The Night That Remembered Me

Mara Bell's POV

"You sure this key actually opens something or are we just trespassing for fun?" Rhett says behind me and his voice echoes down the rusted stairwell because it is so quiet down here that even breathing sounds loud.

"I told you my mother left it in her box with the photo and the note, I did not say she left instructions," I whisper back because I am trying not to make noise even though my heart is beating so fast that I am sure he can hear it anyway.

We are under the hockey arena in a part of Blackridge that is not on any campus map, the air smells like old cement and cold water and the single light bulb above us flickers every few seconds and that flicker is exactly the same flicker from my nightmare from when I was eleven years old.

Rhett holds the flashlight with one hand and my hand with the other and his grip is tight, not romantic tight, protective tight, like he thinks I might disappear if he lets go.

At the bottom of the stairs there is a heavy metal door with faded red letters that say AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY and someone scratched DO NOT ENTER underneath it with a knife a long time ago.

"This whole level was sealed after my father died," Rhett says quietly and he is not being arrogant now, he is being a boy who lost his dad, "my mother made the council lock it, she said there were too many memories here."

I step closer and I put my hand on the cold metal and my wolf wakes up instantly inside me and she does not whisper Mine like she did at the game, she says Here, this is where it happened.

"This is the hallway," I say and my voice cracks a little, "this is the hallway from that night, Rhett, I hid behind that pipe right there because my father told me to not make a sound no matter what I heard."

He looks where I point and his jaw tightens because he recognizes it too from the police reports he has read a hundred times, this is the east service hall where they found Alpha Marcus Veylor bleeding on the floor seven years ago.

I take the old silver key from my pocket, the one with the little wolf head on top, the one Marcus pressed into my palm when he was dying and my mother took away from me and told me it was nothing, and I slide it into the lock.

It fits perfectly and Rhett puts his hand over mine and we turn it together and the lock clicks and the door groans open like it has not been opened in years.

The hallway behind it is narrow and grey and the ceiling light flickers exactly like the one on the stairs, flicker, dark, flicker, light, and the floor has dark stains that have faded to almost black but I know what they are because I saw them when they were still red.

Blood, my father's blood and Marcus's blood.

Rhett does not let go of my hand as we walk slow, too slow, because every step brings back a sound I tried to forget, the shouting, the heavy boots, the sound of someone falling hard against concrete.

At the end of the hall there is another door, smaller, with a dead hand scanner, and Rhett curses under his breath.

"That needs Veylor blood or a master key, my father had a master key that disappeared the night he died and they never found it," he says.

I hold up the silver wolf key again, "maybe this is it, he gave it to me for a reason."

I press the wolf head against the scanner and for two seconds nothing happens and then it beeps weakly, red light, then green light, then click, and the door unlocks.

Inside is not a storage room, it is a small concrete box with no windows and the walls are completely covered in photographs and my breath stops.

There are hundreds of them, maybe thousands, taped wall to wall, floor to ceiling, and every single photo is of me.

Me at twelve at my mother's funeral trying not to cry, me at fourteen skating alone at six AM on the outdoor rink thinking no one watched, me at sixteen carrying equipment bags for the team, me last week mopping blood off the ice after practice, me yesterday standing at the boards right where Rhett hit them.

Someone has been watching my whole life and not just watching, documenting, like I was a project.

"What the hell is this," Rhett whispers and his voice is no longer cold, it is angry and scared at the same time, he rips one photo down, "this is from a Blackridge security camera, this timestamp is from two years ago, this one is from last month, this is all internal university network, someone here did this."

In the middle of the room there is a small metal table and on it there is one old photo, older than all the others, yellow at the edges, and it shows three young men standing together with their arms around each other, smiling like brothers.

I know two of them immediately, my father Samuel Bell when he was young and alive and happy in a way I barely remember, and Marcus Veylor in his Alpha Council jacket looking proud and strong.

The third man stands half in shadow and his face is turned away but his right hand is clear in the light and on his right hand is a thick silver ring with a dark stone in the middle, the exact same ring I saw in my vision when Rhett touched me, the exact same ring the man at the top of the arena wore when he stared down at me after the game.

Rhett picks it up and his hands start to shake so hard that the photo rattles.

"That is Callum Voss," he says and now his voice is low and deadly quiet, "that is Director Callum Voss, he was my father's closest advisor, he was at our house the night my father died, he told my mother he tried to save him, he told the council it was an outside enemy, he lied."

