05
2414 Words
Katherine Harrington:
When my eyelids finally opened, I was standing in a garden.
Roses stretched as far as my eyes could see—thousands of them, maybe more. Crimson, ivory, blush pink, deep midnight red. They were arranged in perfect rows, like a living tapestry, their petals heavy with dew that caught the light like scattered diamonds.
It was the most beautiful place I had ever seen.
And I had absolutely no idea how I got there.
No people.
No voices.
Just endless seas of flowers swaying gently in a breeze I could barely feel.
My feet started moving before my mind caught up.
Step by step, I walked forward.
I tried to stop. I truly did. My muscles tensed, my mind screamed at my legs to pause, to think, to understand what was happening—but it was like someone else held the reins to my body.
Like I had become a passenger inside myself.
Because the last thing I remembered…
Was the hospital.
The sharp antiseptic smell.
The steady beeping of machines.
The stabbing pain in my chest slowly dulling into something distant, something numb.
Like my body had begun shutting down piece by piece.
And then—
Nothing.
Yet somehow I was here.
In this impossible place.
In the center of the garden stood a small canopy woven from twisting vines and blooming roses. The flowers glowed faintly, as if moonlight lived inside them.
Beneath it sat a simple wooden table with two porcelain teacups.
Steam curled lazily from both of them.
Someone had poured tea recently.
And sitting in one of the chairs was a woman.
She looked… radiant.
Not in the loud, dazzling way people used to describe beautiful women in magazines.
No.
This was something quieter. Deeper.
She wore a gown that looked like liquid gold, the fabric flowing around her like sunlight caught in motion. Long silver hair spilled over her shoulders, shimmering with every small movement.
Then she looked up.
Her eyes found mine.
And her face broke into the warmest smile I had ever seen.
For a moment—a brief, fragile moment—I almost forgot how I got here.
Almost.
I stopped a few paces away from the table, instinctively wrapping my arms around myself.
I wasn’t cold.
But I felt exposed.
My hospital gown was gone. In its place was a simple white shift that brushed my calves, soft and weightless.
Still, the vulnerability lingered like an open wound.
“You’re here,” the woman said gently.
Her voice was soft, almost musical. The kind of voice that sounded incapable of cruelty.
“I’ve been waiting for you, my dear.”
My dear?
I didn’t return her smile.
“And where exactly is here?” I asked, my tone sharper than I intended.
She gestured gracefully to the empty chair across from her.
“Please,” she said. “Sit. The tea is chamomile. It soothes even the most troubled souls.”
I glanced around the clearing again.
This had to be impossible.
I should be lying in a hospital bed right now, surrounded by sterile white walls and machines screaming about my failing heart.
Instead there was birdsong I didn’t recognize.
And the faint scent of jasmine drifting through the air.
My legs suddenly felt weak, so I sat—not because I trusted her invitation, but because standing felt like too much effort.
The woman poured tea into the second cup.
Her movements were slow and fluid, like water following its natural path.
“Drink,” she said, sliding the cup toward me. “It will help you remember.”
I stared at the steam rising from the porcelain.
“Remember what?” I asked flatly. “That I’m dead?”
My gaze lifted to hers.
“Because if that’s the big reveal, I figured that part out already.”
Her smile softened, but it didn’t disappear.
“Yes, Katherine.”
The way she said my name made something tighten in my chest.
“You have crossed the veil. Your body could no longer hold you, so your spirit was released.”
A bitter laugh slipped out of me.
“Released?” I echoed.
“That’s a very polite way to describe dying. Honestly, you should consider working in hospitals. Families would probably appreciate that version a lot more.”
She tilted her head slightly, studying me with a patience that felt… ancient.
“You stand at a threshold,” she said calmly. “Two paths lie before you.”
Her fingers traced the rim of her cup.
“One leads to your Creator. To the great rest your soul longs for. A place where pain cannot follow.”
She paused.
