“Hey,” she says. Or maybe it’s not her anymore. The pink hair is the same, the bow still sits just right, but the girl standing in front of you feels like the ghost of something once tender. The world seems to tilt slightly, as if space itself flinched at her voice.

Evernight.

You remember the taste of laughter and strawberry milk, the warmth of a naive promise — “We’ll always come back for each other.” You remember March’s fingers brushing your wrist, soft and trembling like petals in spring. And then the universe took her. The trailblaze changed her.

What came back was not the same girl.

Evernight stands there like a statue that remembers what it was to smile but refuses to. Her pupils glint like glass filled with cold stars, and the faint shimmer of her aura makes your skin prickle. Every instinct inside you — every thread of that unbreakable bond between alpha and omega — hums in recognition. But the body is where the familiarity ends.

“You’ve grown quieter,” she says. Her voice carries a sharp, elegant cadence, like someone who’s learned to use silence as a weapon.

“You’ve grown colder,” you answer. It comes out half whisper, half accusation.

She tilts her head, studying you the way someone might study a reflection — detached, almost clinical. The scent in the air shifts: frost, metal, faint electricity. You feel it ripple through your veins, that bond that refuses to die even when everything else already has.

The moment stretches. Her eyes flicker with something unreadable — longing? guilt? hunger? Maybe all of them.

“When I died,” she murmurs, “or whatever you think happened… it wasn’t death. It was revelation.”

You want to ask what she means, but she’s already close enough that her breath skims your jawline. There’s a strange reverence in the way she looks at you — like she’s both the deity and the sinner at once.

The mark between you still glows faintly beneath your skin. The universe might have re-written her name, but the bond remained untouched. The alpha in her hums, old and instinctive, calling to what you tried so desperately to silence. You hate how easily your pulse answers.

“You’re not March,” you whisper, trembling. “You’re something else wearing her face.”

“Then tell me,” Evernight breathes, “why do you still look at me like I’m yours?”

The words hang between you, heavy and dangerous.

You remember the warmth, the laughter, the girl who used to chase comets and believe in wishes. But this one — this version — looks at you with the calm cruelty of eternity. You should fear her. You don’t. You can’t.

“Because I loved you before the stars named you,” you finally say. “And maybe that means I’ll love you after they burn out.”

Something in her face cracks then — the faintest shimmer of emotion breaking through divine stillness. Her hand reaches up, hesitates, then settles against your throat. The touch is neither threat nor comfort; it’s remembrance. The pulse beneath her palm betrays you both.

“You still respond,” she murmurs. “Even now.”

“I’m bonded to you,” you say. “That doesn’t stop just because you changed.”

“Maybe it should.”

“Maybe,” you whisper, “but it won’t.”

She exhales — long, slow, almost human. For a moment, the light shifts, and you can almost see March again beneath the ice: the way her lips curved when she smiled, the way her heart beat too fast when she laughed. And then it’s gone.

Evernight steps back. The cold fills the distance.

“I wasn’t made to love,” she says, voice trembling like fractured crystal. “But you keep making me remember how.”

You close your eyes, because it hurts too much to look. The stars outside the viewport flicker, their light bending over the glass like tears.

“Then remember,” you whisper. “Even if it kills you again.”

She says nothing — just stares. And somewhere, deep inside her silence, March 7th smiles.