Chapter 7: The First Memory Access (Kira POV)

The workspace Sage had prepared was in one of the tower's middle floors, in what looked like a library or research room. Books lined the walls, ancient texts mixed with modern volumes. In the center was a clear space with cushions arranged in a circle, candles burning at cardinal points.

Sage looked up from her laptop as we entered. "Hey. Ready to potentially traumatize yourself for the cause?"

"Do I have a choice?" I asked.

"Not really." She gestured to the cushions. "Sit. Both of you. This will work better if Dante's present, the bond will help stabilize you."

I sat, and Dante settled across from me, close enough that our knees almost touched. This close, the bond hummed louder, feeding me constant updates on his emotional state: worry, carefully controlled, and underneath that, grief he wouldn't acknowledge.

Still mourning his mother, I realized. However long ago she'd died, the wound was still fresh.

"Stop that," Dante said quietly.

"Sorry." I tried to pull back from the bond, to give him privacy. It was harder than it should have been.

Sage pulled up a chair, setting her laptop aside. "Okay, Blood Heirs access memories through essence. You've got a piece of Adrian inside you now, a fragment of his wolf, his last conscious moments. To see what he saw, you need to sort of... meditate on that fragment. Let it expand, let it show you what it knows."

"That sounds incredibly vague."

Sage pulled out a small object, a phone, I realized, cracked screen and all. "This was Adrian's. He sent a text to his girlfriend about twenty minutes before he died. Just said he was meeting someone at the school. No name, no details."

"Was he pack business?" I asked.

"He was a teenager trying to maintain a human cover," Dante said. "Like most young wolves. But he was also being groomed for pack intelligence work. If he went to meet someone, it was probably related to that."

"So we need to know who he met. And if I can access his memories, I'll see them."

"Theoretically," Sage cautioned. "But memories from the dead are fragmentary. You might get images without context, emotions without explanation. And Blood Heir abilities have a reputation for showing you more than you want to see."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning you won't just see what Adrian saw. You'll feel what he felt. Experience his death as if it were your own." Sage's expression was sympathetic. "It's not going to be pleasant."

I looked at Dante. Through the bond, I could feel his certainty that I could do this, mixed with concern that it would break me. He'd seen people break before, I realized. Had watched his previous guardians crack under the pressure of protecting him.

"I can do this," I said, with more confidence than I felt.

"Then let's begin." Sage lit something letting the smoke curl around us. "Close your eyes. Focus on the bond first, anchor yourself to Dante. Then reach for that fragment of Adrian you absorbed. It should feel foreign, like something that doesn't quite belong."

I closed my eyes and breathed slowly, following the thread of the bond to Dante. His presence was steady, solid, a fixed point in the chaos of my mind. I held onto that feeling and reached deeper, searching for something that wasn't me, wasn't Dante, wasn't the ever-present hum of the pack.

There. A cold spot, a fragment of other pressed against my consciousness. I touched it carefully…

And fell into Adrian Sorenson's last minutes of life.

The parking lot is empty, just like they said it would be. Adrian checks his phone again: "Behind the gym."

He knows it's probably a trap. Has known since the message came through on a burner app that deleted itself after he read it. But he's curious, and more than that, he's ambitious. If someone has information about the murders—real information, not the rumors and speculation that have been circulating through pack channels—then meeting them is worth the risk.

His wolf is uneasy, pacing beneath his skin. She doesn't like this. Too exposed, too vulnerable. But Adrian is seventeen and immortal in the way all teenagers are immortal. He's survived this long; he'll survive this too.

He rounds the corner to the alley behind the gym, and relief floods through him. It's someone he knows. Someone he trusts.

"I was starting to think you wouldn't show," he says.

"Had to make sure we weren't followed." They move closer, and Adrian's wolf finally settles. Pack. Family. Safe.

"So what's this about? You said you had information about…"

Pain. Sudden, shocking pain in his neck. He staggers, trying to understand what's happening. Poison. Something in his bloodstream, moving fast, shutting down his wolf, his healing, everything that makes him strong.

He falls, and they catch him, lowering him gently to the ground. Almost tender.

"I'm sorry," they say, and they sound like they mean it. "But we need your bloodline. Need your strength."

Adrian tries to fight, tries to shift, but his wolf is locked away. He can only watch as they pull out a ceremonial knife—old, carved with symbols he recognizes from pack history. Ritual blade. Blood magic.

They cut him and Adrian feels his essence draining away. Not just blood, but something deeper. His wolf, his power, everything that makes him pack. It's being stolen, pulled out through the wound and into a vessel they've prepared.

He wants to scream, but he can't breathe. Can't move. Can only die as they take everything he is and transform it into fuel for something larger.

The last thing he sees is their face, twisted with grief and determination. Family. They're family, and they're killing him.

"For the new world," they whisper. "For our future."

Then darkness.

I came back to myself gasping, tears streaming down my face. Strong hands gripped my shoulders—Dante, anchoring me through the bond, pulling me back to the present.

"Breathe," he commanded.

But I wasn't safe. None of us were.

"It was pack," I choked out. "Someone he knew. Someone he trusted."

Sage leaned forward, intent. "Did you see who?"

I closed my eyes, trying to hold onto the memory even as it started to fade. Blood Heir abilities weren't perfect, the images were already fragmenting, details slipping away like water through my fingers.

But one thing remained clear. One detail I'd recognized even though I'd never met Adrian, had never been part of his life.

The ceremonial knife. I'd seen it before. Not the exact blade, but its twin.

In Dante's memories, flashing through the bond in the moments when his shields dropped. The night his mother died.

"Dante," I said slowly, opening my eyes to meet his. "The knife they used, I've seen it before. In your memories. The night your mother was murdered."