Chapter 1: This Is Me (Or So I’ve Been Told)
1063 Words
My head. It feels like it's full of nothing. A thick and heavy nothing presses down on me and makes it hard to breathe and think. It's all blank. Nothing before now. Just the sting of cold against my skin and the sound of wind pushing through whatever space I'm in.
I try to open my eyes but the light burns too bright. A dull pain hums in the back of my skull. I slowly let my lids flutter open and squint. I'm on the floor—stone, cold, unforgiving stone. My fingers are splayed against it and I feel each rough edge dig into my palms.
Where... where am I?
I push myself up but my body feels strange and foreign like I'm wearing someone else's skin. My knees buckle and I collapse back down. That's when I see him.
A mass of a man.
He is tall and rigid. His eyes are so dark they almost look black and they stare at me with a coldness I've never felt before. Or have I? I wouldn't know. I don't remember.
“Mara,” he says sharply. “Finally awake.”
I don't know him, do I? His face and his voice don't stir anything in me. Nothing. And yet my heart jumps at the sound of my name on his lips. I don't know what that means but I don't trust it.
“Who... who are you?” I whisper brokenly. He doesn't move. He just watches me with that same frozen stare like I'm something he's already thrown away and can't be bothered to pick up again.
His lips twist into something that almost looks like a smile but there's no warmth in it. Only bitterness. “You really don’t remember anything, do you?”
I shake my head and my throat tightens. There's a part of me that wants to scream and demand answers. But something inside tells me not to. Not yet. Not with him.
He steps closer and his boots echo against the stone. The air around him feels heavy and thick with power. “You’re in my territory now,” he says matter-of-factly. “You’re in my pack.”
Pack? I blink and try to make sense of the word. Wolves. That's what that means, right? Wolves...
“I don’t... I don’t understand.”
He crouches down in front of me and his face is so close now. I can see the lines of tension along his jaw and the shadows under his eyes. His scent hits me—something earthy and wild like the forest after a storm. It's almost overwhelming.
“You and I,” he begins gruffly, “we’re mates. Bound by the Moon Goddess herself.”
Mates. The word slips through my mind but it doesn't stick. It's supposed to mean something. It should mean something. But all I feel is confusion like I'm standing on the edge of a cliff and the ground under me is crumbling away.
“But you betrayed me,” he adds harshly. My heart clenches at the accusation and I don't know why. “You betrayed your pack. You betrayed me.”
I shake my head again, more fiercely this time. “I don’t... I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I don’t expect you to remember.” He stands up and looks down at me like I'm something pathetic, something beneath him. “But that doesn’t change what you did.”
The room feels colder now and the weight of his words presses down on me even though I have no memory of them. Betrayal. It clings to me like a curse, like something I can't escape even though I don't know where it came from.
“Why would I betray you?” I ask shakily. There's an ache in my chest now, an emptiness that grows with each second. “What did I do?”
His eyes flicker just for a moment and in that brief second I think I see something—hurt maybe. Or anger. But it's gone as quickly as it came and replaced by the cold mask he wears so well.
“That’s not for me to explain,” he says. “You’ll figure it out soon enough.”
My fists clench against the stone and I feel frustration rise inside me. I don't know why but I don't like him. I don't trust him. Not with the way he looks at me like I'm some kind of burden. Like I'm the enemy.
And yet there's something in the way my heart stutters when he steps closer. Something in the way my skin reacts to his presence like it remembers something my mind can't. It's maddening, this pull between us, this invisible thread that tugs at me even though I want to break it.
“Mates...” The word tastes strange on my tongue like I've said it before but forgot how it's supposed to feel. “If we’re mates, why do you hate me so much?”
He pauses and his jaw tightens. For a moment I think he's going to answer me. For a moment I think he might soften and explain everything and make it all make sense. But instead he turns his back on me and walks toward the door.
“I don’t hate you, Mara,” he says over his shoulder. “I just don’t care anymore.”
The door slams behind him and I'm left alone with the echo of his words. They cut deeper than they should and I don't know why.
I sit there on the floor and my mind spins. Who am I? What did I do? And why does the thought of this man not caring about me hurt more than anything else?
But the one thing I know for sure is whoever I was, I'm not that person anymore.
I can't be.
I sit there and something else flickers in my mind. A faint face, almost gone. I think it’s a memory. A child. She smiles, her hair wild as she runs through the woods. There is laughter and warmth but it is distant like an old photograph fading in the sun.
Was that... me? Was I ever that happy?
I close my eyes and try to grasp it but it slips through my fingers like sand.
- Writer
