Chapter 178

Amelia

They told me I’d been asleep for days, but I didn’t believe them. Time felt warped, stretched thin, like I’d been drifting through someone else’s nightmares. When I woke, it was to low, echoing chants and the taste of iron in my mouth. The air was frigid and too still. My breaths scraped against my ribs like they didn’t want to go in.

The chamber walls curved inward like they were closing in, carved from crimson rock that pulsed faintly beneath my hands. Candles burned in bowls of dark water, casting shadows that flickered in ways my mind couldn’t follow. The air smelled of rust and rot. Strange symbols were branded into the walls, alive somehow, shifting when I blinked too long. I wasn’t restrained, but my arms felt submerged in ice, and my legs wouldn’t respond when I called on them.

Vasha sat on a raised pillar beside me. Her posture was unnervingly perfect. She looked more like a statue that had been waiting for me to wake than any living person. Her silver hair hung straight as wire. Her skin stretched too tight across sharp cheekbones, and her smile looked practiced, like it had never once been for comfort. Her eyes weren’t red with rage or warmth. They were the hard, polished gleam of garnet. When she finally spoke, her voice was smooth, measured, and too calm.

"You're awake. That will make the next steps easier."

I tried to sit, but my spine buckled. A spike of pain shot behind my eyes.

"What did you do to me?"

"You're still drifting," she said. "But the resonance is beginning to hold."

She gestured toward the bowl on the floor between us. Its surface shimmered, dark and mirror-like, before splitting open. A vision unfurled above it. Wolves thrashed in fire. Smoke swallowed their howls. And then Serena appeared. She was younger, her face twisted in fury as she drove a blade into the chest of a man.

I knew him. Even though I’d never met him in life, I knew.

"That’s my father," I whispered.

Vasha nodded, her expression unchanged. "The one who would’ve let you die. Serena did what had to be done."

“No. No, that’s not—”

“She protected her child.”

The image warped. Blood filled the cracks in the stone floor. The screaming didn’t stop. It wrapped around me, folding itself into my ears and lungs.

“That’s not what happened,” I said, trying to push back, to shake off whatever was sinking into me.

“You only remember the story they allowed you to survive,” she said. “Not the one that actually took place.”

I tried to rise. The pain came back, deeper, more complete. My vision fractured. More images surged forward. Serena holding me tight. Wolves bleeding at her feet. A steel door closing. A spell echoing in a language I didn’t know. Her face was less maternal now. More wild and more afraid.

“You’re rewriting me,” I hissed.

“No,” she replied. “We’re restoring what was taken.”

She walked toward me without a sound. "The wolf in you was never natural. It was patched on top of something older, something more enduring. That’s why it’s always felt like you were being pulled in too many directions. We’re stripping away the noise."

I clenched my jaw. "Richard—"

“Is a king,” she cut in. “And kings don’t choose love over strategy. He needed you when it served him. Now that it doesn’t, you’re gone.”

“He’s not like that,” I snapped. “You don’t know him.”

“He kept you hidden for years,” she said, tilting her head slightly. “Then revealed you when the public needed to see his mercy. That timing doesn’t bother you?”

“He gave me a place in the Pack. He trusted me in battle. He—”

“He gave you what kept you quiet,” she interrupted. “And now that you’re inconvenient, he’s moving on.”

My throat tightened. The bond I’d clung to since the moment he kissed me no longer pulsed. I could feel where it used to live inside me, but not what it meant anymore.

“He said I was his,” I whispered. “He gave me his blood.”

“And you thought that made you his equal?” she asked, studying me. “He’s already rewriting the story. In his version, you were a mistake. In his version, you’ve already disappeared.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “He wouldn’t just forget me. He—”

“He already has.”

She touched my cheek. Her hand was colder than winter stone. It didn’t feel human.

I tried to speak, but nothing came. I remembered every time I asked him to be honest. Every moment he deflected. How hard I worked just to stay close. To be chosen.

She pressed her forehead to mine. Her breath was stale. Her voice low and steady.

The visions returned again.

Serena, covered in blood. Jenny, smiling like none of this touched her. The Elders’ chairs turning away. Richard’s back. My wolf’s gaze, wild and uncertain. Chains around my ankles. My scent snuffed out like smoke.

"He loves me," I whispered. “He does.”

“He used you. And now he’s letting you go.”

“No.” My voice cracked. “He’s cold, yes. Guarded. But he tried. He let me in. He gave me—”

“What you needed to hear,” she said.

I wanted to scream. To rip her hands away. I wanted my wolf to fight back. To rise. To growl. To bite. But she didn’t come.

“He said I was his,” I whispered, softer now. “He told me I mattered.”

“He told you what you needed to hear,” Vasha repeated. “And now he’s telling himself something else.”

The bond went silent, not gone, just unreachable.

I screamed to release something I didn’t know how to contain. I clawed at the stone until my fingers bled. I rocked forward and back, sobbing until my ribs ached and my breath came in shallow bursts. I whispered his name again and again, even when I could barely shape the sound.

Each time I said it, it meant a little less. My voice cracked and weakened until I wasn’t sure if I was saying his name out loud or only hearing it in my head. The syllables blurred. I couldn’t remember how he used to say my name in return.

Maybe he was looking for me. Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he loved me. Maybe he only loved the idea of me. Maybe I had never been anything more than a useful detail in someone else’s story.

I broke apart.

The shaking eventually stopped. My body went still from exhaustion. The silence that followed wasn’t quiet, it was hollow.

I didn’t reach for the bond again. I was too afraid of what I might find.

Vasha stepped forward. She knelt and took my hands in hers. I didn’t pull away.

“Now,” she said quietly, “we begin.”

And I let her.

Something inside me had snapped. But in the space that followed, a strange clarity took root. It didn’t feel good. It didn’t feel right. But it was stable and solid and easier to hold than doubt.

I closed my eyes and let the silence stretch. I didn’t try to imagine Richard anymore. I didn’t try to imagine escape. I let myself sit in what was real, even if it hurt.