Seraphina’s POV
The walk to Caleb’s house took less than ten minutes,. The small residential street was lined with modest hos, their front yards dotted with autumn flowers and children’s toys.
"That one’s ours," Caleb said softly, pointing to a two-story house with white siding and a wraparound porch. A wooden swing swayed gently in the evening breeze.
Before Caleb could reach for his keys, the front door swung open, revealing a woman in her fifties with graying brown hair and kind eyes that went wide with shock the mont they landed on .
"Oh my God," she whispered, her hand flying to her chest. "Oh my God, it’s really you."
"Mom," Caleb said gently, steadying her with a hand on her elbow. "I told you she was alive."
Mrs. Morrison stared at with tears streaming down her cheeks. "Seraphina," she breathed, my na coming out like a prayer. "We thought... we all thought you were dead. After what happened to your parents, when no one could find you..."
"Mrs. Morrison," I said softly, my own voice thick with emotion. "I’m sorry I don’t rember you. I don’t rember anything from before."
"Margaret? What’s all the commotion—" A man appeared in the doorway behind her, tall and broad-shouldered with silver threading through his dark hair. The mont his eyes found , he went completely still. "Holy hell."
"Robert, watch your language," Margaret scolded automatically, though she never took her eyes off .
"Sorry, hon, but..." He shook his head in amazent. "Sera? Is it really you, little wolf?"
Margaret stepped back and gestured us inside. "Co in, co in. We can’t have this conversation on the front porch." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, though fresh tears continued to fall. "I need to call Eleanor and Tom. They’re not going to believe—"
"Mom," Caleb interrupted gently. "Maybe we should let Sera settle in first. It’s been a long day."
The inside of the house was warm and inviting, with overstuffed furniture and family photos covering every available surface. The scent of sothing delicious—pot roast, maybe, or stew—drifted from the kitchen, and I could hear the faint sound of a television playing in another room.
"Sit, sit," Margaret insisted, ushering toward the living room couch. "Are you hungry? Thirsty? I can make coffee, or tea, or—"
"Mom," Caleb said again, his tone fond but firm. "She’s not going anywhere. Breathe."
Robert settled into his recliner with a heavy sigh, his eyes never leaving my face. "We looked for you, you know. After the attack, when the authorities couldn’t find your body with your parents, we held onto hope that maybe you’d survived. We searched every hospital within five hundred miles, called every agency we could think of."
"Where did you end up?" Margaret asked, perching on the edge of the coffee table so she could be closer to . "How did you survive?"
I took a shaky breath, preparing to tell the abbreviated version of my story. "A woman nad Elena saved . She was badly wounded, but she managed to get to another pack territory before she died. The Nightshadow Pack took in."
"Actually," Robert said, standing up with purpose, "we might be able to help with so of those mories. Margaret, where did you put those photo albums?"
"Which ones?" she asked, though her eyes lit up with understanding.
"The ones from the sumr gatherings. The ones with all the kids."
Margaret practically bounced with excitent. "Oh, yes! Sera, you have to see these. We have pictures of you and Caleb from when you were tiny."
She disappeared down a hallway and returned with an armload of photo albums, setting them on the coffee table with reverent care. "These are from the annual pack gatherings we used to have at Moonrise Lake. Every year, all the northern packs would co together for a weekend of celebrating and bonding."
She opened the first album, and I gasped. The photo on the opening page showed a group of adults standing around a picnic table, their faces bright with laughter. In the center were a man and woman I didn’t recognize but sohow felt like I should—a tall, proud-looking man with dark hair and kind eyes, and a beautiful woman with auburn hair and the exact shade of green eyes I saw in my mirror every morning.
"Your parents," Margaret said softly.
I traced their faces with my finger, searching for so spark of recognition, so echo of love or mory. But there was nothing except a hollow ache in my chest for people I should have known.
"And this," she said, turning the page, "is you."
The photograph showed two small children, maybe three or four years old, sitting on a blanket by a lake. A little girl with wild curls and grass stains on her dress was grinning at the cara, her arms wrapped around a slightly older boy with serious dark eyes and a protective posture.
"That’s us," Caleb said, settling on the other side of on the couch. "You’d just fallen into the lake trying to catch a frog, and I was trying to keep you from doing it again."
Margaret flipped through more pages, revealing a treasury of monts I’d lost. There were photos of and Caleb building sandcastles, chasing butterflies, sharing ice cream cones that were bigger than our heads. In every picture, we were inseparable.
"Oh, this one’s my favorite," Margaret said, stopping at a photo that made my breath catch.
It showed the two of us asleep under a large oak tree, my head pillowed on Caleb’s shoulder while he leaned against the trunk. We couldn’t have been more than five years old, but there was sothing so peaceful, so trusting about the image that it made my heart clench.
"You two had been playing all day," Robert said with a chuckle. "Running around like wild animals, getting into everything. By evening, you just collapsed wherever you were and fell asleep. Your parents thought it was the sweetest thing they’d ever seen."
"I look so happy," I whispered, touching the photo with gentle fingers.
"You were happy," Margaret assured . "Both of you were. Those sumrs were magical. Your parents and ours would spend hours talking and laughing while you kids ran wild. It was like having one big, extended family."
The weight of all that lost ti, all those stolen mories, pressed down on my chest like a physical thing. I’d had a family once, a real family who loved and watched grow. I’d had a best friend who protected and shared his toys and fell asleep next to under oak trees.
And it was all gone, erased by violence and trauma and the cruel passage of ti.
"I’m sorry," I said, my voice breaking. "I’m so sorry I don’t rember any of it. I wish I could rember you, rember this, rember being that happy little girl."
"Hey," Caleb said softly, his hand finding mine. "There’s nothing to apologize for. You survived sothing that should have killed you."
Robert cleared his throat roughly. "Speaking of your parents," he said, his expression growing serious. "Caleb said you ca here looking for answers about what happened to them."
I nodded, steeling myself for whatever details they might share. "I need to know the truth. I need to understand who was responsible."
The Morrisons exchanged another weighted look before Robert leaned forward in his chair. "What do you know about that night?"
"Not much," I admitted. "Nothing, actually."
Robert said grimly. "The details are... difficult to hear."
"I can handle it," I said, though my hands were trembling slightly. "I need to hear it."
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