the time. She checked the date again.

Ruth moved beside her. “Do you want me to get someone?”

“No.”

The answer came too fast.

Hannah locked the phone, then unlocked it again. Same date. It could be a dream.

Except she had never dreamed with this much resistance in it.

The cold floor hurt her feet. The phone edge dug into her palm. Ruth smelled like soap, clean cotton, and the faint herbal balm she rubbed into one wrist when it ached. Hannah knew that scent.

She had missed it before she had even understood Ruth was gone. Her throat tightened.

Ruth touched the back of her hand to Hannah’s forehead. Hannah flinched.

“Well, you don’t feel feverish.”

“I’m fine.”

“You look as if someone climbed out from under your bed.”

Hannah almost laughed.

What came out was a broken sound. Ruth’s expression changed completely.

“Hannah.”

She opened her arms. That was all it took. Hannah stepped into them. Ruth caught her.

She was warm and solid, and Hannah had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep herself from making a sound that would demand explanations she could never give. Ruth patted her back.

“There now.”

Hannah closed her eyes. Not dead, not dead, and not dead.

She let herself have three breaths. Then she pulled away.

Ruth looked suspicious again. That was better. Suspicious Ruth belonged to the world Hannah understood.

“You’re going to tell me what that was?”

“Bad dream.”

Ruth snorted. “Must have been a masterpiece.”

Hannah wiped at her face before any tears could fall.

“I’m all right.”

“You’re also late.”

That landed differently. Late. Work. Routine. Hannah looked at the chair.

Her uniform was there because it was supposed to be there.

Ruth had come to wake her because Hannah had overslept. She knew what came next. Dress. Hair. Downstairs. The morning assignment.

The exact ordinary machinery of a day she had already lived. Hannah changed quickly.

Her hands remembered every movement even while her mind fought them. Fasten. Smooth. Tie back her hair. Ruth complained about the time.

Hannah knew the sentence before she finished it. Not word for word. Close enough.

A chill crawled across Hannah’s arms. She said nothing. They left the room. Hannah watched everything. The hallway was intact. No smoke stains, and no shattered doors. At the stairs, she slowed.

Six months later, warriors would run up these steps while servants fled down them.

Now two staff members passed carrying folded linen and arguing quietly about whose turn it was to handle a tedious morning task. Neither had blood on them. Neither was afraid. Hannah followed Ruth downstairs.

She checked the wall near the service corridor. Clean.

The place where the wounded warrior had collapsed was empty.

Her eyes dropped to the floor. No red handprint.

No towels scattered where she had dropped them.

The palace smelled of breakfast, cleaning solution, damp morning air. Normal. Painfully normal.

Hannah began testing the day without letting anyone notice.

She checked where the linens had been stacked. Correct.

She watched which doors were opened first. Correct.

She listened to the cadence of the morning staff moving through the palace. Familiar.

When someone told her what she had been assigned to do, Hannah already knew before the words were finished. Her stomach turned. She did it anyway.

A dream could copy faces. Maybe.

A dying mind could create a room. Maybe. But this? The order of work.

The forgotten cloth someone came back for.

The squeak in a service cart wheel she remembered hearing for weeks before anyone repaired it.

Tiny things no one would choose to dream about.

By the time Hannah reached the end of the first part of her morning work, denial had become harder than terror.

She had lived this day before.

She stepped aside where no one would question her for standing still and pulled out her phone again. The date had not changed.

Hannah counted backward in her head. Not approximately. Carefully. From the assault. From the blood.

From Ruth dying on the palace floor. Six months.

Her fingers closed around the phone. Six months before she died. Her first instinct was Brandon. Go find him. See him. Make sure he was here.

Her body had already turned toward the main part of the palace before she stopped herself. No.

If she saw him now, she did not know what she would do. Cry? Stare? Say something impossible?

You were fighting when I died. They came into your home. I watched everything fall apart. Hannah lowered her eyes.

She had spent years learning how not to be noticed by Brandon Hale.

