Chapter 2 - Skylar
I’ve reread the same patient file four times, and I still couldn’t tell you what it says.
The words all run together on the page, refusing to arrange themselves into anything meaningful.
Blood pressure, heart rate, notes about a recurring knee injury…
None of it sticks. My brain keeps sliding away from the information, dragging me back to the town square and the man I saw standing there like a ghost risen from the grave.
Bryan is back.
After ten years of silence, he just shows up in Silvercreek like it’s nothing. Like he didn’t rip my heart out and leave me bleeding under that oak tree. Like he didn’t make me promise to forget him and then vanish so completely, I sometimes wondered if I’d imagined our entire relationship.
I slap the file folder closed harder than necessary with a huff.
Fern appears in the doorway of my office, one hand braced against the frame and a concerned furrow between her brows.
Her other hand rests on her rounded belly.
She’s far enough along now that the pregnancy is impossible to hide, and the shifter-human hybrid growing inside her has accelerated the timeline considerably.
“Okay, what’s going on with you?” she asks.
“Nothing,” I reply, waving her off. “Just tired.”
“Uh huh.” She waddles into my office uninvited and lowers herself into the chair across from my desk with a small grunt. “Come on. Out with it.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose and reply, “I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Try again.”
I meet her eyes and find nothing but stubborn patience staring back at me.
Fern Ramos—Fern Jenkins now, I suppose, now that she’s married to Connor—might be human and relatively new to Silvercreek, but she’s impossible to bullshit.
Occupational hazard of being a therapist, probably.
She spent years in Manhattan helping trauma survivors untangle their worst memories, and that kind of experience teaches you to spot deflection from a mile away.
“It’s nothing,” I insist. “Really. Just some old stuff coming back up.”
She tilts her head, inspecting me with those too-perceptive blue eyes. “Would this old stuff happen to be about six feet tall with dark hair and a face like he’s been through hell and back?”
I groan and ask, “How do you know about that?”
“Connor mentioned someone new showed up today. Or not new, exactly. Someone who used to live here. He said the guy’s name is Bryan and that you two used to be close.”
Close. What a pathetic word for what we were. Close is what you are with a coworker you sometimes grab coffee with. Close is what you are with a distant cousin you see at holidays.
What Bryan and I had was something that burned so hot it left scars when it ended.
“That was a long time ago,” I claim. “We were kids.”
“You were twenty when he left. That’s not exactly a kid.”
“It feels like a lifetime ago.”
Fern doesn’t push, which I appreciate. She just sits there, present and patient, giving me space to say more if I want to. It’s a therapy trick, and I recognize it because I’ve watched her use it on anxious pack members a hundred times, but that doesn’t make it any less effective.
“He was supposed to be my mate,” I hear myself say. “We never made it official, but we both knew. The bond was there. We were just…taking our time.”
“What happened?”
“His family was killed by Cheslem wolves.” I’ve told this story before, to Luna and Ruby and a few others who needed to understand why I flinch whenever someone mentions his name.
It never gets easier. “His parents and his little sister. All of them, in one night. Bryan was the only survivor because he was with me when it happened.”
Fern sucks in a breath. “God. That’s horrible.”
“He blamed himself. I could see it eating him alive in the weeks after, this guilt that had no logic to it. He kept saying if he’d been home, if he hadn’t snuck out to meet me, maybe he could have done something.
” I stare at the pen I’m twisting between my fingers without remembering when I picked it up.
“Three months later, he asked me to meet him in the woods. I thought he was finally ready to talk about us. Instead, he told me he was leaving and that I should forget he ever existed.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. No explanation, no goodbye kiss, no promise to come back someday. He just walked away. And I never heard from him again until today, when I saw him in the square, standing there like ten years hadn’t passed. Like he has any right to be here after what he did.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“No.” I shake my head firmly. “I looked right through him and walked away. Let him see how it feels.”
Fern is quiet for a moment. I can almost see the wheels turning behind her eyes, the therapist's brain working overtime to analyze and understand. Then she asks, “How did that feel? Walking away?”
