Chapter 3 #2
He looked at me then, really looked, and I saw thirty years of grief carved into the lines around his eyes, the grey threading through his hair, the way his shoulders carried weight that should have been shared.
“So I stopped,” he said. “I stopped looking. I mourned you. I moved on. I took over as Alpha when Dad stepped down, and I built a life that didn't include you because I thought you were dead.”
My throat felt tight. “How long did you look before you stopped?”
“Five years. Maybe six. I searched every pack within five hundred miles. Asked questions until people stopped answering. Followed leads that went nowhere. I was relentless about it. Furious. Grief-driven and half-feral because my brother was gone and no one could tell me where.”
He stopped. Swallowed. When he spoke again his voice was rougher, broken in places.
“And then they showed me the body and said it was over, and I believed them because I was tired.
Because I wanted it to be over. Because mourning a death is easier than searching for a ghost. Then you walked back into my life, and I don't know how to process that.
Don't know how to reconcile the brother I mourned with the man sitting in my kitchen eating scrambled eggs like we're picking up where we left off.”
I didn't know what to say to that. Didn't know how to make it better or easier or less complicated.
So I told him the truth.
“I don't remember the raid,” I said. “Don't remember being taken. I just... woke up somewhere else.”
Daniel's hands clenched on the table. “Where?”
“Different pack. Smaller. Further north, I think. I don't know their name. Don't remember how I got there or how long I'd been there before I woke up.”
“What do you mean, woke up?”
I tried to find words for it. For the sensation of consciousness returning like surfacing from deep water, awareness flooding back into a body that had been moving without you, living without your permission.
“Empty,” I said finally. “I woke up empty. No memories. No name. Just a body that knew how to survive and a wolf that knew how to hunt.”
Daniel stood. Started pacing. His hands moved restlessly.
“How long were you there?”
“I don't know. Years. Maybe decades. Time didn't work right.”
“And no one questioned it? No one asked who you were or where you came from?”
“They knew I was pack. That was enough. I worked. I hunted. I followed orders. They didn't push for more than that.”
Daniel stopped pacing. Turned to look at me. “You were a ghost.”
“Yeah.”
“When did you start remembering?” Daniel asked.
“Six months ago.”
“What did you remember first?”
I closed my eyes. Tried to sort through the fragments that had been surfacing since I woke up to myself for the first time.
“My name,” I said. “That was first. Just the sound of it in my head, like someone had been screaming it and I finally heard. Then Hollow Pines. The shape of the territory. Roads I used to know. And then you.”
“Me?”
I opened my eyes. Stared at the wall behind him because looking at him directly made this harder.
“Yeah. Your face. Not clear at first, just... the way you used to stand. How you talked. Little brother energy, I guess. After that it was just fragments. Forests. Different territories. Pack houses that all looked the same. Faces I can't put names to.”
“What about Mom and Dad?”
I'd been dreading that question since I realized how much I'd lost, how many pieces of myself had been taken or burned away or just eroded by time and trauma.
“No,” I said, and the word tasted like failure. “I can't remember their faces.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing. I know they existed. Know they were our parents. But when I try to picture them it's just... blank. Like looking at a photograph that's been left in the sun too long. All the details burned away.”
I finally looked at him. Saw the pain in his face.
“I feel like a monster,” I said quietly. “Not remembering them. Like I'm grieving strangers instead of people who raised me.”
“You're not a monster.” Daniel's voice was fierce despite the grief threading through it. “You survived. Whatever happened to you, whatever took those memories, you survived it. That's what matters.”
“The last thing I remember clearly was thinking you'd have to be the strong one now.”
Daniel stood and crossed the distance between us in three strides. Grabbed my shoulders with hands that shook and pulled me up to face him.
“I was strong,” he said, voice breaking. “I was strong for thirty years. I carried it. I kept the pack together. I did everything I was supposed to do. And I hated every second of it because you weren't here to share it with.”
His grip tightened. “You don't get to tell me you remembered that. You don't get to tell me you were thinking about me being strong while you were being tortured or controlled or whatever the hell happened to you.”
“Daniel—”
“No.” His voice was rough with thirty years of accumulated loss. “You shouldn't have had to think about anyone being strong. You should have been here. Safe. With your family.”
“But I wasn't.”
“I know.” The anger drained out of him as fast as it had come.
“I know. And I can't change that. Can't go back and search harder or fight better or stop them from burning a body that wasn't you. All I can do is try to figure out how to have a brother again when I spent thirty years learning how to live without one.”
He let go of my shoulders. Stepped back. Ran his hands through his hair.
“I need to know you're not going to disappear again,” Daniel said. “I need to know that whatever's happening in your head, whatever fragments are still coming back, you'll tell me instead of just... slipping away.”
The words wouldn't come.
Because telling him meant admitting I might not be safe. That the missing time was happening more often. That the voice in the dark was getting louder.
And I couldn't do that to him. Couldn't add that weight on top of everything else he was already carrying.
“I'm not going anywhere,” I said, and hoped it was true even though I had no way to know for certain.
Daniel searched my face.
“Okay,” he said quietly. “Okay. But if that changes, if you start remembering things that make you want to run, you come to me first. You don't just disappear into the night like none of this mattered.”
“I won't.”
Daniel moved back to the kitchen. Started clearing plates.
I watched him work, memorizing the movements, the way his shoulders hunched when he was thinking too hard, the way he braced himself against the counter.
This was my brother. This was the person I'd told myself would be strong while I was being unmade and remade into a weapon I didn't recognize.
And I'd just lied to him twice.