Chapter 32 Memory’s Graveyard #2
There was a shift in the air so real I could have reached out and touched it. Aiden’s knuckles went white, the veins on his hands standing out like river deltas on a map. I saw his chest expand, then still.
“You really want to do this now?” Aiden’s voice dropped low, each word weighed and dangerous.
Ulysses smiled, but it was cold. “Why not?” He stretched his arms behind his head, showing off the cufflinks at his wrist. “The forest, the tension, a woman caught between us… It’s practically the nineties all over again.”
I had known, from the way they bristled near each other, that there was history here. But the way Aiden jerked, and Ulysses’s words hung in the air like a curse; this was worse than exes or rivals.
I didn’t want to ask, but I knew I had to.
“What happened?” I asked, voice just above a whisper, careful not to choose a side.
Neither answered for a long, punishing second.
Then Aiden said, “Doesn’t matter,” so quietly I almost missed it.
Ulysses didn’t miss his cue, though.
He smiled wider, eyes glinting with something far from amusement. “It matters, Josie. In fact, history is all that ever matters. We are the sum of what we remember… And what we refuse to forget.”
The words wormed their way under my skin.
I remembered every nightmare, every choice that brought me to this moment.
I remembered every night in the cramped room of my New York City apartment, where all I could hear was the desperate wail of my newborn.
And I remembered, most of all, how it felt to let someone else’s pain become my own.
The SUV hit a pothole. I bit my tongue, blinked the wetness from my eyes. “We’re almost there,” I said. “The clearing’s just past the next bend.”
“Funny, isn’t it?” Ulysses mused, “How these stories always find a way to repeat themselves. Three people bound by need and regret.”
“Don’t,” Aiden said, the warning in his voice unmistakable.
Ulysses ignored him. “You know, Josie, there was a time when Aiden here would have walked through fire for a woman. Burned down the world, even.” He turned in his seat, finally looking at me. His eyes were so pale they seemed to glow. “I wonder… Do you inspire that kind of loyalty?”
Anger flared in me, hot and reckless. “I don’t need anyone to burn down the world for me. I’ll do it myself if I have to.”
Aiden’s eyes flicked up to the mirror. For a second, there was something behind the pain, the anger… Something like pride.
“She would,” he said, just loud enough for me to hear.
But Ulysses was undeterred. “It’s always the strong ones who fall the hardest, isn’t it? That’s what makes the tragedy so… poetic.”
“Shut up,” Aiden snapped, and this time there was venom in it. “You think you’re better than everyone else, but you’re just a parasite.”
Ulysses leaned back, stretching out his legs with a satisfied sigh. “That’s what immortality teaches you, Cross. Everything else is fleeting, but a grudge, that lasts forever.”
There it was, then.
After all the posturing, the veiled jabs, the history between them wasn’t just rivalry; it was something darker. The car was full of ghosts, and not a single one of them was mine.
My stomach dropped.
I knew what name was coming before Aiden said it.
“Careful,” Aiden warned. “You don’t want me to bring her up.”
Ulysses smirked, baring just the hint of a fang. “Oh, but you already did. Sylara.” He rolled the name like a fine wine over his tongue. “Beautiful, cunning Sylara.”
I sat frozen, pulse thundering in my ears. I didn’t know the story, but the venom in their voices told me enough. Whoever Sylara had been, she wasn’t just a ghost between them.
She was the wound neither had let heal.
“You mean the manipulative fae who played us both?” Aiden shot back. “Or are you still pretending she loved you?”
The smirk faltered, just for a second, but Ulysses recovered with a chuckle. “Ah, so there it is… The bitterness of a boy who couldn’t hold on to her. Tell me, does it still sting knowing she came to me when she was done with you?”
Aiden’s hand tightened so hard on the wheel I heard the leather creak. “She died because of you. Because you pulled her into your experiments, your games with the Circle. Don’t put that on me.”
Ulysses’ eyes flashed, something raw breaking through his mask. “She died because you abandoned her when things got complicated. Just like you always do.”
The SUV swerved slightly, gravel spitting under the tires. Aiden steadied it with a curse.
“Enough!” I snapped. Both of them glanced back at me, startled. My heart hammered, but I didn’t back down. “I don’t give a damn about your dead fae or whose fault it was. Mateo is alive, and he’s out there. That’s all that matters.”
