Chapter 3

Evan found me in the hotel lobby while I was printing my employment paperwork. He set a revised plan for the marking ceremony beside the computer and tapped the page for me to read.

The ceremony would be delayed two years. During Ivy’s recovery, I was expected to accommodate all her reasonable needs. If I refused, our engagement would be reconsidered.

“Since when do you get to make those rules?”

“I’m your mate.” He pulled out a chair and sat beside me. “And Blackpine’s next Alpha. You can’t turn every disagreement into a public scene.”

I touched the leather bracelet on my wrist. Evan had braided it himself. We’d been eighteen when we recognized each other as fated mates, and his wolf had been so excited he’d crashed through a section of the training fence. Later, he’d pressed his forehead to mine and promised that whatever happened, he’d always hear me out.

His phone lit up beside the new conditions. Ivy wanted him to walk her into the welcome-home celebration. I watched him type his answer.

[Of course.]

“I don’t remember Luke or Mom anymore,” I told him. “You’re next.”

His fingers stopped moving. He turned the phone facedown. “You’re really going to punish me like this?”

I unfastened the bracelet and laid it on the paper. “You said if I paid, we could move on. Now I’m telling you what that means, and you won’t even ask.”

“Because you don’t have to sell your memories of us!” His raised voice made the receptionist look over. He lowered it and caught my wrist.

His scent was close enough that my wolf leaned toward him before I could stop her. That familiar warmth almost had me believing I could still get through to him if I found the right words. I’d spent four years trusting the man behind that scent. Even with his new conditions on the table between us, part of me still wanted to lean into him. [Maybe he’ll understand if Maeve explains it herself.]

“Then come with me.” I met his eyes. “Let Maeve tell you what I’ll lose. I’m asking you for half an hour.”

He glanced at his phone again. Ivy had sent another message.

[Mom’s tied up with something. There’s nobody to take me to my rehab appointment today.]

Evan let go of my wrist. “Wait for me. I’ll come back.”

I pushed the bracelet closer to him and collected my papers. “I’m done waiting.”

He didn’t come that night. Instead, he sent an old picture of us on a mountaintop, his arm around my shoulders.

[Once you’ve calmed down, we’ll be like this again.]

I remembered that day. It had been so windy he’d pulled me inside his jacket and promised we’d come back every year. When I’d brought up this year’s trip, he’d told me Ivy couldn’t manage the trail and I needed to stop thinking only about myself.

I closed the photo and confirmed my third appointment with Maeve.

The next morning, I took a long time to sign the consent form. Maeve didn’t rush me.

“Would you like another night to think?”

I looked at the pale band the bracelet had left around my wrist.

“I know he isn’t coming. But if he sent another picture tonight, I’d remember how happy we were and start wondering whether I should give him one more chance.”

My eyes filled, and I waited until I could speak.

“I don’t want to spend another year waiting for him to love me the way I remember.”

For $310,000, I sold the love I’d felt for Evan and the memories we’d built it on. Before drinking, I tried to remember the feel of his lips against my forehead one last time.

Afterward, the man in my phone’s photographs could’ve been a stranger in the background of a hotel brochure. But a faint pull remained in my chest, and I asked Maeve if something had gone wrong.

“You haven’t completed a permanent marking, but you’re still fated mates. The bond can let you feel him. It can’t give you back the memory of anything he did.”

I closed the information sheet and emailed the man in the photographs to tell him our engagement was over.

He cornered me in the clinic’s parking lot that evening. “You blocked me?”

“You can still email me. If there’s paperwork, send it there.”

He stepped closer, searching my face, and suddenly fell quiet. “Nora, look at me.”

I was already looking at him. The color drained from his face. He kept looking for something in my expression, something I couldn’t give him. I knew his name from the papers in my folder. I couldn’t remember ever saying it before I took the potion. He said my name, then said it again, as though that should make me throw myself into his arms. I stepped away and confirmed my ride on my phone.

When his own phone rang, he was still staring at me. “She might’ve taken something to block the bond,” he told whoever was calling. “Don’t worry. I’ll handle it. I’ll be there tonight.”

My car arrived. I got in without waiting to hear the rest.

Back at the hotel, my bags were packed and my contract was signed. I’d given my new address only to Leah and Maeve. I opened the final transaction on my phone.

I’d been four when an attack on my pack killed my family. After that, I’d been passed between foster homes until the Reeds took me in.

I remembered rain hammering outside as Grant Reed carried me down the hall. Martha had crouched by the door to pull off my soaked boots. I’d asked if they’d send me away when they found their missing daughter.

They’d held me between them and promised I could always stay.

Every other memory of my mother was gone. That night was the last time I could still remember what it felt like to have a home.

I wrote a final page of instructions for myself, tucked it into my folder, and booked the last dose.