If his wolf was truly active… and everything in me said it was… then leaving him alone in a corridor full of
my pack would have been irresponsible.
I walked ahead without checking if he kept pace. I didn’t need to. I could hear him. The rhythm of his heartbeat had shifted from panic to something tighter, more restrained. Controlled fear. Confusion. It echoed faintly behind me as we moved through the hall.
The scent followed too.
By the time we reached my office, I had already begun ordering my thoughts. This required precision. No assumptions. No emotion.
I pushed the door open and stepped inside. I moved behind my desk but did not sit immediately. I waited until Roman entered fully.
He stood there, uncertain.
“Sit,” I instructed.
He obeyed.
That alone told me something. His body language wasn’t defiant. It wasn’t aggressive. If his wolf had surfaced without guidance, there would be agitation, territorial tension, something primal pressing against
the surface.
Instead, he looked like a man who had just been told the sky was green.
I took my seat across from him and folded my hands loosely on the desk.
“Start talking,” I said evenly. “When did it begin?”
He frowned slightly. “When did what begin?”
I held his gaze without blinking.
“The change.”
He swallowed.
“This morning,” he said carefully. “I woke up and… my injuries were gone. Completely gone. The pain wasn’t there anymore.”
I said nothing, allowing the silence to press him forward.
“And my senses,” he continued. “They’re different. I can hear things I shouldn’t be able to hear. Conversations from down the hall. Heartbeats.” He hesitated at that part, as if admitting it made it more real. “I thought I was imagining it at first.”
< Chapter 316
“You weren’t,” I said calmly. “Keep talking.”
He shifted in the chair.
+25 Points
After a moment of hesitation, he nodded. “There was something else,” he added. “My eyes. I thought I saw
…
something. But it disappeared. I don’t know if I was hallucinating.”
I studied him carefully as he spoke. His pulse did not spike with deception. His breathing remained
uneven. There was no flicker of calculated concealment.
Interesting.
“And before this morning?” I asked. “Did you feel anything?”
He shook his head slowly. “I had a fever. I remember that.”
“Anything else?” I pressed.
“No.”
Silence settled between us again.
I leaned back slightly in my chair, weighing my next words.
There was no point easing him into this.
“Your wolf is active,” I said plainly.
The reaction was immediate.
He stared at me as if I had spoken another language.
“My what?”
“Your wolf,” I repeated. “It was not active before. It is now.”
He let out a short, disbelieving breath. “I think you’ve got the wrong idea, sir.”
“I don’t,” I replied evenly.
His hands tightened slightly against his thighs.
“I’m not… whatever you think I am.”
I held his gaze steadily.
“You are a wolf,” I said. “Like everyone else in this house.”
The room seemed to constrict around that statement.
He blinked once. Twice.
“No,” he said under his breath.
“Yes.”
24
< Chapter 316
“What are you saying?”
+25 Points?
“You healed overnight,” I stated. “Wolfsbane affected you when it should not have affected a human. Your senses are heightened beyond human capability. And right now, you carry the scent of an awakened wolf strongly enough to fill my corridors.”
He went still at that.
His confusion wasn’t feigned. It deepened. His brows pulled together, his jaw tightening as if he were
trying to force his mind to latch onto something familiar.
“I don’t know anything about that,” he said finally.
“Then remember now,” I replied.
He looked frustrated, almost angry. “Remember what? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t remember anything like that.”
“Where did you come from?” I asked.
His expression faltered.
“I told you before. I don’t know.”
“Think,” I said, my voice sharpening just slightly. “Before you were found. Before the injuries. What is the last clear memory you have?”
He pressed his fingers to his temples as if trying to force something forward.
“I don’t have any memories. Except…” He stopped.
“Except what?” I urged.
“There’s this dream I keep having. There was… running,” he muttered faintly. “I think. Trees. Night. And then
pain. That’s it.”
Running.
Through trees.
At night.
His wolf would have known that terrain instinctively.
“Was someone chasing you?” I asked.
“Some… Wolves.” He looked like saying the name out loud hit him in some way.
“That’s not just any dream… it’s your memory fighting to come back. You are feeling it,” I said calmly. “You just don’t recognize it.”
He shook his head.
“This doesn’t make sense.”
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< Chapter 316
+25 Points
“It doesn’t have to make sense to be true.”
His breathing grew heavier again.
He stared at me for a long moment, searching my face for something… reassurance, maybe. Or
confirmation that this was some elaborate mistake.
“Can you think a little? See if you can trigger something. Your parents,” I said.
Nothing.
“Your first shift.” At least that was something that should be triggered now that his wolf was active again…
unless he had never shifted before.
His eyes flickered at that word… shift… but there was no recognition.
“Stop. Please,” he muttered under his breath. “You’re asking me to pull memories out of thin air.”
“I’m asking you to try.”
He went quiet then.
Completely quiet.
His gaze dropped to the floor. His jaw clenched. I could almost see him digging through the recesses of his mind, searching for something solid to stand on.
Seconds passed.
Then longer.
Finally, he looked back up at me.
“I don’t remember anything at all.”
–
FAYE
Anna stood a few feet ahead of me, one hand resting against the spine of a thick leather–bound volume.
I folded my arms loosely across my chest and watched her.
“You sounded urgent on the phone,” I said quietly. “I guess you found something.”
Anna smiled. “I wouldn’t have called you here if it wasn’t worth your time, Luna.”
I smiled in return. “Alright, let’s have it.”
She pulled one of the books free and set it carefully on the large table in the center of the section. The wood creaked softly under its weight.
