Chapter 7: Six Years Later

Hazel’s POV

“He was only twenty when the Rogues killed him,” my client Kendra whispered, tears streaming down her face. “My boy…my beautiful boy.”

“Tell me about him. What was his name?”

“Dylan.” She pressed a hand to her chest like the name physically hurt. It probably did. Liam’s name still made my chest ache and it’d been six years. “He had these bright green eyes, just like mine. Used to light up whenever he saw me coming home.”

My throat tightened. Green eyes. Liam had Ulysses’s green eyes when he was born. Did they still sparkle when he smiled? Did anyone even make him smile, or had Ulysses taught him to be as cold and heartless as his father?

“What did Dylan love to do?” I asked.

“Read stories. Oh, he devoured every book he could get his hands on.” Kendra’s face softened with memory. “Even as a little pup, maybe five or six years old, he’d curl up in my lap and beg me to read to him again and again.”

Six years old, like Liam was now. Was he learning to read? Did anyone read him bedtime stories, or did he fall asleep alone while Kimberley painted her nails and ignored his cries like she had that horrible day?

“His own father left when Dylan was small. Couldn’t handle the responsibility,” Kendra continued, her voice turning bitter. “My son swore he’d never abandon his children like that. Said every child deserved a parent who fought for them.”

The words stabbed through me. Every child deserved a parent who fought for them, but what had I done? Let Ulysses rip my baby from my arms and throw me out like garbage. Let him poison my son’s mind against me.

Liam probably thought I was the one who’d abandoned him—not his bastard father who’d stolen him away.

“Close your eyes,” I said, my voice rougher than intended. “Take three deep breaths with me.”

Kendra obeyed, her eyelids fluttering shut.

“Now I want you to picture Dylan,” I continued, slipping into the hypnotic cadence Elena had taught me. “Not the day he died, but a happy memory. See him clearly in your mind.”

“I can see him,” she whispered. “He’s seven years old, sitting in my kitchen with flour in his hair because he tried to help me bake.”

“Good. Feel that love you have for him. Let it fill your chest, warm and bright.”

As I guided her deeper into the trance, teaching her mind to separate the crushing grief from the pure love, my own chest started aching. Where were my warm memories of Liam?

I’d only had a few hours with him before they tore him away. My only memories of him were of loss and pain.

“The love doesn’t have to hurt,” I told Kendra shakily, because mine still hurt like hell. “You can carry Dylan with you without drowning in the loss.”

Liar. My love for Liam was drowning me every single day.

When she opened her eyes thirty minutes later, something had shifted. Peace replaced the wild desperation in her expression.

“The pain is still there,” she said wonderingly. “But I can…breathe around it now.”

She closed her eyes again and let tears of relief flow down her cheeks—not the desperate, choking sobs from before, but cleansing tears that seemed to wash away months of suffocating grief.

Watching her find peace broke something inside me. My own tears started falling, hot and bitter. She got to heal from losing her son. She got to carry his memory forward with love instead of agony.

What did I get? Six years of wondering if my baby was safe. Six years of hating Ulysses so deeply it burned like acid in my veins. Six years of being the monster in my own son’s bedtime stories, thanks to that cruel bastard who’d convinced everyone I was evil.

“Thank you,” Kendra whispered, reaching for my hand. “You’ve given me back my boy—not the dead child I’ve been mourning, but the living memory of who he really was.”

She got her boy back. I’d never get mine back. I had no living memory of who he was.

After she left, I sat alone in my treatment room and let the tears come harder—tears for the mother I’d never gotten to be, for the six years of bedtime stories and scraped knees and proud moments I’d missed.

Every session like this destroyed me a little more. My clients got to heal, got to move forward.

I was trapped in the same hell I’d been living for six years, with no end in sight.

I was the hypnotherapist who couldn’t heal herself.

Liam would be in school now, learning to read, making friends. Had his hair darkened like his father’s or was it still blonde like mine? Did he ever wonder about the mother who’d supposedly abandoned him?

Did Kimberley treat him well, or was she still the selfish creature who’d threatened to throw him in the forest?

The questions tormented me every day.

And Ulysses…my hands clenched into fists. Six years, and my rage toward him hadn’t dimmed even a little.

If anything, it burned hotter now. Every night I wondered if he ever thought about what he’d done to me. If he ever regretted stealing my child and throwing me away like I was nothing.

Probably not. Men like him didn’t waste time on regret.

The treatment room suddenly felt too small, too quiet. I stood and began straightening things—adjusting the moonstone lamps, smoothing the comfortable chairs where clients bared their souls, checking the soundproof runes Elena had taught me to carve into the walls.

The certifications covering every inch of wall space told the story of my transformation—dozens of pack elders who’d tested my abilities and declared them worthy.

I’d built something from nothing, but nothing could fill the hole where my son should be.

After leaving Thunderstrike Pack with nothing, Elena had found me. Or maybe I’d found her. She’d taken me in without question, this mysterious woman who never spoke of her past.

“I live alone,” was all she’d ever said. “And I have knowledge to share.”

She’d saved me when no one else would.

For six years, she’d been teaching me everything. Hypnotherapy, mental healing, how to guide someone through their darkest memories.

We’d built this clinic together in neutral territory, far from pack politics and the ghosts that haunted us both.

I was organizing client files when Elena appeared in the doorway. She carried an envelope.

“New commission,” she said, setting it on my desk.

I opened it without thinking, scanning the formal letterhead. Then I froze completely.

The pack emblem at the top made my blood turn to ice. Thunderstrike Pack.

No. Not possible.

The request was brief and professional: Official treatment invitation for Alpha Ulysses. Patient suffering from severe insomnia due to trauma from wars with enemy forces.

Ulysses. The man who destroyed my life was asking for my help.