“Good,” I lie.
The truth is more complicated. The truth is that seeing Bryan’s face sent a jolt through my entire body.
The mate bond I’ve spent a decade suffocating suddenly gasped back to life like a drowning victim breaking the surface.
Walking away from him took every ounce of willpower I possessed, and I spent the entire walk back to the medical center with my hands shaking and my wolf howling in protest.
But Fern doesn’t need to know that. Nobody needs to know that. Some wounds are meant to be carried alone.
“The lottery is tonight,” Fern reminds me, changing the subject with merciful grace. “Are you going?”
“Mandatory attendance.” I try for a smile that probably looks more like a grimace. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
“Connor’s excited. He keeps talking about how romantic it was when our names were drawn together.” She rolls her eyes, but there’s affection underneath the exasperation. “As if I didn’t spend the first few weeks trying to run away from him. Literally.”
“You came around eventually.”
“I did.” Her hand moves over her belly in a slow, protective circle unconsciously. “Sometimes the lottery knows what it’s doing, even when we don’t want to admit it. The magic sees things we can’t.”
“Sometimes,” I agree, though I’m not really listening anymore.
My mind has drifted back to Bryan. To the way he looked standing in the square—older, harder, with new scars I don’t recognize. The boy I fell in love with had an easy smile and a quick laugh. The man I saw today looked like he’d forgotten how to do either.
His shoulders are broader now, I noticed, and his frame is packed with muscle. The stubble on his face was too long, like he’d stopped caring about appearances somewhere along the way. He looked rough. Dangerous. Like a man who’s seen things he can’t unsee and done things he can’t undo.
I hate that I noticed. I hate that some part of me still drank in every detail of his appearance and responded to his presence like a compass finding north. Ten years of nothing, and my wolf still recognizes him instantly as ours.
It should have been enough time to kill whatever we had. It should have been enough time to move on, to build something new with someone else, and to forget the way he used to look at me like I was the only person in the world who mattered.
Apparently, my wolf didn’t get the memo.
“I should get back to work,” I say abruptly, reaching for the patient file I’ve been pretending to read. “I’ve got five more appointments before the lottery.”
Fern takes the hint and pushes herself up from the chair with some effort. Connor fusses over her constantly these days. He’s so worried about her climbing stairs or lifting anything heavier than a coffee cup. It drives her crazy, but I’ve caught her smiling when she thinks no one is looking.
“If you need to talk, you know where to find me,” she offers.
“I know. Thanks, Fern.”
She pauses in the doorway. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re handling this better than I would. If Connor disappeared for ten years and then just showed up again out of nowhere, I’d probably throw something at his head.”
Despite everything, I let out a giggle. “The night is young.”
The rest of the afternoon passes in a fog. I see my patients, take notes, offer treatment recommendations, and do all the things I’m supposed to do. My hands know the work even when my mind is elsewhere, and I lean into that muscle memory like a crutch.
But between appointments, in those quiet moments when no one needs me, my thoughts keep slipping away. Replaying moments I’ve tried so hard to forget. Picking at scabs I thought had long since healed.
Like the time he showed up at my door with a stack of old paperbacks because I mentioned wanting something new to read, and he spent his entire patrol thinking about which ones I might like.
Or dancing with him at the winter solstice bonfire while pretending we were just friends, even though his hand on my waist burned through layers of clothing.
The way he’d mouth the words to my favorite songs when he thought I wasn’t watching because he was too embarrassed to actually sing out loud, but memorizing every lyric anyway.
I shake my head, forcing myself back to the present.
That was ten years ago. I’m not that girl anymore.
I’ve built a life here, a career, and friendships that sustain me.
I’m the senior healer at Silvercreek’s medical center, and I’ve worked hard for that position. People respect me. People need me.
I don’t need Bryan Dinac. I never did.
By the time evening rolls around, I’ve almost convinced myself I believe it.
