Chapter 26

Rosemary

I’ve been living with the pack for over 3 months now, slowly adjusting to the rhythm of pack life. It’s strange how quickly everything that felt foreign now seems almost normal. When the new semester began, I opted for online courses, juggling my studies while helping Grace with her intel work. She taught me the basics of gathering information, though my role mainly involved handling the tech side of things. Grace and I became fast friends, bonding over long hours in front of computer screens and whispered conversations about the pack’s dynamics. But Nathaniel still held the title of my best friend, always there with his familiar grin, reminding me of the life I had before all of this.

Nathaniel’s presence was a steady comfort. It surprised me when I learned he already had a business degree - he had only enrolled to find me. Now, when he wasn’t traveling with Dylan for Ethan’s business, he was helping me study, guiding me through the chaos of exams and coursework. There was something about the way he looked at me, so protective, so constant. It made me feel safe.

Over time, the pack became my family. At first, there was hesitation. A human in their midst? It made everyone a little uneasy. But as the months passed, they accepted me. I even started joining their morning training sessions. I always knew I was stronger than most humans, but I never understood why. The pack’s training was tough, and I had a long way to go to catch up with them, but I liked the challenge. It made me feel like I was part of something bigger.

Amber became a constant in my life, too. She helped me piece together fragments of my past, telling me stories about my parents. I had my mother’s smile, my father’s fierce attitude, she said. I clung to every detail, trying to build an image of them in my mind. I learned that I had an older brother who was meant to lead the pack after my father, but he never got the chance. The thought of him weighed on me, a family I never knew, a life stolen from me by Andromeda’s cruelty. I wanted to mourn them, to grieve the loss of something that could have been mine. But every time I tried, something inside me held back. Amber thought it was connected to the spell, the one that had erased my memories and buried my wolf deep within me.

Since that night with Ethan, things between us had shifted. We hadn’t spoken about what happened, and it felt like there was a wall between us now. I would catch him staring at me sometimes, his gaze lingering from a distance, but we kept our space. I think I hurt him when I told him I wasn’t ready to shift, that I wasn’t ready to embrace that part of myself. Fear is a tricky thing. Even though I’ve grown accustomed to this world, the idea of fully becoming a part of it terrifies me.

I want to explain it to him, to make him understand why I’m holding back, but I don’t know how to put it into words. Every time he calls me Rose, though, it makes me smile. I’ve never liked that name before, but hearing it from him somehow feels different.

Ethan has been away from the packhouse a lot, searching for any sign of Andromeda. So far, his efforts have been fruitless, and I feel useless sitting here while he’s out there hunting for the woman who destroyed my life. Grace reassures me that it’s okay, that I’m still adjusting, that it’s understandable I can’t do more. I grew up human, after all. But that doesn’t make the helplessness any easier to bear. Once, in a fit of frustration, I asked Amber to help me contact Andromeda myself. But she shut the idea down immediately. “It would only be a sacrifice,” she had said, her voice firm. “You wouldn’t help anything by doing that.”

The more time I spent alone, the more restless I became. In my search for something, anything, to distract myself, I rediscovered my long-forgotten love of painting. College had taken that from me, the endless grind of classes and work leaving little room for creativity. But now, with time stretching endlessly before me, I found solace in it again. Grace helped me set up a small studio in one of the empty storage rooms, bringing me canvases, paints, and brushes. I spent most of my days there, hidden away, pouring my frustrations onto the canvas.

I painted scenes of destruction - fire, war, blood, and ash. The images came to me in flashes, almost too familiar but just out of reach, like echoes of a memory I couldn’t quite grasp. I knew where they came from. They were the same images that haunted my nightmares. Visions of a world engulfed in red. Everything was red.

Sometimes, I wondered if these nightmares were glimpses of the past, fragments of what I had lost. Other times, I feared they were a premonition of what was to come. Either way, they were always there, lurking in the back of my mind, just like the question I couldn’t shake: How much longer could I hold off on becoming what I was meant to be?

As the days passed, I felt something building inside me - an urgency, a pull toward something I couldn’t quite name. I wasn’t sure if it was the bond with Ethan or the inevitable awakening of my wolf, but I knew one thing for certain: I couldn’t hide in the safety of this half-life forever.