One impossible morning was enough to destroy that skill if she was careless. Facts first.

She needed facts before hope made her stupid. Hannah returned to work.

But now she watched the palace as if every ordinary thing had a second meaning. Six months.

That should have felt like time. It didn’t.

Because the attack had not begun with wolves breaking through palace windows.

By then, they had already lost.

There had been other things first.

Incidents she had noticed only because she was the person cleaning after them, carrying supplies around them, hearing scraps of conversation while people forgot a maid was in the room. Some memories were useless.

Some had blurred together after months of fear.

She could not trust every detail simply because she had died with it in her head, and Hannah slowed because the uncertainty mattered.

If this was real—if she truly had been returned to this day—then memory was the only advantage she possessed.

She could not afford to turn guesses into facts.

So what did she remember with certainty? Not rumors. Not conversations she had only half heard. An event. Something public. Something impossible to mistake. Hannah went still beside the linen cart. She knew. The depot. Fire climbing into the night. People running. Supplies destroyed. The first disaster everyone had called an accident. Hannah gripped the cart handle. The first event she remembered with absolute certainty was the depot burning.

The depot would burn. Hannah knew that much.

What she did not know was whether knowing could change anything.

She stood beside the linen cart with both hands wrapped around its handle while the palace moved around her. Footsteps crossed the service corridor. A door opened and shut. Somewhere farther down, Ruth was giving instructions in the firm voice that could turn three distracted maids into an organized line without ever becoming a shout.

Normal morning sounds.

Hannah had never understood how precious ordinary noise could be.

“Hannah.”

She turned too quickly.

Ruth stopped a few feet away and narrowed her eyes.

“You’ve been staring at that cart long enough for it to become self-conscious.”

Hannah loosened her grip.

“Sorry.”

“That word is doing a lot of work today.”

Ruth nodded toward the corridor. “Finish what you’re doing.” Hannah pushed the cart forward.

The wheels rolled over clean stone. No blood.

She forced herself not to look for it again.

The first fire was real. She remembered flames above the depot roof and the bitter smell that had clung to the air afterward. She remembered servants talking about lost supplies and warriors moving in and out of the palace with the tense impatience that had become common over the months that followed.

But memories were not instructions.

She could not walk up to anyone and say a building would burn because she had already watched the next six months happen once. She needed something solid.

Something she could change without telling anyone why.

The thought should have steadied her.

Instead, a man’s voice carried from the main hall. Hannah stopped.

Her body recognized it before her mind caught up. Brandon.

The linen cart bumped lightly against her hip as she lost hold of it.

For an instant she was back on the floor with Ruth’s blood on her hands, looking through a narrowing field of vision toward an Alpha fighting in the wreckage of his own home. She remembered his torn shirt. Blood down his arm.

The roar that had cut through the last moments of her life.

Now his voice came again, calm and unhurried. Alive.

Hannah moved before she decided to.

She left the cart against the wall and crossed to the end of the service passage. The open doorway gave her a narrow view into the main hall. Brandon Hale stood there. No blood, and no torn clothing.

No wolves crashing through broken windows.

Morning light reached across the floor near his boots. The walls behind him were intact. He was speaking to one of the Blackwater warriors, listening with the same focused stillness Hannah had watched from a distance for years. She forgot the depot.

She forgot Ruth waiting for her to finish the linens.

She forgot to hide how long she was looking.

Brandon shifted his weight, and Hannah’s breath caught. Such a small movement. Such an ordinary one.

He was not the Alpha she had last seen surrounded by attackers. He was simply Brandon.

Living through a morning he did not know he had once lost. Hannah’s eyes burned. She blinked hard.

Her love for him had always been private enough to require nothing from him. He had not promised her anything. He had barely had reason to know she existed beyond being one of the people who worked in his home.

That had never stopped her from noticing him.

The way he listened before giving an order.

The way injured people received his attention instead of becoming obstacles around him.

The restraint that made his strength more frightening, not less.

In her first life, she had loved those things from the safe distance allowed to a woman who knew better than to confuse wanting with having.

