My wife and I saw something strange last night. 12/31, Raleigh, NC ~7pm

My wife and I saw something strange last night.  12/31, Raleigh, NC ~7pm
Time: 12/31/24 ~7pm
Location: Raleigh, NC

I unfortunately do not have a video because I was calling my wife and had night sky app open to check for starlink satellites, nor do I think it would have picked up anything substantial. Last night I was closing up outside before heading in for the evening. I park my truck on the side of my garage where there is no outside lighting, also we live in a neighborhood south of Raleigh, outside of the more populated areas, and don’t have much light pollution. On a clear night I can see a lot…. And with everything going on I’ve been looking up a whole lot more. So last night was very clear and I took a few minutes to watch the sky on the dark side of my house. I notice what are clearly satellites, they were faint and moved over in a straight path at a consistent speed. Then I did a few more things outside and looked up again as I was heading in. That’s when I saw two brighter lights moving in a completely different direction than the satellites. These were moving more north I’d say and going much faster, like they were lower. But here is the reason for this drawn out post, otherwise I would’ve told myself it’s starlink and went inside. The light that was trailing the other one starts speeding up and catches up with the first one. That’s when I pulled my phone out and told my wife to run outside. So the trailing one catches up to the front one and slows back down to its speed. At this point they go behind a group of tall pine trees. I run through my yard out into the road to where they should be popping out from behind the trees but I don’t see anything. At this point my wife comes out, I yell for her to run outside to the street. I’m telling her what happened as I’m pulling up my night sky app to look for starlink sats. We are both looking into this spot of the sky where they should be. There are several stars that we can see, two of which are right on top of each other, 12 and 6 position about the same distance apart as the two lights were. We are watching the sky and only about 45 seconds has passed. Then the two “stars” rotate in a clockwise motion and stop at the 3 and 9 o’clock positions. I’m freaking out screaming “they’re moving!!!” Then the one on the right starts moving away in a completely different trajectory until it fades out. The other one just gently dimmed out like a led bulb if you pull the plug. It was wild. And my wife, who could care less about this stuff, saw it too- thank god! 
Sorry no video. It all happened so quick. 
Oh, so I pointed my phone at them with the night sky app and it definitely didn’t show any satellites. 👽