4. The Stranger in my memories

#Livia’s POV 

The floor beneath my feet felt as fluid as water. My father caught me before my knees hit the hardwood, his arms wrapping around my shoulder to anchor my weight. Pain throbbed behind my eyes, a fierce pulsating heat that blurred my vision until the room dissolved into smeared shapes of gold, gray and brown. Sweat broke out along my hairline, cold and sudden.

“Livia!” Father's voice sounded muffled as though he were calling to me from the bottom of a deep lake. “What's wrong ? What's happening ?”

I pressed trembling fingers into my left temple, my thumb digging into the bone to fight the nauseating wave of pressure. Through the haze I could feel every eye in the drawing room locked onto me. 

“Just…”My breath caught, dragging roughly to my throat. “Just…sudden dizziness. A passing migraine.”

It was the easiest lie to hand them. I couldn't tell my father that my head was splitting open under the weight of an impossible memory – a memory of his political rival kneeling in red slush, weeping over a corpse.

I wasn't afraid of Alpha Asher at that moment. I was terrified of myself. The vision hadn't felt like a fleeting hallucination or the residue of a bad dream. It felt real. It had carried the weight, the smell and the bitter cold of lived truth.

If that memory was real, my mind whispered, then what was the scaffold ?

My father exhaled a heavy breath, supporting most of my weight as he guided me toward the high - backed velvet armchair near the hearth. “Sit child. Mira, fetch some water.”

In the chaos everyone assumed my body was failing me. Everyone except the man standing by the fireplace.

Asher hadn't moved to help, but he hadn't pulled back either. His golden eyes were narrowed to sharp slits, tracking every shallow breath I drew, every tremor in my hands. His fingers tucked behind his back, tightened into a rigid knot. 

He didn't look at me with the awkward concern of a noble managing an ill hostess. He looked at me with a strange, razor- focused scrutiny.

When my eyes met his a moment ago, I hadn't looked at him with embarrassment, or shyness or even simple fear. I had looked at him with a raw, shattered heartbreak. The kind of look reserved for someone who had torn your world apart with their bare hands.

I could see the questions burning behind his silent, guarded face : Why do you look at me like I have already broken you ?

Deep in his broad chest, a low, barely audible vibration hummed. His wolf was pacing, restless and agitated, reacting to the invisible wall I had thrown up between us the second he stepped into the room.

A warm drop slipped down my upper lip. I reached up absentmindedly, my fingertips catching a thin streak of crimson. The absolute strain of the vision had broken a blood vessel in my nose.

Before my father could reach into his tunic, before the Beta could react, Asher moved. 

It was an instinctual, unthinking motion. He reached into his dark coat, pulled out a folded silk handkerchief and stepped forward, extending it toward me. The room fell into an abrupt, dead silence with his sudden action.

My father paused. The Beta blinked. Even Asher himself froze, his hand outstretched, his jaw tightening as if he had just watched his own body act without his permission. He stared at the cloth in his hand, a flicker of genuine shock crossing his features.

I stared at the fine black silk, the silver wolf crest embroidered neatly in the corner. My stomach turned over. In my first or the life I thought I had lived – he had done this exact same thing. Whenever I scraped my hands on thorn bushes while gathering roots, whenever a harsh winter wind split my lip, he would hand me his handkerchief without a word quietly and effortlessly.

My fingers shook so violently I had to clench them into fists against my lap. I didn't take it.

“Thank you, Alpha Asher…” I murmured, forcing my eyes down toward the rug, refusing to touch the cloth. “...but I am fine. Please, do not trouble yourself.”

The rejection was small, but it hung in the air like a blow. Asher’s hand hovered for a fraction of a second longer before he slowly pulled it back, tucking the silk away into his coat. A shadow passed over his golden eyes – a faint, inexplicable sting of rejection that made his shoulders pull back just an inch tighter. It was a reaction that made no logical sense for two strangers meeting for the first time.

My father cleared his throat, stepping in to smooth over the awkward air. “Forgive us, Alpha Asher. My daughter has been spending too many late hours in the conservatory preparing winter tinctures.”

“There is nothing to forgive, Lord Hartwell,” Asher replied, his deep voice smoothing back into a calm, though his eyes lingered on the faint blood stain on my lip. “Her health takes priority.”

Father gestured toward the long oak council table on the far side of the room. “Please, sit. You mentioned urgent matters regarding the southern border trade?”

As the men shifted their focus, I sat back in the shadow of the armchair, keeping my head slightly bowed as if resting. But my mind was hyper-vigilant, recording every word, every shift in tone.

“The council requested I deliver the notice personally,” Asher said, pulling a sealed leather document from his mantle. “The transfer of the Sacred Moon Relic from the High Altar to the Black Moon vaults has been moved forward. It will take place before the turn of the fortnight.”

My heart stopped beating.

The Moon Relic?

I kept my face completely still, but inside, a cold terror flared. That’s impossible.

According to every memory I held of my past, the Moon Relic was an ancient artifact that remained locked in the Neutral Sanctuary until late spring. It wasn't supposed to be transferred to the Black Moon Pack until months after Asher and I were mated. It was the very relic I had been accused of stealing – the relic supposedly found hidden beneath my cabin’s floorboards.

Why was it moving now?

History wasn't just subtly shifting – it was warping around me.

Asher continued talking with my father, discussing patrol routes, grain stores, and border tariffs. I didn't join the conversation, I simply watched him.

I watched him not with the affection of a woman looking at her mate or with the blind terror of a victim watching her killer. I watched him like an investigator dissecting a complex puzzle.

I noticed how he spoke to the young servant girl who brought fresh tea, offering quiet, polite words of thanks rather than ignoring her presence. I noticed his patience as my father rambled on about minor boundary disputes. He didn't interrupt. He didn't sneer. He didn't display a single shred of the cold, arrogant cruelty that had defined the Alpha who had stood above me on the execution platform.

Either he learned that ruthless brutality later in life, I thought, my chest aching with a strange, hollow confusion, or I never truly knew him at all.

A light, rhythmic knock sounded at the open drawing room door, breaking my chain of thought.

“Forgive the intrusion, Lord Hartwell,” a soft, sweet voice called out.