Death had not made the distance smaller.

It had only made the wanting hurt.

Hannah pressed her fingertips into her palm.

She wanted to walk into the hall.

She wanted to hear his voice closer.

Worse, she wanted to touch his sleeve just once so her body would finally understand what her eyes were telling it. Alive. She stayed where she was.

If she crossed that floor with tears in her eyes, she would have to explain them.

If she said his name the way it sat inside her chest right now, she would be noticed.

And Hannah could not afford to be noticed for the wrong reason. Not yet. Brandon finished speaking. The warrior moved away.

For half a second, Brandon turned in Hannah’s direction.

She stepped back before his gaze reached the service passage. Her shoulder touched the wall. Cowardly, perhaps. Useful, definitely.

She knew how to disappear in this palace.

Disappearing felt less like the shape of her life and more like a choice she could use.

“Hannah?”

Ruth again. Hannah looked over.

Ruth had come around the corner and was staring at the abandoned cart. Then at Hannah. Then toward the main hall.

Understanding of the wrong kind appeared on her face.

“Oh.”

Heat rose into Hannah’s cheeks.

“Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

Ruth’s mouth twitched.

Hannah returned to the cart before the older woman could make the expression into words.

For once, the familiar teasing did not embarrass her as much as it should have.

Ruth was alive enough to tease her.

Brandon was alive enough to embarrass her.

The palace was intact enough for Hannah to worry about being caught staring at its Alpha.

These were not small things anymore. She pushed the cart again. Her hands were steadier.

She had spent the morning asking herself whether this could be a dream, a dying hallucination, some cruel repetition she could not control. Brandon had changed the question.

He was here before the war. Before the final assault.

Before the night when every choice had narrowed to running, fighting, bleeding, dying.

The future had not happened yet.

That did not mean Hannah could control it.

It did mean she had time to interfere.

The realization settled inside her with more weight than hope.

Hope could make her reckless. This was different. This was work. She knew how to work. She knew how to watch.

And she knew one thing that had not happened yet. The depot fire.

Hannah reached the end of the corridor and stopped beside the linen shelves.

In her first life, the fire had been something that happened to Blackwater.

An accident. A loss. The beginning of a long chain no one had understood until it was too late.

Now it was still ahead of her. Still changeable, perhaps.

She did not need to understand six months of war today. She needed one test.

One event she remembered clearly enough to recognize when it began.

If she could change that, then the life she remembered was not a sentence.

And Brandon’s future was not fixed.

Hannah looked back toward the main hall, though Brandon was no longer visible. Then she faced her work again. The depot fire was her first objective. Stopping it meant getting close enough to act without giving anyone a reason to ask how a maid knew where to watch.

The depot fire had happened before anyone understood there was a war coming. That was the problem.

Hannah pushed the linen cart into the storage room and shut the door behind her.

For the first time all morning, no one was speaking to her. No footsteps were approaching. No task waited in someone else’s voice.

She put both hands on the cart handle and closed her eyes. The fire.

Not the attack six months later. Not Ruth’s blood. Not Brandon fighting in the central hall. One thing. One memory.

She had to take it apart without adding anything she had learned afterward.

That was harder than it sounded.

In her first life, the depot had become important only after it burned. Before that, it had been part of the machinery of Blackwater—supplies arrived, supplies left, servants complained when something was delayed, warriors came and went, and Hannah did her work.

She had never stood over maps.

No one had invited an Omega maid into security meetings.

She had not known who guarded what, or why a delivery changed, or whether a patrol had noticed trouble beyond the palace grounds.

What she had known was what crossed her hands. Soap. Clean cloth.

Food sent up from the kitchens.

Crates that appeared where they were supposed to appear. Crates that did not. She opened her eyes.

That was where she had to begin.

Not with what the Alpha might have known.

With what Hannah Mercer had seen.

She pulled a folded cloth from the cart, set it on the shelf, and let the movement drag another piece of memory loose.

The depot had burned at night.

She remembered waking to the alarm.

