Chapter 6 The Gap #2
But I'd learned, over four years as Alpha, not to dismiss that kind of feeling.
The low, restless itch I'd felt all morning before the clerk walked into the council room — that same kind of feeling, the kind that didn't come with an explanation but came, instead, with a kind of certainty that explanations would eventually catch up to.
Something had happened to me. Three years ago. Something that had taken a piece of my life — a significant piece, the most significant piece — and removed it so cleanly that I'd lived three years without ever noticing the absence.
And whoever had done it had also, apparently, made sure I'd never go looking.
Made sure that if Marlowe ever came back — if the bond ever resurfaced, if the gap was ever discovered — there would be a tidy, official, fully-witnessed document waiting to explain it away.
Personal grounds. No further action required.
A story complete enough that nobody would ever think to ask the obvious question: why doesn't the Alpha remember any of this?
Until today. Until a checkpoint guard recognized a name, and a clock started that nobody — apparently including whoever had engineered all of this — had ever expected to actually run.
I closed the folder, but I didn't put it back.
I sat there instead, in the narrow circle of lamplight, and thought about the look on Desmond's face when the clerk had said the name Wren Calloway out loud in the council room.
The way he'd gone still. The way he'd been the first to suggest, smoothly, gently, that I shouldn't put much weight on a gap in my memory from a difficult time.
Grief does strange things. I wouldn't put much weight on it.
I thought about how careful that sentence had been. How quickly it had come, how easily it had slotted into the moment, offering an explanation before anyone else in the room had a chance to offer one of their own.
And I thought about the fact that, as far as I could remember — which, granted, might not mean very much anymore — Desmond had been the one person who'd stayed close to me through the worst of that year.
The uncle who'd stepped up. The family member who'd helped me hold things together while I learned how to be Alpha.
I'd been grateful for that, for years. I'd never once questioned it.
I was questioning it now.
A door opened somewhere down the hall — distant, but in a building this quiet, sound traveled. I sat very still, listening, and after a moment heard footsteps, slow and unhurried, moving in the general direction of the records office.
I had just enough time to slide the folder into the desk drawer, close it, and turn off the lamp before the door opened.
"Roman." Desmond's voice, mild, faintly surprised, though something about the surprise didn't quite land right — too smooth, too immediate, like a reaction he'd practiced rather than felt. "I didn't expect to find you down here. Couldn't sleep?"
"Something like that." I kept my voice even, the same careful evenness I used in council meetings, and was grateful, suddenly, for years of practice at not letting my face show more than I wanted it to. "What are you doing up?"
"Same as you, I imagine." Desmond stepped further into the room, and even in the dim light from the hallway behind him, I could see him take in the office — the desk, the closed drawer, the absence of any obvious explanation for why I was sitting alone in the dark in a room full of filing cabinets.
"It's been an eventful day. I thought you might be having trouble settling, after — well. After this morning."
"It's been a strange morning."
"That's one way to put it." Desmond's tone was gentle, sympathetic, the same tone he'd used in the council room — and for the first time, sitting here in the dark with a folder hidden in the drawer beside my hand, I noticed something about that tone that I'd apparently never noticed before.
It was careful . Not careful in the way people were careful around grief, or careful around something painful.
Careful in the way people were careful when they were managing something.
When they were watching for a reaction and adjusting their approach based on what they saw.
"Desmond." I kept my voice light, almost idle, the tone of a man making conversation rather than asking a question that mattered. "What do you remember about that year? After Father died. The first few months I was Alpha."
Something flickered across his face — there and gone too fast to name, but I caught it, because for the first time in this conversation I was actually looking for it. "It was a hard year. For both of us. You know that."
"I do. I remember most of it, actually — surprisingly clearly, given how bad it was." I kept my eyes on him, steady, unhurried. "What I'm curious about is what you remember. Specifically. Do you remember a Luna candidacy? A wolf named Wren Calloway?"
The pause that followed was brief — less than a second — but in a building this quiet, in a conversation this careful, a second was a very long time.
"I remember the name came up earlier today," Desmond said, and his voice hadn't changed at all, hadn't wavered, but something in his posture had — a stillness that hadn't been there a moment ago, the particular stillness of a man choosing his next words with more care than the conversation, on its surface, seemed to warrant. "Why do you ask?"
"Because everyone in that council room this morning seemed to know exactly who she was.
Seemed to know, in detail, about a rejection I apparently issued myself, in front of all of them.
And I have no memory of any of it. Not vague memory.
Not foggy memory. No memory. Like it never happened.
" I held his gaze, and let the silence stretch, just slightly, before adding, "And you were the first person to suggest I shouldn't worry about that.
That grief does strange things. That I shouldn't put much weight on it. "
"Because it's true." Desmond's voice had gone slightly harder now — not angry, but firmer, the tone of a man redirecting a conversation back onto ground he found more comfortable.
"Roman, that year nearly broke you. I watched it happen.
I watched you barely sleep, barely eat, run this pack on fumes while trying to figure out how to be Alpha and grieve your father at the same time.
If there are things from that year you don't remember clearly, that's not a mystery. That's just what grief does ."
"This isn't unclear, though. That's the part I can't get past." I kept my voice level, conversational, even as something in my chest had gone tight and watchful.
"It's not that I remember it badly, or remember pieces of it, or remember feeling a certain way without remembering why.
It's gone . Completely. And everything around it — the weeks before, the weeks after — all of that, I remember perfectly.
It's just this one thing. This one specific, enormous thing. Gone, like it was cut out."
The silence that followed lasted longer this time.
"I don't know what to tell you, Roman." Desmond's voice was quieter now, and something in it had shifted — not quite defensive, but closer to it than anything he'd said so far.
"Memory doesn't always make sense. I'm sorry I don't have a better answer for you.
But I'd be careful, if I were you, about chasing this too hard.
Whatever happened with that woman three years ago, it's done.
The Reclamation process will run its course, the council will rule, and then it'll be over, the same way it was over three years ago.
Digging into ancient history isn't going to change the outcome — it's just going to make the next thirty days a great deal more painful for everyone involved. Including her."
"Including her," I repeated slowly. "You're worried about her."
"I'm worried about everyone , Roman. That's my job.
" Desmond's smile, when it came, didn't quite reach his eyes.
"It's late. You should get some rest. Whatever's in that gap in your memory — and I'm not saying there isn't one, I believe you that something feels off — chasing it isn't going to bring it back.
Some things, once they're gone, are just gone.
Better, sometimes, to let them stay that way. "
He left before I could respond, his footsteps retreating down the hallway with the same unhurried pace they'd arrived with, and I sat alone in the dark office for a long time afterward, the closed drawer beside my hand, turning over every word of that conversation and finding, underneath the surface of it, something I hadn't been looking for an hour ago and now couldn't stop seeing.
Some things, once they're gone, are just gone. Better, sometimes, to let them stay that way.
That wasn't comfort. That was a warning.
And for the first time in three years — for the first time, possibly, in my entire life — I found myself looking at my own uncle and feeling something I had never associated with him before.
Suspicion.