The steel walls of the sublevel vault exhaled cold silence. A kind of silence you had to earn by bleeding — by surviving long enough to be forgotten.
Magdalene stood at the far end of the corridor, her face lit only by the flickering light above her. A camera blinked red beside the door, and her reflection stared back at her in its lens — not as Magdalene Rivers, the girl the world buried — but as Selene Noir, the woman who had returned to tear it all down.
A soft hiss broke the stillness. The biometric lock scanned the false print she'd lifted from Maddox's own glass the night before. A trick from the old world.
Click.
One of the twelve locks disengaged.
She didn't flinch.
Instead, she exhaled softly, adjusting the collar of her fitted onyx jacket. It was stitched with silver-thread lining — protection against ancient wolfrunes embedded into Vale architecture.
Eight years had turned her into a ghost. Now, she would haunt the king in his own castle.
She pressed her palm flat to the final lock. Her ring — the only relic from the Rivers estate that hadn't been burned — pulsed. The bloodstone inside it reacted with the silver in the walls. An old enchantment. Her father's final safeguard.
The vault shuddered.
Magdalene smiled.
He never knew I kept this.
Another click. Then a heavy grinding groan of steel on steel.
The door slid open.
Inside, the chamber glowed blue with protective runes. In the center stood a pillar — and on that pillar, bound in ancient chain, sat a black wooden box trimmed with wolfbone.
The Rivers Legacy Contract.
She stepped inside. No hesitation. No fear.
Only purpose.
Maddox stormed through the private elevator, Rhys at his side. The alert had come from the deepest level of the Tower — a place no one, not even most of his board, knew existed.
Only two people had ever accessed that vault in the last decade.
Him.
And Magdalene Rivers.
His voice was low. Controlled. "Seal off every floor. No one leaves this building."
Rhys nodded, fingers flying across his portable interface. "Already done. Surveillance is back up — and she's on it. Just came through the sublevel. She bypassed everything."
"Of course she did," Maddox muttered.
His heart slammed in his chest like it hadn't in years.
She was real.
She was here.
And she remembered everything.
Inside the vault, Magdalene walked slowly, every step deliberate. She unlatched the box and opened it. Inside lay the official, sealed blood pact between House Vale and House Rivers — one that ensured land, power, and alliance.
She ran her fingers over the signature burned in blood.
Her father's.
And next to it… Maddox's.
They had signed it together. A promise of unification. Of legacy.
Of marriage.
Magdalene's hands trembled.
She remembered the day clearly. How he looked at her — wild and in love and full of empire. They had sealed their future with a kiss beneath the full moon.
And then, two days later…
He ordered her execution.
A sharp sting flared behind her ribs.
She clenched her jaw.
Not yet.
You don't get to break now.
She scanned the chamber, ignoring the old wounds. She wasn't here for sentiment.
She was here for the documents buried beneath the pedestal. The originals. The ones that proved what Vale did to House Rivers — the forged treason letters, the kill orders, the transfer of land deeds.
All faked. All signed by Maddox Vale.
She crouched, fingers brushing the steel edge of the hidden drawer.
It hissed open.
Inside, the parchment was still sealed. Untouched. They never thought anyone would return to retrieve it.
She pulled the scroll free.
A thousand wolves may have forgotten who Magdalene Rivers was.
But Maddox Vale never would.
That was her weapon.
And now she would use it.
The elevator doors burst open.
Maddox moved like a storm through the corridor. When he reached the vault, his eyes locked onto the open door — and the woman standing inside, shrouded in shadows and silverlight.
She didn't turn.
Not at first.
But she knew.
He could feel it — that electric charge beneath his skin. The primal instinct, the mate pull he thought had been burned out of him long ago.
She turned slowly.
Face still hidden beneath the mask.
But he knew.
In his bones, in his blood.
He knew.
"Selene," he growled, voice low, barely human.
She smiled behind the mask.
"Wrong name."
His eyes narrowed.
And then he saw the ring.
Bloodstone.
Rivers bloodstone.
His heart seized.
"No…"
She stepped closer, the scroll in hand.
"I told you I'd come back."
Maddox stared — frozen.
Her voice was different now. Sharper. Mature. But he'd know it anywhere.
"Magdalene…"
A war between rage and disbelief warred in his face.
"You're dead."
She tilted her head. "And yet here I am."
The scroll unrolled between them, revealing the truth he'd buried.
She dropped it at his feet.
"Remember me now, Alpha King?"
Rhys's voice crackled through Maddox's comm.
"Sir—authorities are arriving. They're demanding access."
Maddox didn't answer.
His gaze locked with hers.
"I buried you," he whispered.
Her expression twisted — not in pain. But in fury.
"You burned me."
A thousand memories crashed between them — moonlight promises, secret meetings, the warmth of shared dreams.
And then the betrayal.
The order to eliminate her.
Maddox took a slow step forward.
"You don't understand—"
"I understand enough," she snapped. "You chose your crown over me. Over the truth."
"I thought you were the traitor."
"And now you know better."
Another step. This time, she didn't flinch.
"Why come back now?" he asked. "Why reveal yourself?"
She reached into her pocket.
And pulled out a vial.
Blood. Glowing faintly blue.
"Because the truth doesn't just deserve to be known."
She threw the vial at his feet. It shattered — and a shockwave of magic surged across the vault.
Maddox staggered back.
She met his eyes.
"It deserves to burn."
_
Above, alarms began to wail.
Lights flickered red.
The enchantments protecting the vault were failing.
Magdalene turned and walked past him, calm, unbothered, as if she hadn't just resurrected every secret he tried to bury.
Maddox stood frozen, scroll in hand, staring at her back.
"You can't just disappear again," he called.
She paused at the door.
Then slowly looked over her shoulder.
"Oh, I won't."
Her voice was a promise.
"I'm not here to run."
The lights surged one final time.
And then died completely.
Darkness swallowed the corridor.
When the backup lights snapped on a heartbeat later, she was gone.
Vanished.
But on the steel pedestal where the scroll once sat…
…was a single crimson rose.
And wrapped around the stem, a note written in her handwriting:
"For every ruin, there is a reckoning."