The Stranger in the Mirror

Chapter 14: The Stranger in the Mirror

The journey back from the Forbidden Grove was a silent funeral for a love that only one person remembered.

Audrey sat atop her horse, but she rode like a prisoner. Every time Lucas drew near, she stiffened, her eyes wide with a frantic, bird-like fear. To her, he wasn't the man who had restored her soul; he was a massive, scarred warrior-king who had snatched her from the only life she knew—miserable as it had been.

"You're staring again," Audrey whispered, not looking at him. Her hands gripped the reins so hard her knuckles were white.

"I'm watching for the trail," Lucas lied. His heart felt like a hollowed-out tree, cold and brittle. "The Blackwood is dangerous."

"You keep calling me 'Luna,'" she said, finally turning to look at him. The golden sparks that usually danced in her irises were gone, replaced by a dull, flat brown. "But I’m just Audrey. I don't have a pack. I don't have... whatever 'white wolf' power you keep talking about. You’ve made a mistake. You should have taken Samantha. She’s the one who was born to be a Queen."

Lucas stopped his horse abruptly. Vane and the guards kept moving, sensing the Alpha’s need for space.

"Samantha is a viper who would have let you rot in a cellar," Lucas said, his voice raw. He dismounted and walked toward her. Audrey flinched, but he didn't reach for her. He reached for a small leather pouch at his belt and pulled out a simple, scorched piece of ribbon—the one she had used to tie her hair back the night she broke the Rite of Severance.

"You gave me this," he said, holding it out. "You told me that even if we lost everything, we would build something new from the ashes. You weren't a victim when you said that, Audrey. You were a conqueror."

Audrey looked at the ribbon, then back at him. "I don't remember saying that. I don't remember you." She swallowed hard, her voice trembling. "It’s like there’s a giant hole in my head, and everyone is trying to fill it with lies."

"Then let me show you one truth," Lucas said. He took a gamble. He stepped into her personal space, the heat of his body radiating against the mountain chill. He took her hand—the one that still bore the faint, silvery scar from Selene’s ritual—and pressed it against his bare throat, right over his pulse point.

"I am a blind man who was given sight by your touch," he whispered. "Search your feelings, Audrey. Not your head. Your blood. Does your blood tell you I'm a liar?"

For a heartbeat, the world went still. Audrey’s fingers twitched against the steady, thrumming beat of his heart. Deep within her, beneath the layers of amnesia and fear, something flickered. A phantom warmth. A memory of cedar and ozone.

A tiny spark of gold flared in the center of her chest.

"I..." she gasped, her eyes searching his. "I feel... a pull. Like a string tied to my ribs, tugging toward you."

"That's the bond," Lucas said, a glimmer of hope breaking through his grief. "It’s still there. It’s deeper than memory. It’s written in your marrow."

But the moment was shattered by a sharp, whistling sound.

Thwack.

An arrow, fletched with black raven feathers, thudded into the tree inches from Lucas’s head.

"Ambush!" Vane’s voice screamed from up the trail.

From the shadows of the Blackwood, figures emerged. They didn't wear the armor of the Moon Shadow or the Silver Pack. They were draped in tattered furs and bone-charcoal war paint—the Black Guard mercenaries. And at their head was a man Audrey recognized with a jolt of pure terror: Jaxon, her father’s lead Enforcer.

"There she is," Jaxon sneered, leveling a heavy crossbow at Audrey. "The little kitchen mouse playing dress-up. The Alpha wants his property back, King Lucas. Hand her over, and maybe we won't burn your fortress to the ground tonight."

Audrey scrambled off her horse, hiding behind Lucas. The "White Wolf" should have emerged then. She should have erupted in a pillar of flame that turned the arrows to ash. But she stood there, trembling, her power locked behind a door she no longer had the key to.

"She is not property," Lucas growled, his claymore sliding from its sheath with a deadly hiss. His silver eyes glowed with a predatory light. "And you are in my woods now, mercenary. Here, there are no laws but mine."

"Kill the King," Jaxon commanded. "Bring the girl alive. Her sister wants to finish what the fire started."

As the mercenaries charged, Lucas shoved Audrey toward a hollowed-out log. "Hide! Don't come out until I call for you!"

Audrey huddled in the darkness of the log, listening to the horrific sounds of battle—the clash of steel, the wet thud of blades hitting flesh, and the terrifying, guttural roars of wolves shifting mid-leap.

She watched through a crack in the wood as Lucas fought like a demon. He was a whirlwind of silver and blood, taking on three mercenaries at once. But he was distracted. He kept glancing back toward her hiding spot, his protective instinct overriding his tactical mind.

Jaxon saw the opening. He didn't aim for Lucas. He aimed for the log.

"If I can't have her, no one will!" Jaxon roared, igniting a vial of Alchemist’s Fire and hurling it toward Audrey.

The world turned orange. The dry wood of the log caught instantly.

"AUDREY!" Lucas screamed, turning his back on a mercenary's blade to reach her.

The blade bit deep into Lucas’s shoulder, but he didn't stop. He dove into the flames, his hands reaching for her.

Audrey saw the fire closing in. She saw the man she "didn't know" walking into an inferno just to reach her. The injustice of it—the sheer, selfless love of it—hit her like a physical blow.

I am not a victim, a voice whispered in the back of her mind. It wasn't Selene’s voice. It was her own.

The door in her mind didn't open; it exploded.

A shockwave of white-hot energy blasted outward from the log. The Alchemist’s Fire didn't just go out; it turned into gold-leafed embers that floated harmlessly in the air. The mercenaries were thrown back by a wall of pure force.

Audrey stepped out of the burning log. Her clothes were scorched, but her skin was glowing with the brilliance of a thousand suns. She looked at Lucas, who was kneeling in the dirt, bleeding and gasping.

She didn't have her memories back. Not yet. But she had her wrath.

"You touched what belongs to me," Audrey said, her voice sounding like a choir of bells and thunder.

She turned her gaze to Jaxon. She didn't use a sword. She simply raised her hand, and a beam of concentrated starlight struck the ground at his feet, melting the stone and sending him flying into the trees.

The remaining mercenaries fled into the dark, terrified by the celestial power.

Audrey’s light faded, and she collapsed into Lucas’s arms. She looked up at him, her eyes clear for the first time.

"I still don't remember our first kiss," she whispered, her voice fading as she succumbed to the exhaustion of the flare. "But I remember the way you look at me. And I think... I think I’d like to do it again."