The Hollow is packed when I arrive. Torches line the perimeter, scattering light across the gathered crowd. The Mother Tree stands at the center, reaching toward the darkening sky. Spanish moss hangs from the lower limbs, swaying gently in the evening breeze.
I find a spot near Ruby and James and nod a greeting, but I don’t trust myself to speak. My nerves are too exposed with my wolf so close to the surface. One wrong word and I might shatter the composure I’ve been maintaining all day.
Ruby gives me a concerned look but doesn’t comment. She’s good like that. She and James have their hands linked together, and it makes me think of their lottery and the chaos and drama that surrounded it. They came out the other side stronger than ever, just like Fern and Connor.
The ceremony begins with Elder Amelia taking her place in front of us all. She’s taken over since Victoria’s death a few years back, and while she lacks Victoria’s commanding presence, there’s a quiet strength about her that demands respect.
“We gather tonight to honor the ancient tradition of the mating lottery,” she intones. “A tradition that binds us together, strengthens our unity, and guides compatible souls toward one another through magic older than memory.”
I’ve heard variations of this speech at every lottery since I was a kid, but this time, my attention is scattered across the crowd.
Fern and Connor stand near the front, and Luna and Nic occupy the elevated platform with the other members of the inner circle.
Their bonds are visible in the way they angle their bodies toward each other without seeming to realize they’re doing it.
Everywhere I look, there are mated pairs. Everywhere I look, there’s proof that the lottery works.
“Tonight, we welcome all eligible wolves into the drawing,” Elder Amelia continues, and my attention drifts. I’ve heard this part before. The rules, the traditions, the ancient magic that supposedly guides the selection. My gaze wanders across the crowd, and that’s when I spot him.
Bryan is standing near the edge of the gathering, half-hidden in the shadows between two torches. My stomach lurches at the sight of him, and I have to tear my attention away before he catches me staring.
Why is he here? Attendance is mandatory, but he just got back. Surely Nic would have given him a pass for tonight.
Luna steps forward to stir the contents of the bowl, blessing the selection with whatever magic she possesses before Ameia reaches inside, and her wrinkled fingers disappear among the folded slips of paper.
The crowd holds its collective breath as Amelia draws the first slip of paper.
She unfolds it slowly, and her eyes move across the name written there.
“Bryan Dinac.”
My blood turns to ice.
No. No, no, no.
I look back toward where he’s standing. His posture has gone rigid, and his hands are clenched at his sides. Even from here, I can see the shock written across his face.
This isn’t happening. This cannot be happening.
Amelia reaches into the bowl once more. My heart pounds so hard I can feel it in my throat, though I’m not sure why. There are dozens of eligible females in the pack. Dozens of names still in that bowl. The odds of my being drawn are impossibly slim.
She draws the second slip and unfolds it, and I hold my breath.
“Skylar Reyes.”
The world tilts sideways.
I hear cheering. I see faces turning toward me, smiling and celebrating. Someone claps me on the shoulder—James, I think, though I can’t be sure because my vision has gone fuzzy. The noise crashes over me, but I can’t process any of it.
My name. They drew my name.
For Bryan.
I’m going to be sick.
Across the Hollow, Bryan is staring at me. His gray eyes are wide, and his mouth is open. The bond between us comes to life, pulsing with recognition, with want, with a decade of suppressed longing I’ve never been able to fully kill.
He starts making his way through the crowd, pushing past celebrating pack members who try to congratulate him.
His eyes never leave my face. They stay locked on me, making my skin prickle.
He’s coming toward me, and I know if he reaches me, if he touches me, every wall I’ve built will come crumbling down.
So I do the only thing I can think of.
I run.
I turn and shove through the crowd, ignoring the confused shouts behind me. Ruby calls my name, but I don’t stop. My feet carry me away from the Hollow, away from the torches and the cheering and the man I’ve spent ten years trying to forget.
The forest swallows me whole, and I keep running until I can’t hear anything but my own ragged breathing and the pounding of my heart.