For a long beat, only the engine filled the silence.
Ulysses’ expression softened, not much, but enough for me to see the shadow behind his arrogance.
“You sound just like her,” he murmured.
“Don’t,” Aiden growled. “Don’t you dare compare Josie to her.”
I swallowed hard, staring out at the dark trees ahead. Whatever Sylara had been to them, she was a fracture that had never healed. And now that crack was bleeding right here, in this car, when I needed them united.
“We’re close,” I said quietly, giving the next direction. “You’ll see the mill on your right.”
We crested the hill, and suddenly the trees parted, the forest giving way to a wide, moonlit field. The old mill stood at the far edge, a black cutout against the night sky. Its windows were boarded, but one near the roof glowed faintly yellow, a single unblinking eye in the darkness.
Aiden turned off the lights and coasted to a stop at the tree line, killing the engine. For a moment, the only sound was the slow ticking of the cooling metal.
I was about to reach for the door when Ulysses spoke again, softer than before, almost gentle. “For what it’s worth, Josie, I hope your son is still alive. But if you want to find him, you need to remember, wolves hunt in packs. And some games are older than all of us.”
Aiden’s hand found mine as I closed the door behind me. His touch was calloused, grounding. “Stay close,” he murmured.
The night air slapped cold against my skin. Damp earth and the faint scent of rust filled my lungs. Every nerve in me screamed, “Not here, not again,” but my feet carried me forward. Toward the mill. Toward the clearing. Toward the place I had spent years trying to bury.
We walk into the forest in silence, leaving the mill behind. The underbrush clawed at my jeans. Just like that night, when I made my way towards the fire. My stomach twisted.
I froze.
The fire. The bonfire.
The flash came suddenly and sharply. It hit me like a punch in the gut.
A bonfire, here, in the clearing, alive and ravenous, so bright it burned away the world.
My vision went white at the edges, and the present dissolved until nothing but memory was left.
The music, a thumping blur of bass and shrieking guitar, reverberated in my chest. My own hand, the one I thought was steady, reached blindly and found the rough bark of a pine tree.
Just like then.
I was seventeen again, boots sinking in the rutted mud, trying to look older than I felt and failing.
The beer was lukewarm, the Solo cup sweating in my palm.
The smoke stung every inhale, and somewhere far away, my friends, girls I’d grown up with, were dancing in a half-moon ring, all bare arms and too-loud voices.
Back then, I’d just learned how to smile and pretend I didn’t care. I didn’t know yet that smiling could be a shield you hid behind, or that pretending could leave scars.
I remembered the way my whole body had tensed, not from the heat, but from the attention.
Boys in varsity jackets had circled me, their voices syrup-thick with whiskey and cruelty.
One had bet his friend I couldn’t chug a beer without spilling it down my shirt.
The crowd egged him on, goading and wild, and I’d played along.
Emily and Ethan tried to tell me I didn’t have to, but I was too proud to back down.
I could remember the way the foam bubbled up my nose and made my eyes water.
And then, I blinked, sweat prickling my scalp, the memory unfolding faster than I could stop it.
I heard footsteps crunching behind me, and for a second, I thought it was one of those boys from my memory.
But it was just Aiden, his face pale in the moonlight, watching me with real concern.
He reached out, hesitated, then set his hand gently on my shoulder.
The steady weight of it pulled me back to the present, to this moment, to the person I’d become.
“Josie?” Aiden’s voice broke through the fog.
“I remember…” My throat closed. “The party. Right here. There was a bonfire.”
Aiden glanced at Ulysses over my shoulder. Neither of them said a word, but the weight of their stares pressed against my back.
I forced myself to keep moving, deeper into the tree line, the clearing shrinking behind us. The laughter from that long-ago night echoed in my skull, fading into whispers I couldn’t shake.
My hand shook so badly I nearly dropped the flashlight. I wiped my palm on my jeans and forced myself to breathe. In and out. Even in the city, the nightmares chased me, and every time I thought I could leave them behind, they found me again.
Every step took me deeper into the grave of my own memory.
