Aria
Duskwither.
Even the name sat wrong in my mouth. Bitter, like burnt sugar. Like something that sounded normal until you listened too closely.
"Mom," I said softly, my fingers curling in my lap as the car slowed into town, "I don't like it here."
She gave me a tired smile that didn't touch her eyes. "I know, baby. It's just for a while. Until things calm down."
Calm down. Settle. Her favorite words when things were falling apart.
The town was hidden under gray skies and thicker fog. Duskwither wasn't on most maps. It had no chain stores. No traffic lights. Just a main road, a few crooked houses, a market, and a church with a cracked bell tower.
And then there was the forest.
Tall. Dark. Endless. It pressed against the town like a sleeping beast. The house Mom rented was right on the edge of it—so close the trees scraped the sky outside my window.
I hated it.
The house groaned when we stepped inside. It smelled old—like dust, moss, and something sweetly rotten buried deep in the walls.
I headed straight upstairs to unpack. My room was small, sloped at weird angles, with a narrow bed and a crooked window that opened directly toward the woods.
I stared out for too long, then shoved the window shut and locked it. Something in me recoiled from it—not just fear. It was worse. Familiarity.
I didn't know the forest.
But something inside me did.
I pressed my palm to the cold glass and whispered, "Don't remember. Don't remember. Don't—"
A knock at my door. Mom.
"Dinner," she said. "You okay?"
I nodded. "Just tired."
She didn't ask more. She never did when I said that.
---
That night, the dream returned.
It always started the same way.
I stood in a silver forest beneath a moon that burned too bright. I was barefoot. My hands were stained with blood. Not mine.
I ran.
And then I saw him again.
The silver-haired boy.
He stood among the trees like he'd always been there—waiting. His dark eyes were endless. His voice was a whisper in my bones.
"I found you."
I wanted to ask who he was. Why I kept seeing him. Why he looked at me like I held the sky inside me.
But I couldn't speak.
Then came the moment that always broke me.
The light. The pain. My knees hitting the ground.
I died.
In his arms.
Again.
---
I woke up screaming.
Sheets tangled. My throat raw. Tears on my face.
Mom burst in seconds later, heart pounding. "Aria! Baby, what is it?"
I shook my head, curling into myself. "Nothing. Just a nightmare."
She rubbed my back, murmuring soft things, but I wasn't really listening.
The boy's eyes were still burned behind my eyelids.
Eyes that looked like they'd known me forever.
But I didn't know him.
And the terrifying part?
A voice deep inside me kept whispering his name was important—but if I remembered him, something terrible would happen.
I didn't tell Mom that.
I didn't tell her I woke up every night with blood that wasn't there and a name I wasn't allowed to remember sitting on the edge of my tongue.
I didn't even know how I knew that remembering was dangerous.
But I did.
Like a rule carved into my soul.
---
Lucian
She returned with the moon.
I felt her before I saw her.
The pulse of the bond flared like a spark across dry leaves—ancient and aching.
I staggered.
It had been seventeen years since the forest took her. Since the air turned to ash and her body collapsed in my arms, then disappeared.
No blood.
No grave.
No trace.
Just dust and light, scattered in the wind.
They told me she'd been reincarnated. That one day, her soul would find its way back to the world.
But they hadn't told me the price.
"She won't remember," the Seer had said. "And if she does... she'll die again. For good this time."
I'd waited anyway.
Waited and watched, night after night, for that thrum in the earth that told me Selene was near.
And tonight—it hit like a lightning strike.
My wolf roared beneath my skin, tearing toward the surface.
"She's close," I growled to Rafe, my second.
His expression darkened. "You're sure?"
"She's here. In Duskwither."
I shifted. Fast. The air shattered as my bones reformed, silver fur slicing through skin as I bolted through the woods.
And then—I saw her.
Not clearly.
But enough.
A figure in the window of the old Winslow house on the edge of the forest.
Dark curls. Pale skin. The shape of her. The feel of her.
My mate.
My soul.
My ruin.
She looked directly toward me, even through the night. Even through the glass.
Her eyes were wide.
Terrified.
Not of me—no.
Of something inside herself.
And then she closed the curtains.
She didn't remember.
But some part of her still felt me.
---
Aria
I didn't sleep again.
I sat by the window the rest of the night, curtains cracked, watching the forest like it might swallow the world whole.
It was just a dream, I told myself.
Just a silver-haired boy who haunted me in the dark.
But the way he held me in the dream…
It wasn't fear I felt. Or confusion.
It was grief.
Mine and his.
And love. Raw. Bone-deep.
Love so old it didn't belong to me.
I curled my knees to my chest.
"I don't know you," I whispered.
"But why does it feel like I lost you?"
---
Lucian
Rafe stood behind me, his arms crossed as we watched the house from the treeline.
"You're not going to her?"
I shook my head. My jaw clenched so hard it hurt. "If I go now, she'll feel it. The bond."
"And?"
"She's not ready."
"She's yours, Lucian."
"She's not Selene anymore," I said roughly. "Not fully. If the memories break through too fast—"
"She dies," he finished.
I turned away from the house, heart breaking and burning all at once.
"She was taken from me once," I said. "I won't lose her again."
"You won't," he said quietly. "But you'll have to win her this time."
I knew that.
I'd waited seventeen years to hold her again.
I could wait a little longer.
But the forest was waking.
And something old had stirred the night she returned.
Which meant fate wasn't done with us yet.
---
Aria
I dreamt again the next night
.
Not of death this time.
But of a hand in mine.
Of a forest glowing silver.
Of a whisper.
"You promised."
---
Lucian
"I swear it," I had said once, in that same forest, long ago, beneath stars older than time.
And I meant it.
Then.
Now.
Always.
---