Not the palace alarm from the night she died. A different one. Farther away. The noise had moved through the compound in waves as people learned what was happening.

Someone had opened the servants’ door.

The air outside had smelled wrong.

Smoke carried differently in the damp Florida night. It had settled low enough that even from the palace grounds Hannah had tasted ash.

She had gone as far as the doorway before Ruth ordered her back inside. Hannah swallowed. Ruth had been alive then.

Annoyed. Practical. More concerned about half-dressed servants standing where they would get in the warriors’ way than about anyone’s curiosity.

The memory almost pulled Hannah sideways.

She forced herself back to the fire. What came before it? That morning had been ordinary.

Or she had believed it was.

Hannah began sorting the remaining linens more slowly.

She remembered work because work divided her days better than dates ever had. Breakfast cleanup. Guest rooms. The long hall. Fresh towels. A request from the kitchen. A trip downstairs. Nothing that had frightened her.

Nothing she had recognized as danger, which made the absence itself significant.

If someone had walked into the palace bleeding that day, she would have remembered.

If Brandon had ordered an evacuation, she would have remembered.

If warriors had filled every corridor, she would have remembered. They had not.

The disaster had arrived inside a day that looked normal to people who did not know where to look.

Hannah’s fingers paused on a folded sheet.

Where had she been when she first heard the word depot? Before the fire. She searched. A corridor. Voices.

Not a conversation with her. Never with her.

Two people passing while she worked.

No faces came clearly enough for her to trust them.

That frustrated her, but she refused to fix the memory by inventing what she wanted.

She had heard the depot mentioned. That much she believed. Why?

She pressed her lips together. Supplies. Of course supplies.

But “supplies” could mean almost anything. Food. Medical stock. Equipment. Household goods. Things used by warriors. Things used by servants.

Hannah had lived close enough to Blackwater’s operations to touch their consequences and far enough from authority to know almost none of their reasons.

For years, she had thought that made her unimportant.

Now it might be the only reason she had a chance. People talked around servants.

Doors opened while servants carried trays.

Orders left marks in kitchens and laundry rooms long before anyone explained them.

Hannah had never needed to understand the whole machine to notice when one part made the others change. She put the sheet away.

After the fire, the changes had been obvious.

Work had doubled in strange places.

People had rationed things they normally used without thinking.

Warriors had moved through the palace tired and angry. Requests had come with urgency.

Brandon had looked as if he had stopped sleeping.

Hannah’s chest tightened at the memory.

She had seen him one morning after the fire standing alone near a window while someone spoke to him. He had been listening, as he always listened, but exhaustion had sat in the line of his shoulders.

She had wanted to bring him coffee. That was all.

She had stood there holding a tray and wishing she could do one useful thing that belonged to him.

Someone else had taken the tray. Brandon had never known.

Hannah looked down at her hands.

In the life she remembered, usefulness had always meant doing what someone asked before they had to ask twice. Clean this. Carry that. Stay out of the way.

She had been good at it.

She had died good at it.

The thought was ugly enough to make her straighten. No.

That was not fair to the woman she had been.

She had helped the wounded warrior during the attack. She had run toward Ruth. She had fought a wolf with a broken chair leg because there had been no better weapon. She had not been weak.

But she had spent too much of her life believing that usefulness and invisibility were the same thing. They were not. Hannah returned to the memory. The depot burned. Blackwater lost supplies. The palace changed afterward.

Before the fire, something must have made the fire possible. That last thought was dangerous. She stopped herself. Must have was not remembered. It was deduction. Useful, perhaps. Not fact. She needed rules.

Hannah pulled her phone from her pocket, then hesitated.

Writing down impossible memories would be stupid.

Instead she counted on her fingers. What she saw herself. What she heard herself.

What changed in work she personally did. Nothing else.

If she could build the days before the fire from those pieces, maybe she would find a point she could touch. Not a secret military order.

Not an enemy she had never seen.

Something small enough for a maid to reach.

She slid the phone back into her pocket.

The silence of the storage room suddenly felt protective.

