Chapter 7
I didn't fall asleep.
Sleep implies choice.
This felt like being dragged under.
The moment my eyes closed, the world peeled away too smoothly. One breath I was curled on my narrow cot, the scent of pine and cold dirt in my nose. The next, I was standing barefoot on stone so cold it bit straight into bone.
The sky above me was wrong.
No moon. No stars. Just a pale, luminous stretch of nothing, like the world had been scrubbed clean and left unfinished.
My heart pounded.
"This isn't a dream," I whispered.
The sound echoed. Not outward. Inward.
Good, my wolf said quietly. You're listening now.
I turned slowly.
The circle surrounded me.
Not the pack's sacred circle. Not the one stained by blood and panic.
This one was older.
The stones were taller. Carved with symbols so worn they felt tired. Power hummed through them in a low, constant thrum that made my teeth ache.
I knew this place.
Not from memory.
From habit.
My chest tightened. "Why do I know where everything is?"
I walked without deciding to. My feet carried me to the center, to a raised slab etched with a symbol that made my skin prickle.
A crown.
Not jeweled. Not ornate.
Simple. Heavy. Meant to be endured.
My hands trembled as I lifted them.
They were clean, strong and scarred.
"No," I breathed. "This isn't me."
It was.
And it wasn't.
The air shifted behind me.
I didn't turn.
"I wondered how long it would take before you stopped pretending," a woman's voice said.
Calm. Low. Familiar in the worst way.
I closed my eyes. "I'm not pretending."
A soft laugh. "That's what makes it convincing."
I turned.
She stood a few steps away, draped in dark fabric that moved like smoke. Her hair was braided with bone and silver thread. Her eyes glowed faintly gold.
She had my face.
Not exactly.
Sharper. Harder. Like someone had carved away softness and left only resolve.
My knees nearly buckled.
"You're not real," I said.
She tilted her head. "Neither are you. Not fully."
My breath came fast. "What are you?"
She considered that. Then shrugged. "What's left."
Anger flared, sudden and hot. "Left of what?"
"Of you."
The ground pulsed.
Images slammed into me without warning.
Hands forcing my shoulders down.
Stone biting into my back.
Voices chanting words that felt like betrayal.
I gasped, doubling over.
She watched without sympathy.
"They called it mercy," she said. "Erasure instead of execution."
I shook my head violently. "Stop. I didn't live this."
Her gaze sharpened. "You survived it."
The difference hit like a blow.
"No," I whispered. "I was born. I grew up human. I learned how to be small because it was safer."
Her lips curved. "They taught you well."
Pain bloomed behind my eyes. "Why are you doing this to me?"
She stepped closer. The air thickened with pressure.
"Because you're still lying," she said. "And lies rot power from the inside."
"I'm not lying," I snapped. "I don't remember."
Her hand came up fast.
She pressed two fingers to my forehead.
The world shattered.
I was standing in the pack yard.
No. Watching it.
From above.
The rejection played out again. Kael's voice. The silence. The way my heart cracked clean down the middle.
But this time, I felt something else.
Not heartbreak.
Calculation.
And fear.
Not mine.
But his.
I staggered back, breath hitching. "That's not how it felt."
"That's how it was," she corrected. "Your memory clings to pain. His clung to terror."
The scene shifted.
The healer's den. Eamon's careful hands. His eyes sliding away when I asked the wrong questions.
I saw what I'd missed.
The way his pulse spiked when he looked at my mark.
The way his hands shook just a little.
"He knows," I whispered.
She nodded. "They all do. In different ways."
The vision twisted again.
Lyra, standing beside Kael.
But not as she was now.
As she had been placed.
Guided.
Told where to stand. When to smile. What to say.
My stomach dropped. "She's not…"
"She's a mechanism," the woman finished. "A beautifully crafted one."
The pressure eased.
I found myself back in the circle, gasping, sweat slicking my skin.
"This is too much," I said hoarsely. "I'm breaking."
She crouched in front of me, finally close enough that I could feel her presence like gravity.
"You broke once," she said. "This is remembering."
I laughed weakly. "That's worse."
Her expression softened. Just a fraction. "It always is."
I swallowed hard. "If you're me… why aren't you helping?"
She studied me for a long moment.
Then she stood.
"I am helping," she said quietly. "I'm just not protecting you anymore."
The stones began to glow brighter.
The hum deepened, vibrating through my bones.
"What happens if I don't wake up?" I asked.
She looked back over her shoulder.
"Then you'll become useful again."
Fear lanced through me. "To who?"
She smiled without humor.
"To him."
The world lurched.
I woke with a scream tearing out of my throat.
My body convulsed, lungs dragging in air like I'd been drowning. My hands clawed at the bedding, at my chest, at the place just below my collarbone.
The mark blazed.
Not silver.
Not gold.
Something deeper and older.
I curled onto my side, shaking.
This wasn't a nightmare.
Nightmares faded.
This clung.
My wolf stirred, alert and watchful.
She's close, my wolf said.
"Who?" I rasped.
The one wearing calm.
Cold slid down my spine.
I forced myself upright, legs unsteady. Dawn hadn't come yet. The pack slept uneasy around me, breaths shallow, dreams troubled.
I stood on instinct and padded toward the door.
The night air hit my skin like a slap.
At the edge of the clearing, Lyra stood alone beneath the trees, moonlight spilling over her like a benediction.
She wasn't smiling now.
She was waiting.
And when she looked up and met my eyes, the mark on my skin flared violently, answering something in her that I didn't yet have words for.
She opened her mouth.
And said a name I had never told her.