34. Memories
Memories
Cassius: Present Day
I tighten my arms around her, holding her to my chest.
“You really hate being told what to do, don’t you?” She speaks, and it cuts through the sting of her memories, fresh in my mind.
I lean down, pressing my lips against hers, staining them pink with her own blood.
Fuck. I want to bite her all over again.
“What did you see?” I ask, my voice hoarse.
“Lots of arguments with your brothers. The day you met Alpha Harriet.” She rattles off, refusing to look at me.
“Why you started the organisation.”
She looks at me with her big eyes, curiosity and caution on her face.
“Will you tell me about the army?”
A deep sigh leaves me.
“I was troubled. I was young and angry at everyone, and everyone around me was always telling me what to do. It’s easier now.
I have an outlet. But when I was in the army, I was captured and powerless.
There were five other Alphas with me. We didn’t know each other.
They left us there to rot, and I watched them turn feral.
By the time we were rescued, they were nothing more than rabid animals.
I put them down the first chance I got. I saw how bad Alphas could get, and no one did anything to stop them.
I mean, you saw it. They were monsters. I refused to feel like that ever again. ”
She nuzzles into my neck, and her spicy scent rolls over me in a wave.
“What—what did you see?” She swallows roughly and tries to huddle into herself, shying away from my touch. “Did you see—what I did?”
Nausea curls in my stomach.
I gently pet a finger over her cheeks. My mate. Evangeline. So strong, yet so fragile.
“What do you remember about that night?”
Tears make her eyes glisten.
“I remember the lights and alarms from the police, ambulance, and fire trucks. I can remember everyone shouting around me. I remember laughing. Everything is blurry.”
“Do you remember anything about what happened?”
I tread carefully.
“Fire. I was so scared, but relieved. I get these headaches when all I can remember is the heat from the flames and flashes behind my eyes of someone screaming for help. I did nothing. I just watched.” A tear rolls down her cheek.
I can’t tell her. Not until I know if it’s true. If my mate was really scent trafficked. I need to find out who the Alphas were that she killed, because if what I saw was right, they sure as shit weren’t her parents.
* * *
I want to look away, but I know it won’t change what’s staring at me.
The monitor continues, blaring its bright light at me like an interrogation, never changing.
“I knew something felt off about her past.” Harry keeps clicking through the files she has curated. I wish she would stop.
“How do I tell her?” I ask her and myself.
She goes still and silent, her eyes flickering over the images and text like she is realising that what is on her screen has very real consequences for the first time.
“How do I tell my mate that her parents are alive and have been looking for her. Her entire life?”
I turn to face Harry.
“How do I tell her that the life she knows, the memories she has, are a lie? She was trafficked, Harry. Stolen from her parents and held captive while they tried to sell her.”
Harry swallows roughly and takes my hand in her shaking palm.
“She has to know. She has a whole family looking for her. She has you, you’ll make sure she’s not alone in this.”
“Fuck. She looks so much like them.”
I can’t stop watching. Like a car slowing as they pass a crash. Her mother has the same long, black hair. She has her father’s green eyes. My brain pulses, pain radiating over my skull.
“I can’t believe the Council never figured it out.”
I know better than anyone that they’re not perfect. Especially back then, but I can’t conceive of them fucking up this badly.
Harry growls under her breath.
“What?”
“The Council assumed that she killed her parents. The Alphas had records of a daughter her age, and when the house burnt down, it took all the evidence with it. Omega Evangeline couldn’t discredit it.
She can’t remember anything. If I were to guess, I would say they probably took the easy way out.
It wasn’t hard to piece it together with the information you had.
All I did was look into missing Omega cases around parks around at that time, and there she was.
Yes, she was from another country, but all they had to do was look, but they didn’t.
They decided on a narrative and made the evidence fit it. ”
“There was another child?”
“There wasn’t another body in the house. My best guess would be that they never had a child, and it was a way to hide their illegal activities. Or the child died, and they never reported it, or they sold them, like they planned on doing to Omega Evangeline.”
I take a deep breath.
“Do we have anything on her actual parents? Are they good people?”
Harry pulls up a folder.
“Her mother is Alpha Audrey, and she has an Omega father, Hugh. She’s an only child, but they were very involved with their nieces and nephews when they were younger.
Her mother used to be a lawyer and her father a history professor, but after she went missing, her mother started a charity for lost children.
Her father began working at an orphanage.
They’ve never stopped looking for her. They’ve dedicated their entire lives to children in need.
They live in the same house in case she ever came home.
Every year they celebrate her birthday by doing a toy drive in her name, and when she turned eighteen, they donated a garden in her honour, which was built at the local Omega Finishing School, where she would have been attending. ”
My heart hurts listening.
“Her last name is Williams.”
“Her last name is Atwood,” I growl. “How long will it take them to get here?”
“Assuming they leave right away, three days.”