“The other path leads back to Earth. Back to life.”
My brows slowly lifted.
“To another chance.”
I stared at her for several seconds.
Waiting.
For the punchline.
When none came, I leaned back in my chair.
“You’re serious.”
“Completely.”
Another laugh escaped me—sharper this time.
“If you’ve been watching my life—and I assume you have, since you’re sitting here hosting tea parties for my soul—then you already know how miserable it was.”
The words began spilling out before I could stop them.
“A marriage that fell apart before it even began. Divorce papers signed and torn up so many times I lost count because Sebastian couldn’t decide whether he hated me or just needed an excuse to crawl back to Helen.”
My fingers curled tightly in my lap.
“A wolfless woman in a pack that worships strength.”
I let out a quiet, humorless breath.
“Mocked. Pitied. Ignored.”
“Invisible.”
“And then he marries her.”
My jaw tightened.
“Helen. Already pregnant with his child.”
I met the woman’s calm gaze again.
“So if that is the life waiting for me, I’d honestly rather dissolve into nothing right now. Just… disappear.”
She didn’t react.
She simply took a thoughtful sip of her tea.
“There is unfinished business,” she said quietly.
I blinked.
“Unfinished business?”
“Yes.”
“What does that even mean?” I asked incredulously. “Like I left the stove on? Forgot to water a plant somewhere?”
I leaned forward slightly.
“My life ended the moment he looked at me like I was nothing and chose her anyway.”
My voice dropped.
“It ended when I took a knife meant for his precious Helen… and he still told me to go to the hospital alone.”
Silence stretched between us.
“Perhaps,” the woman said after a moment.
“But fate’s threads are not so easily severed.”
Her eyes held mine steadily.
“There are choices yet to be made. Words yet to be spoken. Wounds yet to be healed… or inflicted.”
I shook my head slowly.
“I don’t want to heal anything,” I said tiredly.
“And I don’t want revenge either.”
All the anger drained out of my voice.
“I just want rest.”
Real rest.
“Not that exhausting half-life where you pretend you’re fine while everyone else moves on without you.”
The woman placed her cup down.
When she spoke again, her voice carried a quiet authority that made the air itself seem heavier.
“I am the Moon Goddess.”
I stared at her.
The words hung in the air between us.
The deity who gave wolves their power.
Their wolves.
Their mates.
And here she was.
Drinking tea with me in a rose garden.
A hollow laugh slipped out of my chest.
“Right,” I muttered. “Of course you are.”
Her silver brows lifted slightly.
“You doubt me?”
“I doubt everything right now,” I replied.
I leaned forward, elbows resting on the table, studying her luminous face.
“Tell me something,” I said.
“If you really are the Moon Goddess…”
My voice hardened.
“Why?”
Her gaze didn’t waver.
“Why did you make me this way?” I continued quietly.
“Wolfless.”
“Mate-less.”
“Worthless in the only world that mattered to my kind.”
For the first time, something flickered in her eyes.
Sorrow.
“Everything happens for a reason, my dear Katherine.”
That did it.
My palm slammed against the table, rattling the teacups.
“Don’t call me that,” I snapped.
My chest rose and fell with anger I hadn’t realized was still inside me.
“Don’t you dare call me your dear.”
I leaned closer, my voice trembling with fury.
“Do you even know what it feels like to live a life like mine?”
I shook my head slowly, disbelief curling through me.
I couldn’t believe I was even entertaining this conversation.
“Don’t give me that,” I said, my voice tight. “If everything happens for a reason, then what exactly was the reason for me? To be a cautionary tale? The girl who proves that even the Moon Goddess can make mistakes?”
She didn’t answer right away.
She simply watched me—calm, patient, allowing the anger to flare and burn the way dry wood does before collapsing into ash.
The silence only made my frustration sharper.
When my breathing finally steadied, she spoke.
“I did not create you wolfless to punish you, Katherine,” she said quietly. “I created you exactly as you are because your soul required a different path. One that strength alone could not teach.”
