Chapter 7

Aeliana's POV

The bathtub is enormous.

Like, ridiculously enormous. It's carved from what looks like a single piece of black stone, deep enough that the water comes up to my chest when I sink into it. Elena keeps adding ice like actual ice, until my teeth are chattering and my skin has gone from feverish to merely warm.

"Better?" she asks, settling into a chair beside the tub with a cup of something that smells like mint and lavender.

"Manageable," I replied while leaning back comfortably against the stone, grateful for the relief even as my body protests the cold. "Is this really necessary?"

"Trust me, without the cooling treatment, you'd be climbing the walls by now." Elena's dark hair is pulled back in a practical braid, and her amber eyes, just like her brother's but softer and hold a wisdom that seems older than her years. "I've seen unmated females go through heat. It's not pretty."

Unmated. The word sits heavy in the water between us.

"Tell me about him," I say suddenly. "About Caelan. About... before."

Elena's expression softens. "What do you want to know?"

Everything I mused, only to blurt out. "How long were we together?"

"Four years." She traces the rim of her cup with one finger. "You met in town. Caelan and Marcus... our gamma, were getting supplies when they ran into you at the diner in town."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that. Though Caelan says he knew the moment he saw you." Elena's smile is fond. "Spent the next three months finding excuses to go back to town, hoping to see you again."

Despite my situation, warmth spreads through my chest that has nothing to do with the heat. "Three months of stalking?"

"Three months of terrible small talk and awkward flirting, according to Marcus." Elena laughs. "My brother may be an Alpha, but put him in front of a pretty woman, and he turns into a stammering teenager."

A flutter of something, not quite sure what it was, stirs in my chest.

"You were human then," Elena continues. "Completely human, as far as we could tell. That's what made everything so... complicated."

"Complicated how?"

"Human-werewolf bonds are rare. Difficult. Your body wasn't designed for our mating cycles, our pack dynamics." Elena's expression grows more serious. "But somehow, it worked. You adapted and grew stronger. You even got your wolf, though it is not unheard of, but like I said, it's rare, and you could imagine our surprise when you shifted and your wolf was white ... that was the only confirmation needed to shut down the murmurs from the pack elders. We suspected that there was something dormant in your bloodline or that it was the moon goddess blessing you."

Another wave of heat crashes over me, and I sink deeper into the ice water. "White wofl?"

"Yes, white wolf. Black wolves are mainly for alphas, brown for betas, and grey for gammas. The white wolf, though rarely seen, is attributed to the very first wolf ancestry, which is why it's believed to be the blessing of the moon goddess. But before we could figure out why your wolf was white, everything went down the hill.

There's something in her tone, something she's not saying. But before I can ask, another pulse of need hits me so hard I gasp.

Elena is immediately alert, reaching for another bucket of ice. "The memories are triggering stronger episodes. We need to keep you cooler."

"The night I disappeared..." I manage between chattering teeth. "What happened?"

Elena's face darkens. "You'd been having nightmares for weeks. Visions of a woman with silver hair and cruel eyes. We thought they were all consequences of the curse, stress from fighting it through medicines and cleansing spells." She shakes her head. "We were wrong."

"Analise."

"Analise Blackthorn. That's the witch who'd cursed you and had been circling our territory for months, testing our defenses." Elena's voice grows hard. "The night you vanished, you'd gone to bed normal. Caelan saw you sleeping beside him around midnight. But when dawn came..."

"I was gone."

"Completely. Your scent masked by enough wolfsbane to hide you from every tracker in the pack." Elena sets down her cup with a sharp clink. "Wolfsbane doesn't grow in these mountains naturally, as it is poisonous to us. Someone had to import it; plan your disappearance perfectly."

Disappearing. Like I was some kind of smoke that vanished into thin air.

"But how? Caelan would have woken up if there was a disturbance by his side, especially by how alert he seems."

"That's what we can't figure out." Frustration bleeds into Elena's voice. "No signs of struggle, no foreign scents, no magical residue. You just... vanished."

The ice water suddenly feels too cold. I wrap my arms around my knees, processing what she's telling me.

"She cursed me to disappear?"

"We think the curse created a compulsion. Made you walk out on your own, willingly, then erased your tracks." Elena leans forward. "The wolfsbane would have hidden your scent from Caelan or any tracker, preventing him or them from tracking you until you were too far away to find."

I left him. Not because I wanted to, but because magic made me. The distinction should matter, but somehow it doesn't. The result was the same... four years of love destroyed and forgotten in a single night.

"Why?" My voice comes out smaller than I intend. "Why target me specifically?"

Elena hesitates, and I catch something like uncertainty in her expression. "Bonded humans are rare. Valuable to certain types of magic users. Your connection to Caelan, to the pack... it made you powerful in ways you probably never realized."

Powerful. The word feels foreign applied to me. I've never felt powerful. Confused, lost, incomplete... but never powerful not like I remebered.

Another howl rises from the forest, closer this time and so full of anguish it makes my chest ache.

"He's been out there for hours," Elena murmurs, glancing toward the window.

"Because of me."

"Because he's terrified of making things worse." Elena's gaze returns to mine, direct and unflinching. "Four years of loving you, two years of losing his mind searching for you, and now you're back, but you don't know him. Can you imagine what that's doing to him?"

I can, actually. The thought of loving someone completely, losing them, then having them return as a stranger... it would be its own kind of hell.

"The heat will pass," Elena says gently. "But the choice of what comes after... that's yours alone."

A choice between a life I've built in ignorance and a love I can't recall but somehow still feel in my bones.

No pressure at all.