Out in the palace, Hannah knew exactly how to move without attracting attention. She lowered her gaze when rank required it. She stepped aside before important people had to ask. She listened without appearing to listen.

Those habits had kept her safe.

They had also kept her at the edge of every decision.

If she only repeated them, she would learn what she had learned the first time. Too late. Hannah gripped the cart.

She did not need to announce that she had died.

She did not need to walk into Brandon’s office and tell him the future.

The very idea made heat climb her neck. He barely knew her.

And if she approached him with a story about waking six months before her own death, she would sound frightened at best and dangerous at worst. No.

She needed proof before she asked anyone to believe anything. The depot was that proof. Or it could be. If she remembered enough.

If she found the right moment.

If she changed even one piece of what came next. Hannah opened the storage-room door.

The service corridor stretched ahead of her, ordinary and familiar.

For years, she had known how to cross it without anyone remembering she had been there.

She pushed the cart over the threshold.

To stop the depot from burning, that could no longer be enough.

Sooner or later, Hannah would have to let herself be seen.

Hannah checked the clock above the service corridor for the third time in ten minutes. Eight seventeen. She kept walking.

The rear entrance had opened at eight twelve. Two kitchen workers had gone through with empty crates. A palace vehicle had passed beyond the glass a few minutes later, heading toward the lower part of the compound.

None of that meant anything yet. That was the point.

Hannah could not afford to turn ordinary movement into evidence simply because she was frightened.

She carried fresh towels toward the guest rooms, slowed as she passed the next doorway, and glanced through it.

The side entrance was still locked. Good. Or maybe irrelevant.

“Hannah.”

She nearly walked into Ruth.

The older woman stood with a bundle of folded sheets against one hip. Hannah stopped.

Ruth looked past her toward the door, then up at the clock. Then back at Hannah.

“What are you doing?”

“Working.”

“That answer would be stronger if you were looking at the towels instead of every door in the palace.”

Hannah adjusted the stack in her arms.

“I’m looking.”

“So I noticed.”

Ruth stepped closer.

There was no teasing in her face this time.

Since Hannah had awakened, Ruth had caught her staring too long, asking what day it was, watching Brandon from the edge of the main hall, and going quiet at things that should have meant nothing.

Twice that morning, when Brandon crossed the hall, Hannah had turned back to her work before he could catch her staring. She wanted him alive badly enough to make herself visible when it mattered. Wanting his attention for herself was different, and she made herself look away.

Hannah had known the questions would come.

She had hoped for more time.

Ruth lowered her voice. “Are you waiting for someone?”

“No.”

“Did someone frighten you?”

“No.”

That answer came quickly because it was true in the way Ruth meant it.

No one in this life had threatened her. Not yet. Ruth’s eyes narrowed.

“You keep checking the entrances.”

Hannah said nothing.

“And the clock.”

Still nothing.

“And this morning you asked which work was being prepared before lunch.”

Hannah looked down at the towels. Too much.

She had thought she was being careful.

Apparently careful looked different when someone had known you for years.

Ruth shifted the sheets to her other arm. “If you’re in trouble, tell me before you make it worse by trying to solve it alone.”

For one dangerous second, Hannah wanted to. The words were right there. I died. You died. The palace fell.

I woke up this morning six months before it happened.

She imagined Ruth’s face if she said them. Concern first. Then fear.

Then questions Hannah could not answer. Who sent her back? Why? Was it the Moon Goddess?

Could she prove any of it?

Hannah had nothing except memory and a future fire.

Worse, telling Ruth would put the knowledge inside her too. It would change the way Ruth moved through the palace. The way she spoke. What she watched.

Hannah did not know how many changes the future could bear before her memories became useless.

She forced her grip to loosen around the towels.

“I’m not in trouble.”

Ruth waited.

Hannah added, “I’ve just been paying more attention.”

“That is not an explanation.”

“No.”

Ruth’s eyebrows rose. Hannah almost apologized. She stopped herself.

Apologizing would not make the answer better.