Her silver eyes held mine steadily.
“A path that demanded breaking… so that something new could be forged.”
A scoff slipped out of me.
“That’s beautiful,” I said dryly. “Truly poetic.”
I pretended to think for a moment, tapping my chin like I was trying to recall something.
“Oh right.”
I looked back at her.
“Completely useless.”
“All that path taught me was pain,” I continued, the bitterness returning to my voice. “Endless, exhausting pain.”
She inclined her head slightly.
“Pain is a cruel teacher,” she said. “But it is also a thorough one.”
I laughed softly, though there was no humor in it.
“That sounds like something people say when they’ve never actually suffered.”
Her expression didn’t change.
The calm in her face was infuriating.
“You promised mates,” I said after a moment, my voice quieter now but heavier. “You promised that every wolf would find the other half of their soul.”
My fingers tightened around the edge of the table.
“You lied to me.”
“No,” she replied gently. “I promised that every soul would eventually find completion.”
Her gaze softened.
“But completion does not always appear the way people expect.”
“Sometimes it looks like freedom.”
“Sometimes it looks like forgiveness—of others, or of yourself.”
“And sometimes,” she added softly, “it looks like choosing yourself when the world refuses to.”
I swallowed.
The words settled somewhere deep inside me, where I wasn’t ready to examine them.
“And sometimes,” I murmured, “it looks like nothing at all.”
For the first time, she reached across the table.
Her hand stopped just short of mine.
She didn’t touch me.
But the warmth radiating from her palm felt like standing beneath gentle moonlight on a summer night.
“If I offered you the chance to return,” she asked quietly, “would you consider it, Katherine?”
I met her gaze.
“No.”
The word came out steady.
Certain.
Because it was the truth.
“Nothing waits for me there.”
She nodded slowly, as though she had expected that answer.
“Then tell me this,” she said. “If you could return knowing everything you know now… if all that pain had already taught you what it needed to teach… what would you do differently?”
I opened my mouth to say nothing.
To repeat that I wanted rest.
That I was done.
But the words didn’t come.
Instead, memories rose uninvited.
The countless nights I had cried myself to sleep, wishing my life had turned out differently.
The quiet mornings when I forced myself out of bed anyway.
The strength it had taken to sign those papers… to walk away instead of begging for a man who had already chosen someone else.
And suddenly—
The idea of going back…
Not to him.
Not to the pack.
But to myself—
Didn’t feel entirely impossible.
“I don’t know,” I admitted softly.
The confession felt strange on my tongue.
“But I still won’t return.”
The Moon Goddess smiled again.
This time the smile was different.
Quieter.
Prouder.
“Then perhaps,” she said, “your unfinished business has nothing to do with them at all.”
Her gaze deepened.
“Perhaps it has everything to do with you.”
Before I could respond, something shifted around me.
A glow began forming at the edge of the garden.
At first it was faint—like moonlight gathering in one place.
But it grew quickly, expanding into a soft, radiant light that surrounded me.
It shimmered gently, warm and strangely comforting.
And yet…
It was pulling at me.
Drawing me toward it.
My breath caught as the sensation grew stronger, like an invisible tide trying to carry me away.
“What is this?” I asked, turning back to her.
But the Moon Goddess only watched me with calm acceptance.
“Choose, Katherine,” she said.
Her voice seemed to echo through the garden.
“Rest… or return.”
The light brightened.
“Step into the light… or continue fighting it.”
My fingers curled into fists.
“I can’t go back,” I said firmly.
The pull suddenly intensified.
The glow surged forward, swallowing the garden, the roses, the table—
Everything.
Before the light completely engulfed me, I heard her voice one last time.
Soft.
Certain.
“He will not allow you to make that choice, my dear.”
Confusion flashed through me.
He?
“You are not alone anymore.”
And then—
The light took me.
- Writer
