Even if I didn't have a map in my head, finding my way back to the Moon Arch wasn't a problem. It wasn't snowing; it wasn't windy, so the trail Blake plowed through the winter forest ran straight as an arrow. My powerful fated mate ignored every difficulty of the terrain, the depth of the snow, even the trees. He crashed through every obstacle to bring me out of the forest safely.

My problem was racing against time, as even the long November night was waning. And racing Blake, because even with a head-start, he would catch up with me in no time...if he went after me. If...my heart twisted painfully in my chest as I leapt from one Blake's footprint to another. Scarlett, naturally, would deploy every delaying tactic in her arsenal, she'd jump out of her tanned skin to keep him from going to the hospital, then to Harold.

Goddess, how did it come to this? Scarlett was my ally. I prayed for Blake not to come looking for me, and it scared me that he wouldn't. I was pushing my tired body to run as far away from him as possible, when every fiber of my being wanted to be with him. It was so wrong to be putting distance between us, that the inner resistance was as bad as the cold and the snow in slowing me down.

My chest hurt. My head throbbed. My lungs burned. I was half-blind from frozen tears.

But I kept my punishing pace, hopping from one Blake's footstep to another, then another one, further away from him, closer to the Moon Arch. Because the cursed gateway, the Moon Arch that scared even the rogues, was my hope to become worthy of Blake. I would be his Luna, his fated mate...unless the Arch would also reject me.

Then...I refused to think about what happened then, the double blow of the ultimate rejection and Blake's anger when he discovered my disobedience.

I had to go on...I just wished I didn't lose my snowshoes, because each step became more difficult. No matter how hard I gritted my teeth and how loud I yelled inside my head to keep going, my steps began slowing down.

Wheezing for breath, I had to stop and lean against a tree. I wiped sweat and tears out of my eyes. Just a breather, just a brief stop. I couldn't go on without a little rest.

The only light was the glow of the full moon. No other living creature was roaming the forest. They all found a safe shelter, I hoped. I also wanted to curl up and sleep for a short while. Wanted it so badly, I ignored a voice of reason in my head.

It was so frigid in the forest, it said, that the cold would stop a living heart, and I would never wake up.

Whatever. My eyelids grew heavy. I felt cozy slumped against the tree, even though I didn't remember sitting down into the snow.

A howl broke my descent into slumber. I peeled my eyes open and stared into luminous green irises. My heart bounced—Blake!—even though it wasn't his howl, weren't his eyes. It was his wolf.

"Did Blake send you?" I slurred my words, not a good sign.

The wolf nuzzled me instead of answering my dumb question—Blake couldn't send him; it didn't work like that. But the wild beast resisted the natural impulse to kill a helpless meatbag, and he emanated warmth.

I groaned and clutched the wolf's fluffy neck.

He moved, and I straightened my stiff joints to stand on my own two feet. It was an accomplishment, but the wolf didn't look impressed. He nudged me to get moving—toward the Moon Arch, not The Olympian.

"Blake didn't send you," I said.

The wolf howled again, sounding like he was losing his patience with me.

"Okay. Okay, I'm moving." I stepped forward like in a dream, or rather a nightmare. However, with the wolf looping around me, turning his head every few yards to check on my progress, I couldn't stop.

Despite the fatigue and pain in my thawing toes and fingers, I sped up, went faster than before.

Or maybe I just thought I went faster? I didn't care. I was closing on my destination, and that was good enough.

A frost-embroidered dead body of a woman barred my path—I was really close now, because this was Blake's first kill. The rogue he felled just out of the sight of the Moon Arch.

I turned my face away not to look at the corpse, but I still glimpsed torn flesh where her nose should have been and the black crystals of blood and ice around her opened gut.

I shivered, knowing what I would have to cross the wolves' killing grounds to approach the Moon Arch. Go among the bodies of men and women Blake had gored.

"I can do it," I whispered through chattering teeth. "I can!"

Despite this vow, I stopped when I walked upon the birch grove.

The wolves were gone, except Blake's, who went straight to the Arch and sat next to it on its haunches. His muzzle was fluffy, so he must have licked my former landlord's blood clean off his fur. I swallowed a few times, trying to clear the sick taste at the back of my mouth.

Silver moonlight poured from above. The Arch also glowed, though faintly. The cold light from both sources mixed, reflected from the snow with an even colder, bluish quality. It was almost as light as during the day, and I wished it wasn't.

The wolves dragged and turned the bodies to harvest the softest, fattiest flesh. All four lay on their backs. Dead eyes stared at the Goddess' face above them, because the carrion crows were still asleep.

I rowed my gaze over the terrible place, picking a route to the Arch that would keep me as far away from the dead rogues as possible. The attack felt like it had happened weeks, not hours ago. The viciousness of my enemies paled in my memory. The threat to my life was no longer hanging over this eerie place.

All I felt was dread.

My fated mate, Blake, did this. My first and only love. The man whose arms were so strong. Whose chest was so wide under my cheek, and whose heart beat strong and true. Once again, I saw the proof that my Alpha would stop at nothing to protect his pack. And the pack was celebrating it, as I stood and witnessed what the civilized world would have called murders.

An Alpha werewolf was a killer, and it agreed with their mores. And I still desired Blake with a primal, all-encompassing, single-minded ache. No Blake, no happiness. With Blake, I could suffer, yes, I could—

My gut twisted. I bent over and retched. When I straightened, the Arch glowed fainter than before, diminishing with every heartbeat.

