Chapter 3

Caelan's POV

The door closes behind me with a soft click, but it might as well be a gunshot for how it echoes in my chest.

She doesn't remember.

I lean against the hallway wall, pressing my forehead to the cool stone. My hands are shaking while I can still smell her on my skin. Lavender and vanilla and that sweet, addictive scent that's purely her. It's stronger now than it was in Montana, richer, and more potent.

Two years. Two years of that scent haunting my dreams, of waking up hard and desperate with her name on my lips.

Now she's here, in my room, and I can barely think straight.

My wolf is pacing, agitated and confused. Why did we leave? He growls. She's ours. She wants us. I can smell it.

And she does want me; that much is undeniable. The way her breath caught when I stepped closer, the subtle shift in her scent when our eyes met. Her body remembers what her mind has forgotten.

I push off the wall and head toward my office, each step feeling like I'm walking through quicksand. The pack house is quiet this early; most of the wolves are still sleeping off last night's hunt. Good. I can't deal with their questions right now, their barely concealed excitement that their Luna has finally come home.

Home. What a fucking joke.

The memory of that night three days ago burns through me like acid. Finding her in that tiny apartment, curled up on her couch with a book in her lap, looking so peaceful, it broke something inside me. She'd been wearing those ridiculous Mickey Mouse pajamas, her hair spread across the throw pillow like spun gold.

For a moment, I'd just watched her sleep. Memorizing the curve of her cheek, the way her lips parted slightly with each breath. Two years of searching, of following dead ends and false leads, and there she was. Safe. Alive.

Beautiful.

The curse had changed her, made her smaller somehow. More fragile. The fierce warrior who used to fight beside me was buried under layers of human mundanity, and seeing her like that...domesticated, diminished, had filled me with rage so pure it scared me.

Not at her. Never at her. At the witch Annalise, who'd stolen two years of our lives. At myself for letting her walk into that trap. At the cruel twist of fate that had brought her back only to make her a stranger.

I reach my office and close the door behind me, immediately moving to the whiskey cabinet. My hands are still shaking as I pour three fingers of bourbon.

The irony isn't lost on me. I remember everything. Every laugh, every touch, every breathless moment when she'd arch beneath me and whisper my name like a prayer. I remember the way she used to trace my scars with her fingertips, mapping every mark like she was memorizing a sacred text.

I remember the night she told me she loved me.

And I remember the morning I woke up to find her gone, nothing left but the lingering scent of lavender.

The bourbon burns going down, but it's nothing compared to the fire in my chest.

I should have told her the truth.

About Montana. I remember that day with perfect clarity. I'd taken some of the pack warriors for hunting up in Montana, only to be hit with her scent on the second day of our trip.

Fuck, the shock of it.

I was sitting in some generic coffee shop, nursing black coffee that tasted like motor oil, when she walked out of the bookstore across the street. Just stepped onto the sidewalk like any normal Tuesday, completely unaware that she'd just stopped my heart.

For a moment I thought the world had stopped. I sat there waiting for her to notice me or walk up to me.

Instead, she'd adjusted her cardigan against the autumn chill and walked away.

My wolf had gone insane. Absolutely fucking feral. It took everything I had not to shift right there in the middle of town, not to chase her down and claim what was mine. The need was so sharp it felt like dying.

Instead, I'd spent weeks watching her from shadows, learning her new life, her routines. The way she smiled at customers in the bookstore, patient and kind. How she'd fed Charlie the stray cat.

But I couldn't approach her. Not directly. I could have approached her and could have tried to explain. But the truth is, I was terrified. Terrified she'd choose that simple human life over the complicated, dangerous reality of being mine

So I'd waited. And watched. And planned.

I saved her life, I tell myself, downing the rest of the bourbon. I had no choice. What if she was harmed by rogues when the curse stops masking her scent? Then every wolf will come to know that she's mine.

But the guilt still eats at me like acid. The way she'd looked so peaceful in my arms as I carried her through the night, trusting even in unconsciousness. The way she'd murmured my name in her sleep, like some part of her recognized home, was opposite the way she'd looked at me just now—betrayed, hurt, and angry.

Kidnapped.

The word echoes in my head. Technically accurate. Morally complicated.

My cock throbs against my jeans, and I curse under my breath. Even now, even with her doubting me, my body responds to her proximity like a teenage boy seeing his first naked woman. Two years of celibacy, of my hand and cold showers and dreams that left me gasping her name.

The mate bond is a cruel mistress. It doesn't care about timing or circumstances or the fact that she barely remembers who I am. It just knows she's here, alive, smelling like heaven, and wearing nothing but silk in my bed.

Our bed.

I'd burned the sheets after she left. Couldn't stand her scent fading, becoming just another ghost haunting our home. But when I brought her back, Elena had prepared the room exactly as it used to be. Every detail was perfect, down to the throw pillows she used to steal for her reading nook.

Did she notice? Does some part of her remember how she used to curl up in that chair by the window, feet tucked under her, completely absorbed in whatever book had caught her attention?

A knock at my office door interrupts my thoughts. "Come in."

Elena enters, her expression carefully neutral. My sister has always been good at reading me, probably too good.

"How did she take it?" she asks without preamble.

"About as well as you'd expect." I pour another drink and offer her one. She shakes her head.

"Did you tell her everything?"

Everything. Like how I'd rented that apartment across from the bookstore for two months, just so I could watch her through the windows. How I'd memorized her schedule, her habits, and the way she'd hum while she organized inventory.

How I'd followed her home every night from the shadows, making sure she was safe.