The puzzle clicks together so loud in my head that I feel dizzy, it was never an outside enemy that got past the guards, it was someone inside, someone they trusted, someone who let the killer in and then made sure the only witness, an eleven year old girl, was too scared to ever speak.

Before we can say another word the metal door behind us slams shut with a loud bang that makes me jump and the single bulb in this room dies and we are in total darkness.

I grab for Rhett in the dark and he grabs for me at the same time and we find each other instantly because the bond pulls us together whether we want it or not.

Then a voice comes from the dark corner of the room, calm and polite and familiar in a horrible way, the same low calm voice that answered my mother's old phone number last night.

"Well, it took you seven years, little wolf, I was starting to think you would never remember," the voice says and it chuckles a little like this is funny.

My wolf does not say Mine, she howls Danger inside my head and my whole body freezes.

Rhett steps in front of me even though we cannot see anything and he gets bigger, his shoulders wider, his wolf pushing up under his skin, his eyes start to glow faint gold in the dark.

"Who is there, show yourself," Rhett shouts and his Alpha voice shakes the concrete walls.

A small red light blinks on in the corner, a camera, recording us this whole time, and the voice laughs again, softer now.

"You have your father's key, Mara Bell, and you have his eyes, Elena told you to stay away from the Veylor boy, she was smart, smarter than Samuel, but you did not listen, did you, just like your father did not listen when Marcus told him to keep quiet about what he found," the voice says and hearing my father's name from this stranger makes my fear turn into pure fire.

"What do you want from me," I shout into the dark, I am shaking but I am not whispering anymore, "why have you been watching me since I was a kid."

"What I wanted seven years ago," the voice says, "for you to forget what you saw, but now you remembered and you brought the heir with you and that makes things very complicated for me."

We hear heavy boots outside the door now and the lock turns from the outside, locking us in, and Rhett slams his shoulder into the metal door once, twice, three times, but it does not move, it is solid metal meant to keep people out or keep people in.

"VOSS," Rhett roars and his roar is not human, it is wolf, loud and furious, "I KNOW IT IS YOU, OPEN THIS DOOR RIGHT NOW."

The voice answers from the other side of the door now, muffled but still calm.

"Your father shouted my name too, Rhett, right before he died, no one came then either," Voss says and then his footsteps start to fade away down the hallway.

The red camera light keeps blinking and the emergency yellow light flickers on weak and in that weak light I see something carved deep into the back wall, the same jagged symbol from the hockey puck that was left at my dorm door, the same symbol I saw on the ground beside my father's body seven years ago.

Under it, fresh black marker, not old carving, someone wrote it yesterday or today, YOU WERE NEVER SUPPOSED TO SKATE HERE AGAIN.

It is a threat and it is meant for me, written in handwriting that tries to look like Marcus Veylor's but it is not, it is fake.

Rhett sees it and his face goes from furious to deadly calm, the calm that is scarier than shouting.

"He is trying to scare you," Rhett says and he grabs my face with both hands, his hands are rough and warm, "listen to me, Mara Bell, you are not nothing, you are not just equipment girl, you are my mate and you are the only witness who can bring down the man who killed both our fathers and that is why he is scared of you."

For the first time since he rejected me in front of three thousand people at the game, he looks at me like I am something worth protecting, not a problem or an obligation.

He folds the old photo of our fathers with Voss and puts it deep in his own jacket pocket, right against his heart.

"We need to get this out," I say, "we need to show Coach Reyes and Ivy and the Council, this is proof."

"We will," Rhett says and he picks up a metal chair from the corner and smashes it into the blinking red camera, sparks fly and the camera dies, then he smashes the chair into the door lock, the metal dents but does not break, "but first we need to get out of here before he comes back with Garrick Thorne."

Above us we hear the arena speakers boom for hockey practice and the team gathering upstairs, Owen and Priya and everyone else, and no one knows we are trapped down here under their feet with proof that Director Callum Voss has been watching me since I was eleven and killed our fathers.

Rhett looks at me, his gold eyes glowing in the yellow emergency light, his chest heaving, his hand still holding mine tight.

"When we get out of here," he says quietly, "I am not letting you go again, do you understand me, little wolf, I rejected you once and it was the stupidest thing I have ever done, I am not doing it twice."

The bond hums between us, warm and painful and real, and for the first time I do not try to push it away.

Somewhere above us, a door slams, and footsteps run fast across the arena floor toward the sealed stairwell, someone heard Rhett's roar, someone is coming, and I do not know if it is a friend or if Voss sent someone else to finish what he started seven years ago.