The trail wasn’t just a trail anymore; it became a corridor lined with shadows, and with every footfall, something inside me thrashed harder, desperate to reverse course. The air thickened with the scent of pine needles and old, rotting leaves.
Exactly the way it had that night.
And every night since, when I tried to sleep.
My tongue went dry. The taste of acid rose and burned the back of my throat. I tried to swallow it down, but the harder I tried, the higher it surged.
Suddenly, a strobe of sensation: a hand, not my own, cinching hard around my wrist. The heat of breath, sour and urgent, against the curve of my neck. The prickle of fear was so sharp it was almost electric. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
I lost my footing. Pine needles skidded under my boots, and I pitched sideways, just barely catching myself on the jagged edge of a tree trunk. I dug my fingers into the bark until splinters bit back.
The pain was real.
The here and now, the rough texture.
The world flickered in and out of focus. I heard Aiden and Ulysses next to me, their footsteps crunching through the drifts of dead leaves, but they sounded miles away. I pressed my forehead to the tree and tried to breathe.
One. Two. Three.
In. Out.
The pine sap stuck to my palm, sticky and fragrant and oddly comforting, a little proof that I was still here, still myself, not just some echo of the girl who’d stood in this same spot a lifetime ago.
I squeezed my eyelids shut and fought to remember why I was here, what mattered enough to drag every last nightmare into the light.
Mateo.
The sound of his laughter, the way he just started rolling his eyes at me, the stubborn hope that maybe I could shield him from the world.
That was enough.
It had to be.
Somewhere in the blur, someone called my name. I didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. I forced my legs to move, one trembling step at a time, until my knees remembered the point. My breath came ragged, but I stayed upright.
I would always stay upright, if only because falling was no longer an option.
The memory didn’t fade so much as recede, a wave dragging itself back across the sand. I could feel my heartbeat in my ears, but I could also feel the present, the press of the night, the slow hush of the wind, the knowledge that Aiden and Ulysses were right next to me, watching, waiting.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand and made myself look up at the sky. Clouds tumbled across the moon, and the stars winked, half-obscured but still stubbornly there. I drew that stubbornness into myself and kept walking, refusing to give the past another inch.
“You don’t have to…” Aiden started.
“Yes, I do.” My voice cracked, but I pushed forward.
My son was out there. If this was where the path led, I wasn’t turning back.
After a couple of minutes walking, the trees thinned, opening into a smaller clearing.
Stone. Cold, gray, unforgiving.
A circle etched into the ground, glowing faintly as if the earth itself remembered.
And at its heart…
“Mateo.” The word ripped from me like a sob.
He lay in the center of the stone floor, motionless, his limbs too long now to look like a little boy’s, his hoodie torn at the sleeves. His hands were scraped and bleeding, as if he’d tried to claw his way free.
Behind me, Aiden swore under his breath.
But my feet wouldn’t move. Because I saw him.
A man.
Standing at the edge of the clearing.
My blood turned to ice. His outline burned against the moonlight, familiar in the way nightmares always were.
Kyle Grey.
The monster from that night.
The man who had carved a scar through my life and never once looked back.
And now he stood here, calm as the woods around him, his eyes locked on me as if nothing had ever changed.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.
He hadn’t changed.
The years hadn’t softened him. If anything, they’d sharpened him.
I felt seventeen again, small and cornered, my back pressed into rough bark, his hand crushing my wrist. My body remembered even when my mind wanted to forget.
My knees buckled. I caught myself on a low branch, the bark biting into my palm. I wanted to move, to run to Mateo, to claw at Kyle’s face, to scream loud enough to shatter the night, but my muscles wouldn’t obey. Fear had rooted me to the earth, just as it had that night.
“Josie.” Aiden’s voice, low and steady, was trying to anchor me.
His hand hovered just shy of my back, not touching, not pushing, just waiting.
I couldn’t answer.
Kyle wasn’t paying attention to Aiden or Ulysses. His gaze was fixed on me as if nothing else existed. And when his lips curled, just slightly, I saw the truth that had haunted me for years.
He remembered.
The night he’d stolen everything from me. To him, it wasn’t a blur, a mistake, a crime lost in the fog of youth.
No. He remembered.
And he was smiling.
This wasn’t just the past clawing its way back.
This was the past alive, breathing, standing three steps away from my son.