“I started with documented cases of dissociation between wolf and host,” she said, flipping it open with careful fingers. “Historical anomalies. Psychological fractures. Ritual interference. I don’t think his loss or
< Chapter 316
lack of memory was an accident.”
I stepped closer.
The pages were filled with dense script, old dialect, translated notes scribbled in the margins from previous scholars. Some of the ink had faded to brown.
“You think it isn’t trauma?” I asked.
Anna looked up at me.
“I think it might not be trauma… yes.”
The words settled heavily in my mind.
I leaned forward slightly, resting my palms on the table. “Maybe you’re right. He doesn’t present like someone suppressing memories from pain alone.”
“No,” Anna agreed softly. “He doesn’t.”
That had been bothering me too.
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Trauma–induced amnesia had markers. Behavioral inconsistencies. Defensive gaps. Emotional flares
around certain triggers.
Roman had… emptiness.
Clean emptiness.
Anna turned a few pages and rotated the book so I could see a specific passage.
“In earlier centuries,” she began, “when packs were more territorial and less forgiving, banishment was not considered sufficient punishment for wolves deemed too dangerous to execute but too powerful to leave
intact.”
I lifted an eyebrow slightly.
“That’s a very specific category,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Do you think that is what happened to Roman? You’ve seen him. Does he look that dangerous to you?” I asked genuinely.
“I’m not sure of anything. We’re just exploring theories for now,” Anna said.
I nodded for her to continue.
Her fingers traced a paragraph lightly.
“Also, there was an ancient practice. Rarely documented in full detail, but referenced across several regions. It involved severing the conscious tether between wolf and human mind before exile.”
I went still.
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< Chapter 316
“Severing?” I repeated.
Anna nodded.
+25 Points
“The ritual did not kill the wolf. It did not remove it. But it fractured the awareness. The host would lose
access to memory, instinct, identity… sometimes entirely.”
A quiet chill crept along my spine.
“That sounds terrible,” I said.
“It was meant to be,” Anna replied. “The purpose wasn’t mercy. It was containment. A wolf stripped of
memory would not know its territory. Would not remember enemies. Would not seek revenge.”
“And would not remember the path back,” I murmured.
Anna met my eyes.
“Exactly.”
Silence pressed between us, thick and contemplative.
I straightened slowly, processing.
“You’re suggesting Roman might have been subjected to something like that.”
“I’m suggesting the symptoms align disturbingly well,” Anna said.
I turned away from the table, pacing once toward the nearest shelf and back again.
“But this is dark magic you’re talking about. We used to have some dark practices back then in Silver Hollow. My father used to say there were signs,” I said after a moment. “If something like that had been done to him, we would see signs in his aura. At least someone would have noticed something.”
Anna hesitated.
“You might not see it immediately, especially since you haven’t been around him for long.”
I stopped.
“Right.”
“According to some of these texts,” she said, tapping the page gently, “the ritual was designed to leave the body intact. Clean and functional. The fracture occurs beneath conscious awareness.”
I folded my arms again, staring at the book.
“Then explain the detachment from his wolf,” I said quietly. “Even if memories were suppressed, instinct should remain. Reflex. Response. He reacts like a complete human.”
Anna nodded slowly.
“That’s the part that doesn’t fully align.”
< Chapter 316
I appreciated that she wasn’t trying to force a theory where it didn’t fit.
“And what would undo it?” I asked.
Anna closed the book carefully before answering.
“That’s what I don’t know yet.”
I exhaled slowly.
The quiet of the library felt different now. Less academic. More dangerous.
“Show me the references,” I said.
+25 Points
Anna nodded and moved to another shelf, retrieving two thinner volumes and a stack of copied notes she
had prepared. She laid them out in an orderly pattern.
“Did you read all these in less than two days?” I had to ask.
Anna laughed. “Of course not. This is where I work, and I love reading. All I had to do was go back to some
of the books I once read and overlooked.” She shrugged.
“This one,” she said, tapping a dark green book, “details the banishment rites of the Northern Territories. They describe wolves who were considered ‘too wild to tame and too powerful to destroy.”
I felt a faint tightening in my chest at that phrase.
Too powerful to destroy.
“And this one,” she continued, indicating a worn manuscript, “contains fragmented accounts of memory severance rituals. Most of it is incomplete. Intentionally, I suspect.”
“Why intentionally?”
“Because knowledge like this isn’t meant to be replicated easily.”
I ran my fingers lightly over the parchment. The script was older than the house we stood in.
“Do we have any record of this practice being used in modern times?” I asked.
Anna shook her head. “None that are public.”
Public.
The word hung there.
“But I think if someone had reason to erase a wolf without killing him, they might seek forgotten methods.”
I walked slowly around the table, studying the pages more closely.
“If Roman was dangerous enough to warrant this,” I said slowly, “why is he not displaying any level of
aggression?”
Anna leaned lightly against the table.
7/8
< Chapter 316
“Well, maybe without memory, he may not know he’s dangerous.”
The idea unsettled me more than I wanted to admit.
25 Points
If this was punishment… what had he done? Why still attempt to kill him–stabbing him and leaving him to
die? It didn’t add up.
“I don’t like building conclusions on theory,” I said finally.
“I guessed,” Anna replied gently. “That’s why I’m still digging.”
H
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Sara Lili is a daring romance writer who turns icy landscapes into scenes of fiery passion. She loves crafting hot love stories while embracing the chill of Iceland’s breathtaking cold.