“I’m trying to understand how some of the deliveries and preparation work fit together.”

Ruth stared at her.

“Why?”

Because the depot will burn.

Hannah held the words behind her teeth.

“I noticed I don’t actually know.”

That, at least, was true. Ruth looked unconvinced.

“A maid does not need to know every vehicle schedule in Blackwater.”

“No.”

“Or which door opens at what minute.”

“No.”

“Or when depot stock is staged.”

Hannah’s attention snapped up. Ruth saw it. There.

A tiny shift in the older woman’s expression. Hannah had reacted too fast. Ruth sighed. “That one.”

“What?”

“That is the one you care about.”

Hannah wished she had inherited the gift of lying from someone more talented.

Instead she said, “I heard people talking about it.”

“People always talk about supplies.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you acting as if a flour delivery might attack you?”

Despite herself, Hannah laughed.

The sound surprised both of them. Ruth’s mouth softened.

For a moment Hannah saw her on the palace floor again, blood spreading beneath her. She looked away. Ruth touched her elbow. Not restraining. Just there.

“Hannah.”

“I’m fine.”

“You keep saying that as if repetition will make me stupid.”

Hannah swallowed.

“I don’t want you worrying.”

“That has never been your decision.”

The answer hurt more than it should have.

In her first life, Hannah had thought love was something she could manage by being useful enough not to burden anyone. Bring the right thing. Finish the work. Keep the fear to herself.

Ruth had never followed those rules.

Hannah looked at the woman who had died in her arms and understood that protecting her could not mean turning her into a stranger.

But the truth was still impossible. Not yet.

“I had a bad dream,” Hannah said.

Ruth’s expression did not change.

“A very bad one.”

“That explains the morning. Not the doors.”

Hannah considered.

Then chose the largest truth she could safely give.

“It made me think about how much happens around me that I never really notice until afterward.”

Ruth studied her for a long moment. Hannah let her. No supernatural confession, no future fire, and no dead Alpha.

Only the part that belonged to both lives.

Finally Ruth exhaled through her nose.

“Well. If you’re determined to become an expert in corridors, at least do it while carrying those upstairs.”

Hannah’s shoulders loosened.

“That’s all?”

“No. I am also going to watch you.”

“I assumed.”

“You should.”

Ruth started past her, then paused.

“And if this turns into something more serious than a bad dream, you tell me.”

Hannah’s throat tightened.

“I will.”

It was not exactly a lie.

She would tell Ruth if she found something Ruth needed to know.

She just could not tell her why Hannah knew to look.

Ruth continued toward the laundry room.

Hannah stood still for two seconds before forcing herself back to work. Being noticed had consequences.

She had wanted to step outside her invisibility.

She had not expected the first person to see her so quickly.

For the next hour, Hannah made herself move normally.

She completed each task before checking anything else. No hovering near doors, and no repeated glances at clocks.

She let the palace come to her. That worked better.

From the stairs, she saw the kitchen staff begin setting aside goods for later movement.

From the service hall, she heard a door unlock and the ordinary scrape of crates over stone. She did not follow. She remembered.

In her first life, preparation for the depot had a rhythm she had never considered important.

Some things were staged early because they moved before the heat built. Other things waited until later.

The pattern had been so ordinary that Hannah had barely registered it.

Now she watched the shape of it without trying to force meaning onto every piece.

Near midday, she returned with an empty cart. Then she stopped.

Three supply carts were already lined against the wall near the rear service entrance. Hannah knew them. Not those exact carts. The arrangement.

The kind of palace stock gathered before a run toward the depot. Her pulse sharpened. She looked at the clock. Then at the carts.

In the life she remembered, this preparation had not happened today.

She was almost certain of that. Almost was not enough.

Hannah closed her eyes for one breath and searched the memory by work, not fear.

The day before the staging, Ruth had assigned her upstairs.

The next morning, Hannah had complained about maneuvering around carts in this very passage. Tomorrow morning. Not today. She opened her eyes. The carts were still there.

The first thing she remembered had already changed.