Chapter 260
ELENA
The room was spinning when I surfaced.
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Not literally not in that dizzy, vertigo way but in a deeper, stranger sense. Like reality had been pulled too tight and then suddenly let go, snapping back with a sickening lurch.
The floor wasn’t moving, but I felt as though.1 was tilting, like my soul couldn’t find purchase inside my body. Like gravity had forgotten me.
The light in the room seemed too sharp, the air too thin. My ears tag with silence, if that made sense, a dense hem that filled every inch of my skull.
My fingers dug into the arms of the chair. The soft fabric pressed against my skin, grotmding me in a world that suddenly felt distant and unfamiliar. I couldn’t seem to draw a full breath. Each inhale caught halfway, stuck behind the lump in my throat and the ache in my chest.
The memory–that memory- was still clinging to me like ash from a fire. It coated everything. My thoughts. My muscles. My breath.
It left behind a bitter film I couldn’t wipe away. And beneath it, I could feel the edges of something else stirring. As if that one truth–the truth about Cassandra, about Derek, about me—had only been the first crack in a long–sealed vault.
I squeezed my eyes shut, but the images didn’t fade. If anything, they sharpened.
But it wasn’t the end.
Not even close.
“You’re all right,” Dr. Voss said gently. His voice drifted to me like sound through water–distorted, distant, but still clear enough to reach the frayed edge of my awareness. “You stayed with it. I’m proud of you.”
His words felt like a lifeline.
I tried to respond. Opened my mouth to say something–anything–but before the words could form, something inside me gave way. Like a hinge snapping free. Like a lock being broken from the inside.
And then it began.
Not softly. Not gradually. There was no gentle wading into this sea.
It hit me like a wave, fast and furious and inescapable.
Memory after memory surged through me. Not like a trickle, not like a tide–but like a dam breaking, and I was standing at the base of it.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t blink. Couldn’t scream.
I was falling again–only this time, not into darkness, but into blinding light. Into noise and scent and feeling. Plunging through the corridors of my own mind, slammed into each new recollection with the force of a physical blow.
Only I wasn’t just watching.
I wasn’t just the observer.
I was inside it.
Every moment. Every heartbeat. Every tear, every laugh, every whispered secret and muffled sob, Every scrape of a chair, every echo of my mother’s voice, every scent of rain on the stone path behind the packhouse.
All of it real.
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All of it mine.
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Running through the Moonstone orchard, barefoot, laughing as Mason chased me with a stick and Dawn screamed at both of us that we were going to ruin her picnic.
Sitting in my mother’s lap as she brushed my hair. Her voice low as she told me the story of the first Luna of Moonstone. Her fingers gentle on my scalp. The scent of rosemary in her hands.
The first time I shifted.
The terror. The exhilaration. The way my bones bent like they were going to snap in two, then rebuilt themselves into something new. Something older than human or wolf.
The moon had been so big that night. So close.
My grandfather’s voice, gravelly and warm. “The stone remembers us,” he said, his claw tracing the carvings. “Even when we forget ourselves.”
The day my father was named Alpha.
His hands shaking as he made the blood offering. My grandmother whispering prayers under her breath. The entire pack howling so loud my ears rang for days. I had never seen him look prouder–or more afraid.
The fear on Dawn’s face the night she told me she didn’t want to marry her first mate.
My first kiss.
The way my ribs hurt from laughing with Mason until we both collapsed in the sand at the river.
The packhouse stairs where I sat crying the day my grandmother died.
My father holding me and saying nothing. Because what could he say? What words could possibly fill that silence?
Sitting beneath the Moon Stone alone for the first time. Tracing my father’s name in the carvings. Feeling like I would never be enough to live up to him.
Dawn’s wedding.
The soft hum of the bond between me and Derek the first time we touched. The lightning that crawled up my skin. The way I felt whole for the first time since the accident.
Derek’s voice in the dark: “I missed you.”
The small moments. The quiet ones. The way he held Aiden when he thought no one was watching.
The way he looked at me when I didn’t remember him, and he pretended it didn’t kill him.
The betrayal I felt when I saw him with Cassandra.
The way he ran after me anyway.
The anger. The longing. The unresolved everything of it all.
I remembered it all.
Even the moment I let go.
The moment I stopped believing I could love anyone and survive it.
I gasped.
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My back arched in the chair as if every muscle had to expel the memories I’d just taken in. My breath came in ragged gulps. I felt like i had run a marathon through my own mind. My arms were slaking
Dr. Voss was beside me instantly, his hand gently bracing my shoulder.
“You’re here,” he said. “You made it.”
Tears were running down my face. I hadn’t even realized I was crying. My whole body trembled with adrenaline and the raw, painful wholeness of what I now remembered.
All of it.
Every single thing.
I slumped forward, curling in on myself. The heat of shame and grief and joy and recognition rushed through me all at once. I remembered who I was. Not just the version of me that lived in bits and pieces, fragmented and hesitant.
I remembered me.
I knew who I was again.
Elena Hart.
Daughter. Sister. Mother. Luna.
And survivor.
I had survived.
I had lost everything. My memory. My name. My sense of the world.
And still
I was here.
“Drink,” Dr. Voss said, pressing a glass of water into my hand. I took it with trembling fingers and sipped.
It was the best thing I’d ever tasted.
For a long time, neither of us said anything.
The candles burned low around us. The herbs on the coals had faded to smoke and ash. A breeze moved the curtains and brought with it the scent of pine.
Finally, he patted my hand.
“I think our work here is done, dear.”
I looked up at him, the tears still drying on my cheeks. He looked proud. Soft. Like a grandfather who had just watched someone take their first steps.
I let out a shaky laugh. “Thank you. For not letting me run.”
“You were never meant to run from this.”
I nodded. My body ached, but something in my chest was quiet now. Settled.
“You’re in no position to get yourself home,” he said. “Is there someone you can call?”
I hesitated.
For a long moment, I thought about Mason.
Dawn
Chapter 260.
Even Jacob.
But when I closed my eyes, it wasn’t any of them I saw.
It was him.
The boy I saved.
The man I loved.
The one I had to face again.
“Yes,” I said softly. “There’s one person I’d like to talk to.”
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