09 The Daughter’s Dream

Ava

I woke up reaching for someone who wasn't there. My fingers grasped empty air, trying to hold onto the woman with the rose smell and the laugh that made my chest feel warm. But she faded away like she always did, leaving me cold.

Winter light sneaked through my window, making little rainbow spots on my wall. My room was too neat. Miss Hilda always said a proper young lady keeps her space tidy, but I thought she just didn't want me to have too many things. Things that reminded me of someone I wasn't supposed to remember.

I sat up and rubbed my eyes. The dream was already going away, slipping like water through fingers. But I remembered her hands—soft but strong, with little marks on them like stars. In my dream, those hands were braiding my hair, and she was singing something I couldn't quite remember.

It was strange how I missed someone I didn't know.

I slid out of bed, my feet quiet on the cold floor. Alpha didn't like noise in the mornings. He didn't like a lot of things, especially questions about her.

My secret box lived under the loose board by my bed. Nobody knew about it except me and maybe Luis, but he never told. Inside was my counting book.

"One thousand, eight hundred and twenty-six," I whispered, making another careful line next to all the others. I'd been counting ever since I could hold a pencil. "Five years exactly."

Five years since Mom left. Or was taken away. Nobody would tell me the truth, but I was good at listening when grown-ups thought I couldn't hear.

I pulled out the photo next. It was getting soft at the edges where I'd touched it too much. A woman holding a tiny baby wrapped in white. Me. Her smile looked real, not like the smiles people gave me now. I pressed my finger to her face.

"Hi, Mom," I whispered. "It was my birthday yesterday. Alpha gave me his watch, the special one with the moonstone. But then he looked mad about it after. Like he wished he hadn't."

I told her about the cake that got knocked over, about how Alpha hardly ever called me his daughter. I told her the things I couldn't tell anyone else.

Footsteps in the hallway. Quick as lightning, I tucked everything away and pretended to be just waking up when Miss Hilda came in with breakfast.

"You look small in that new dress," she said, putting down the tray. Her eyes did that thing adults' eyes did—like they were sorry about something but wouldn't say what.

I just nodded. I learned a long time ago that when people talked about how small I was, they were really talking about something else.

* * *

School was the worst part of the day. Not the lessons—I liked those. But the other kids looked at me funny.

"My mom says Alpha never visits the nursery when you're there," whispered Mila during arithmetic. She was my only friend, if you could call someone your friend when they made your stomach hurt sometimes.

"That's not true," I lied. But we both knew it was.

Mila leaned closer while Teacher was writing on the board. "I heard my dad talking. He said Alpha isn't really your father. That's why he doesn't want to see you."

My pencil stopped moving. I'd heard this whispered before, but never said to my face.

"That's stupid," I said, but my voice came out wobbly. "He's the Alpha. He's just busy."

Mila shrugged. "That's what they said. That's why you're so small and don't look like him."

Under the table, my hands curled into fists so tight my fingers hurt. I didn't cry though. Alpha said crying was for babies, and I was five now.

* * *

I didn't go to lunch with the others. Instead, I slipped away to find Aunt Susan. She was in the Luna office, the one that should have been my mother's. Her fingers moved through papers like spider legs.

"Aunt Susan?" My voice sounded too small in the big room.

She looked up, and her face did the thing it always did when she saw me—smiled with her mouth but not her eyes.

"Ava, darling. Shouldn't you be at lunch?"

I twisted my hands in my dress. "Can I ask you something? About my mother?"

The air got colder somehow. Aunt Susan put down her papers slowly, like she was thinking very carefully.

"What about her?"

"Did she..." I swallowed. "Did she leave because she didn't want me?"

Aunt Susan came around the desk and knelt in front of me. Her perfume was too sharp, making my nose itch.

"Your mother chose to leave us, sweetie," she said, voice dripping sweet like too much honey. "Some people just aren't made to be mothers."

She touched my cheek and I tried not to pull away. Her fingers were cold.

"But she's mine," I said before I could stop myself. "And I'm hers."

Something flashed in Aunt Susan's eyes, dark and quick like a snake. Then it was gone, replaced by that fake smile.

"You have me now," she said. "And Alpha, of course."

But I didn't, not really. Alpha looked through me most days like I was made of glass.

* * *

The east garden was where I felt closest to her. Luis told me my mother planted these roses herself when she was carrying me.

"She had dirt under her nails at the mating ceremony," he told me once, smiling at the memory. "The Luna wouldn't let anyone else tend these white ones. Said they needed a mother's touch."

Now, kneeling in the cold dirt, I touched the winter-bare stems carefully. The thorns were sharp but I didn't mind. Pain meant you were feeling something, and sometimes that was better than feeling nothing.

"I had the dream again," I told the roses. "The one where you're holding me up high and laughing. Your hands smell like these roses and something else... something clean. In the dream, you never want to put me down."

Wind rustled through the bare branches. If I closed my eyes, it almost sounded like someone answering.

Luis said I looked just like her. That my eyes were the same, and the way I tilted my head when I was thinking hard. He was the only one who talked about her like she was real, not some shadow everyone wanted to forget.

I pulled out the little candle I took from the kitchen. It was a bit crushed, but it still worked when I lit it with the matches I wasn't supposed to have.

Cupping the tiny flame with my hands, I closed my eyes tight. I made the same wish I made every year, every day.

"Please come back for me."

I blew out the candle, watching the smoke curl up toward the heavy snow clouds. The wind shifted, bringing the smell of more snow coming. But there was something else mixed in, something that made my nose twitch and my chest feel funny.

Roses. And something sharp and clean underneath.

Something from beyond our borders.

The little wolf inside me—the one that hardly ever spoke—suddenly lifted her head and sniffed.

Mom?

* * *