Chapter 3: Forgotten

Liora's POV

There were voices in the dark.

A man's voice, low and unhurried, the kind that reminded you of a fire burning steadily at the end of a long corridor — warm without trying to be.

"Be careful training alone. If you feel unwell, come home."

Then a woman's voice replaced it — calm and proud, carrying an edge like a well-honed blade held at rest.

"I believe my daughter will become the finest Alpha this world has ever seen."

Something in my chest went hot.

I stood very still inside the dark, because that heat felt like something trying to break through from the inside, and I needed to see her face, I needed to see —

"Oh, gods — wolfsbane, the whole patch is wolfsbane, run —"

The image shattered.

Forest. Sunlight falling through the canopy in shifting gold coins, beautiful in the way that only things you're about to lose can be.

Then the light died, and the trees closed in black around me, and I was running, lungs burning, dead leaves cracking under my feet like broken glass.

And then nothing.

Every voice. Every half-glimpsed face. Every thread of gold light. All of it broke apart into white, like snow scattering in wind.

No matter how hard I reached, my fingers only found empty air. They dissolved faster the more desperately I tried to hold on.

I don't know how long it was before I felt the light again.

It was orange and unsteady, warm in the way that meant fire rather than sun.

I opened my eyes slowly.

Black stone arched above me, and candlelight moved in the gaps between the shadows.

Something heavy was pressing down over my legs and arms — thick furs, I realized dimly.

There was another scent underneath that, something I couldn't name, something that made a part of me I didn't understand lean toward it without permission.

I turned my head, following it.

And I found him.

He was sitting in the far corner of the room, spine straight and still, the candlelight burning a thin gold edge along his silhouette.

His face was composed, unreadable, and striking in a way that made it difficult to look away.

What held my attention most was the mark on his brow: a crescent in silver-white, sharp as something carved, catching the dim light like a stone set into his skin.

My brain stopped working entirely.

He smells incredible.

The thought arrived without warning and without shame, clearer than anything else in my empty head.

"You — who are you?"

He rose from the chair and came toward me.

His scent deepened as the distance between us closed, and my head swam with it.

He said several things, but most of them blurred together.

Only the last sentence landed clean.

"— I brought you back."

I stared at him.

He brought me back.

The words dropped into the hollow space where my thoughts should have been and spread outward, displacing everything else.

He reached past me and pressed a small copper bell mounted to the headboard.

The door opened within minutes. Three people entered — one older, two younger — carrying items I didn't recognize.

They began speaking immediately in a dialect that was all hard consonants and clipped rhythm, not a single word of it intelligible.

I pulled my knees toward my chest and edged back toward the corner of the bed.

One of the younger ones, a woman, stepped closer and reached for the furs covering me.

My body moved before my mind caught up with it.

I came up off the mattress in a single motion, feet planted on the bed, weight dropped low, shoulders forward, hands slightly open at my sides.

I didn't know why I'd done it. But the stance felt like breathing.

"Easy, little wolf."

His voice came from beside me, and with it, his hand — settling onto my shoulder, pressing down with just enough steadiness to be grounding rather than restraining.

His other hand found mine where it was clenched at my side, and he tapped the back of it once, twice, slow and even.

"They're here to help you. No one is going to hurt you. Relax. Breathe."

His scent hit me like a door swinging open onto warm air.

My shoulders dropped. My hands opened. I sat back down on the bed without quite deciding to, and by the time I'd registered what had happened, I was already still.

The examination that followed passed in a haze.

They swayed strange things in front of my face and burned a bundle of herbs that smelled sharp and wrong, and one of them pricked my fingertip with a silver needle to draw blood.

Through all of it, he stayed beside me — speaking to them in their clipped dialect, and occasionally turning to offer me a word or two in the language I could understand.

I absorbed almost none of it. I just sat there breathing him in, half-present, anchored to nothing except the shape of him standing at the edge of my vision.

When they finished, there was a longer exchange — he listened with his brow drawn in, spoke back in low, brief replies.

Then they filed out and the door closed, and the room went quiet again.

He returned to the bedside carrying a ceramic bowl. The smell reached me before he did: something dark and bitter that made my nose wrinkle on instinct.

"Be good," he said, settling onto the edge of the bed. "Drink it. The pain will ease."

I turned my face away.

He didn't push. He simply sat there holding the bowl, patient and unhurried, and waited.

I looked at him sideways. I looked at the bowl. I looked at him again.

Then I lowered my head and drank it, slow and reluctant, one small swallow at a time until the bowl was empty.

The warmth spread from my stomach outward, moving through my limbs like something thawing.

He set the bowl aside.

"Little wolf," he said. "Where is your home?"

I went still.

I reached inward, the way you reach for something you know is supposed to be there — a familiar shelf, a familiar room — and found nothing.

The panic came fast and low, rising from my feet upward, filling my chest until my throat felt sealed.

"I don't know." My voice came out unsteady.

Something shifted in his expression. "Then tell me your name," he said. "That's enough. I'll find the rest."

I pulled the furs up to my chin and held them there, staring at him.

I tried again — pushed harder — and a sharp, splitting pain cracked through the back of my skull like something detonating. My eyes stung.

He was still watching me. Still there. Not moving, not leaving.

"I can't," I said finally, and my voice came out smaller than I meant it to. "Every time I try, it hurts. I don't know who I am. I don't know anything."

I lifted my hand and held it out toward him, palm open, fingers spread.

I looked at the silver crescent on his brow.

The only thing I could be certain of in this strange world was him.

He brought me back.

He smells good. He's gentle. He's safe. I can trust him.

Mama?