Chapter 4: A Stranger in Her Own Home

She showed up before I'd even washed his blood out from under my fingernails.

Dr. Reed found me in the hallway an hour later, still pressed against that cold stone wall, and crouched down to my level with the kind of gentleness that made me want to scream. "Clara, can you hear me? I need to talk you through what we know."

"Tell me." My voice came out flat. Hollow. I'd cried myself dry somewhere in that last hour and had nothing left but the need to understand.

"The damage to his memory appears total for the two-year period." He chose his words like a man walking across thin ice. "I won't lie to you and pretend I know if it's permanent. The brain is... it can surprise us. But I want you prepared for the possibility that it doesn't come back. Not on its own."

"What do you mean, not on its own?"

"I mean we wait. We watch. We don't force anything." He squeezed my shoulder once, brief and clinical, then stood. "I'm sorry, Clara. I wish I had better news."

I nodded because nodding was easier than speaking, and watched him walk back toward Alex's room, back toward the husband who'd looked at me an hour ago like I was something he needed protecting from.

The pack council convened by midafternoon, fast enough that I understood immediately someone had already been waiting for an excuse.

I stood at the head of the long table out of habit, the seat that had been mine for two years, and felt every single pair of eyes in that room sweep over me like I was something they were trying to identify. Elder Marcus cleared his throat first.

"Given the Alpha's condition," he said carefully, "the council feels it prudent to clarify the chain of authority during his recovery."

"I'm his Luna." The words came out steadier than I felt. "Nothing about that has changed."

"Hasn't it?" Marcus's gaze flicked toward the door, toward the rumor already spreading faster than I could outrun it. "Forgive me, Clara, but the Alpha himself does not currently recognize you as his wife. That puts this council in an... unprecedented position."

"He has amnesia. He doesn't recognize the dining hall either. That doesn't mean the dining hall stopped belonging to this pack."

A ripple of something moved through the room. Not agreement. Not quite disagreement either. Just discomfort, the kind that comes from people watching a structure they'd trusted suddenly show its cracks.

"We're not suggesting anything be decided today," another elder offered, not unkindly, though the words still landed like a blow. "Only that we proceed with... caution. Until the Alpha's memory clarifies the situation one way or another."

One way or another.

As if my marriage was a hypothesis still waiting on evidence.

I left that meeting with my spine locked straight and my hands shaking the entire walk back to my own bedroom, the one Alex and I had shared for two years, the one that still smelled like him even with him lying confused and frightened three doors down.

That's when I heard the voice drifting from the front entrance. Light. Familiar in a way that made my stomach drop before I even understood why.

"I came as soon as I heard."

I rounded the corner and saw her.

Serena.

She stood just inside the packhouse doors looking like she'd never left at all, golden hair perfectly arranged despite what must have been a frantic journey, her traveling cloak still damp from the road. She looked, infuriatingly, exactly like every story Alex had once told me about her, the woman who'd broken his heart years before I'd ever stumbled into his life.

Margaret intercepted her in the entryway, her voice tight with something between courtesy and barely restrained fury. "Serena. I wasn't aware anyone had sent word."

"News like this travels fast, Margaret. You know that." Serena's eyes swept the hall and landed on me with a coolness that made my skin prickle. "Oh. You must be... Clara, was it?"

"You know exactly who I am." I kept my voice level through sheer force of will.

"I know what I've been told." She tilted her head, studying me the way you'd study something you found mildly curious and entirely unthreatening. "Alex's wife. While he was unwell, I understand. It's a complicated situation, isn't it?"

"There's nothing complicated about it. We've been married two years."

"And now he doesn't remember a single day of it." Serena's smile didn't waver, but something colder moved behind her eyes. "That must be devastating for you. Truly. I can't imagine building an entire life with someone who, the moment his mind clears, doesn't recognize a piece of it."

The implication sat there in the air between us, ugly and unmistakable. Maybe none of it was real to begin with.

"I'd like to see him," she said, already moving past me toward the hallway, toward his room, like she had every right in the world.

"He's resting." I stepped sideways, blocking her path before I'd even decided to. "Dr. Reed said he needs quiet."

"I think he'd want to see me." Her gaze flicked over my shoulder toward his door, and something in her expression sharpened, hungry, certain. "Don't you think it's strange, Clara? That the moment he wakes up confused and frightened, the only name he asks for is mine?"

I didn't have an answer for that. I didn't have an answer for any of it, standing there in the home I'd built with my own hands while a woman who'd left him years ago walked back through the front doors like she'd never been gone at all.

Margaret's hand found my arm, steady, grounding. "Serena, perhaps tomorrow. Let the doctor assess him fully first."

Serena's smile thinned, but she dipped her head in something close to agreement. "Of course. Whatever's best for Alex."

She turned to go, then paused, glancing back at me one last time with an expression I couldn't quite name. Pity, maybe. Or something far less kind wearing pity's face.

"For what it's worth," she said softly, "I really am sorry this happened to you. Truly." Then she was gone, disappearing down the hall Margaret's staff had already arranged for her, like the packhouse had been holding its breath for her return.

I stood frozen in the entryway long after she'd vanished from sight, one hand pressed flat against my stomach, the other braced against the doorframe of what used to be unquestionably my home.

For the first time since I'd become Luna, I didn't feel like I belonged inside these walls at all.