Caleb POV
I threw my pencil across the room and watched it rattle against the wall.
The drawing stared back at from my desk - another sketch of the sa woman’s face I’d been feverishly drawing for three weeks. Silver hair flowing like moonlight, eyes that seed to hold secrets, a smile that made my chest ache with love I couldn’t understand.
Who was she? And why did I keep thinking about her every single night?
"Caleb?" Aiden’s voice ca through my bedroom door. "You missed the morning eting again."
I rubbed my eyes, realizing I’d been drawing since before sunrise. Again. "Co in."
Aiden entered and stopped short when he saw my desk. Paper after paper covered every surface, all showing the sa mysterious woman from different angles, in different poses, but always with that sa ethereal beauty that haunted my thoughts.
"You’re still having those dreams," Aiden said quietly.
"Every night," I admitted, annoyed. "She feels so real, Aiden. Like I should know her. Like she’s important sohow."
Aiden picked up one of the sketches - the one where I’d drawn her laughing, her head thrown back in pure joy. His expression grew troubled.
"Have you shown these to anyone else?" he asked carefully.
"No. Why would I? They’re just drawings of soone from my imagination." I stood up and started pacing. "But that’s what’s driving crazy. She doesn’t feel imaginary. When I dream about her, I can sll her hair, hear her voice, feel her hand in mine."
"What does she say in the dreams?" Aiden asked.
I stopped pacing, trying to rember. "That’s the strange part. I can never quite make out her words. It’s like listening to soone talk underwater. But the feeling is always the sa - like she’s trying to tell sothing important, sothing I need to rember."
Aiden set the drawing down carefully. "Caleb, I think you should talk to Elder Iris about this."
"Why? They’re just dreams."
"Are they?" Aiden’s voice was soft but serious. "You’ve been different since the ritual three weeks ago. Distant. Like part of you is missing."
I wanted to fight, but I couldn’t. Ever since I’d woken up after the Great Gathering ceremony, sothing had felt wrong. Not physically wrong - my mories were intact, my magic was strong, my place in the pack was safe. But emotionally, I felt hollow. Like I was going through the motions of life without actually feeling alive.
"I keep expecting sothing," I said slowly. "Or soone. I’ll walk into a room and be unhappy that it’s empty, even though I don’t know who I was hoping to see."
Aiden nodded sadly. "That’s why you need to talk to Elder Iris. She might be able to help you understand what’s missing."
Before I could reply, a commotion erupted outside. Shouts and running footsteps rang through the pack grounds. We rushed to the window and saw wolves gathered around soone lying on the ground.
"It’s Lily," Aiden said, his face going pale.
We ran outside and pushed through the crowd. Lily lay motionless, blood trickling from a wound on the back of her head. Elder Iris knelt beside her, checking her pulse with shaking hands.
"What happened?" I asked, kneeling down. The mont I got close to Lily, sothing strange happened. The constant ache in my chest - the one I’d been carrying for weeks - suddenly lessened. Like a puzzle piece sliding into place.
"Soone attacked her," Luna said, tears running down her face. "She was helping the wolves who collapsed, and then soone hit her from behind."
I found myself reaching out to touch Lily’s face, pulled by an instinct I didn’t understand. Her skin was warm and soft, and touching her sent a shock of recognition through .
"I know you," I whispered, so softly only she could hear.
Her eyelids moved. For a mont, her eyes opened and t mine. In that instant, images flashed through my mind like lightning - Lily and dancing under the moon, Lily curled up beside reading a book, Lily’s face glowing with happiness as she told she was pregnant.
The pictures were so vivid, so real, that I gasped and pulled my hand back. Lily’s eyes closed again, and the link broke.
"Did you see that?" I asked Aiden frantically. "Did you see what just happened?"
"See what?" Aiden looked confused. "You touched her face and she opened her eyes for a second."
But I had seen so much more. The woman from my dreams - she was Lily. Lily with longer hair, Lily shining with so kind of inner light, Lily looking at with love so deep it took my breath away.
"We need to get her to the healing center," Elder Iris said, but her eyes were fixed on with a look I couldn’t read.
As we carried Lily inside, I couldn’t stop thinking about those flashes of mory. They felt more real than my actual mories. But how was that possible? I barely knew Lily. She was just another pack mber, wasn’t she?
Elder Iris pulled away while the pack healer examined Lily. "You rembered sothing, didn’t you?" she asked softly.
"I don’t know what I rembered," I said honestly. "But when I touched her, I saw... us. Together. Happy. Like we were..." I struggled for the word.
"Mates?" Elder Iris suggested softly.
The word hit like a physical blow. "That’s impossible. I would rember if Lily was my mate."
Elder Iris’s old eyes filled with sadness. "What if your mories were taken from you? What if soone made you forget the most important person in your life?"
I stared at her in shock. "Who would do that? And why?"
"That’s what we need to figure out," Elder Iris said. "But first, I need you to understand sothing important. The rite three weeks ago - it didn’t just save our pack from the Great Gathering. It broke mate bonds that were already ford."
My heart stopped. "You’re saying Lily and I were actually mates?"
"I’m saying you need to look at your sketches again," Elder Iris said. "Really look at them."
I ran back to my room and grabbed the drawings. Looking at them now, with the chance of truth in my mind, I saw details I’d missed before. The woman in my sketches wasn’t just beautiful - she was sparkling with silver light. And on her wrist, barely visible in so of the pictures, was a mark. Three crescent moons linked.
The Triple Moon Mark. Lily had been the Triple Moon carrier.
"She was my mate," I breathed, the truth hitting like a wave. "She sacrificed our bond to save everyone else."
No wonder I felt hollow. No wonder I kept expecting soone who wasn’t there. Half of my soul was missing, and I’d been too confused to realize it.
I rushed back to the treatnt center, my sketches clutched in my hands. I had to tell Lily that I was starting to rember. I had to apologize for forgetting her, for not trying harder to hold onto what we had.
But when I burst through the door, the healing bed was empty.
"Where is she?" I asked.
The pack healer looked confused. "She was here just a minute ago. I stepped out to get supplies, and when I ca back..."
"She’s gone," Elder Iris said grimly, appearing behind . "Soone took her while we were distracted."
My world tilted. I was just starting to rember the woman I loved, and now she’d been kidnapped.
"Who would take her?" I asked desperately.
Elder Iris t my eyes, and I saw fear there that chilled to the bone.
"The sa person who stole your mories in the first place," she said. "And if we don’t find her soon, they’re going to finish what they started three weeks ago."
"What do you an?"
Elder Iris’s voice was barely a whisper. "They’re going to kill her, Caleb. And when they do, you’ll forget her completely. Forever."
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