"No!" I yelled.

Blake's wolf lifted his clean muzzle to the Moon and howled.

A responding howl from my wolf rippled beyond the gate, but it was barely audible now.

"She's still there, isn't she? Waiting for me."

Blake's wolf burrowed the gaze of his green eyes into me. Their intensity was harsh, like he was trying to say, yeah, she's there. Why the fuck are you still standing there, stupid Omega?

My heart clenched, and I sprinted, no longer caring where the unburied bodies lay.

I tripped on a torn off, frozen hand. I screamed, and my throat hurt like hell from the onrush of the frigid air. Either my sight was fading out, or the Arch was dimming.

"No!" I was three strides from the Arch, but with a faint glow nearly extinguished and the image of the strange forest between them going transparent, I closed my eyes and leapt.

I hit the ground hard, getting a face-full of cold, crusty snow. I chewed it since it filled my mouth. Then it slipped inside my jacket's collar and started to thaw. Meltwater trickled down my neck...or was I drenched in cold sweat? Both?

Blake's wolf howled a single keening note.

I didn't want to sit up. Didn't want to confront my failure. But if I stayed down, my corpse would end up freezing next to the rogues'. I didn't want to die here.

So I pushed myself onto my elbows and stared at the snow-bound birches, spruces and mountains. Then, I turned around with the painful slowness of an old woman. No wonder, because I felt like I was ninety.

I had landed a few yards past the two birches that framed the Moon Arch, so I definitely flew right through it.

Alas, all the otherworldly light, the image of another place...all of it...was gone.

I had finally passed through the Moon Arch—and it was too late. Well, I didn't get cursed because of it, or at least I didn't feel cursed. I simply felt like a failure, a perfectly normal state for me. Look at the bright side, right?

Blake's wolf kept howling, like he was mourning everything I had just lost. Tears streamed down my cheeks in hot trickles as I took an inventory of it: Blake, self-respect, integrity and my chance to become a Luna.

"Shut up, Wolfe, not all is lost," I said between sobs. "There'll be another new Moon."

There would be, in two weeks' time, because the Earth didn't stop its rotation around the sun on my behalf. Neither did the Moon. So it would wane once more before the Winter Solstice.

Then I could come here, camp by the Arch and go through it the second it appears. Right?

Wrong! my every instinct told me.

The Arch might appear, alright, but Blake wouldn't wait on me any longer.

He must have found out my betrayal by now, and he didn't follow me into the forest. He let me have my folly, because he gave up on me.

If I returned from the woods beaten, humiliated...after he had fought for me, thanked me for not leaving him...he'd just reject me like everyone else, and take Scarlett as his mate.

The needs of the pack came first, and the pack needed someone they could trust.

Sure, Scarlett was a manipulator, and she had conspired against him, but hadn't I just done the same? By dashing to the forest behind his back, I had destroyed the only advantage I wielded over Scarlett: I also lied to him!

How would Blake believe in the sincerity of my love for him after I deceived him? How would he believe I ached for him, if I ran to the forest the second he'd returned, when there was a new Moon two weeks from now and I could have asked for his permission? He would have denied me, but I could have asked!

"Shut up!" I screamed at Blake's wolf, as if it was him accusing me with his non-stop howling, not my inner voice. "Shut up! I had no choice, and you helped me to get here! You're probably sweet on my she-wolf too, you prude."

I climbed to my feet and hit my forehead on its white trunk wrapped in papery bark. Why couldn't it stay open for just another damn second? I grabbed the tree and shook it in my impotent fury.

"Why? Why? Tell me why you couldn't last for just another second?"

The slim leafless branches dangled around me, rustling about the unfair treatment.

"Unfair? I'll show you the actual unfair!"

Violent images zipped through my mind, my anger lashing out at the trees, the snow, the Moon. Axes, fire, nuclear explosions...I craved to unleash it all, no matter how absurd. It just felt so good...until a clear, silver thought pierced my mind: the Arch was supposed to reveal one's true self.

I always hoped I was a Luna at my core, but I was acting like a spoiled, wrathful brat, which no pack would want as their Luna. Was this actually the truth about me?

Was I actually an Omega, too stupid and too violent to govern herself, so she needed the whole pack hierarchy to keep her in line and not harm herself and the others, down to the truly innocent trees, for Goddess' Sake?

"No," I begged, taking a step back from the Arch. "No, please. That's not me! That's not my true self!"

I went to my knees, turned my face to the Goddess and searched my soul for absolute truth.

"Goddess, see me. Hear me. I was desperate and stupid. I was sick with love for my fated mate. I've given offense, and for that I beg forgiveness. I shall now leave humbled and come back, asking for your blessing at the night of the New Moon.

"If you do not grant it then, I will come again, until I am as wise as a Luna should be. May your bliss always find my pack, my Alpha and my wayward soul...but most of all my Alpha, my fated mate, Blake Villar."

Once I said Blake's name, words flowed like a river.

"Alpha Blake has always done the right thing, and he deserves happiness. I love him. I love him. I love him!"

There it was, a stark truth about me. Hollowed out by my confession, my heart emptied to the bottom, I collapsed on the snow and wept.

The Moon and the stars gazed down on me.

When I rose to go home and apologize to Blake, silver dapples of light danced in my field of vision, between the two slender birches. Probably the afterglow of looking at the Moon directly, rather than magic. But I didn't think.

With my heart in my throat, I plunged my hands between the reflections and pulled them apart, as if I were opening a curtain.