Chapter 275: Fragments

Abandoning my foolish hopes of escape, I let out a shaky breath and watched helplessly as the man studied something on his phone, a disgusting smirk spreading across his face.

"Nope. No mistake. You’re wolfless. A breeder without a wolf and... a scent gland."

The air rushed from my lungs.

"Yours was cut out of you when you were a child. That’s why that fat bastard is so interested in you," he continued, blowing a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. "Your information has been floating around the black market ever since Michael dragged you into his filthy little den and decided to make some money selling you off to wealthy buyers. Unfortunately, the idiot got himself caught by the cops. They only found a few charred pieces of him afterward."

He shrugged, as though discussing something utterly insignificant.

"Well, we’re a lot more careful than he was. Anyway, your daddy’s been waiting for you, Amelie. You’ll be heading to your new home in a week. Until then, focus on getting better. Someone will bring you food tonight."

With one last smug grin, he turned and walked out.

The heavy metal door slammed shut behind him, leaving me alone.

I clenched my trembling hands into fists so tightly that my nails dug into my palms. Tears threatened to spill down my cheeks, but I fought them back, biting my lower lip until I tasted blood.

Then I curled up on the narrow bed, pulled my knees to my chest, and squeezed my eyes shut.

So tightly that bright, pulsating spots danced behind my eyelids.

All it took was one ragged breath.

And suddenly, a face flashed through my mind. A child’s face. Distorted by pain, illuminated by blinding bursts of light.

Don’t touch her!

My eyes flew open.

I jerked upright, instinctively grabbing my throbbing head with my free hand. A sharp pain tore through the back of my skull, so violent that I nearly screamed.

But I froze, my lips parted in shock. Because without warning, a flood of memories came crashing down on me. Fragments of a past I hadn’t even known I’d forgotten.

Strangers. Car rides. Screams of pain mingling with the distant echoes of a child’s laughter. Happiness.

And scents. So many scents.

They came rushing back with terrifying clarity, each one stirring something deep inside me.

I remembered everything.

How could I have forgotten him?

My mate...

The memories crashed over me like a merciless avalanche. I gasped for air, my dry throat struggling to draw in enough oxygen as I desperately tried to calm myself.

Fragments of my past slowly began falling into place, piecing together the picture that had been buried somewhere deep inside my mind. The image was finally becoming clear.

He hadn’t lied to me. Not a single word.

For as far back as I could remember, we’d been together. There were only the two of us. Every childhood memory I could retrieve, every moment before I lost my memories, was somehow connected to him.

My brave mate.

We’d lived together in what appeared to be an orphanage. A small, secluded clinic where a handful of children, including us, were kept under constant supervision. The most astonishing part was how clearly I remembered being able to speak back then. I hadn’t yet lost my memories, and my words had come so naturally. It was only afterward that I’d had to relearn how to form sounds, one painful attempt at a time.

It had been incredibly difficult.

Damian and I had shared a cramped little room. Whenever I was frightened at night, I’d crawl beneath his thin blanket, and we’d fall asleep wrapped in each other’s arms. We were repeatedly scolded for it, but I stubbornly ignored the rules and kept sneaking into his bed. Somehow, being close to him made everything less frightening.

The doctors constantly took our blood and ran various tests. Neither of us had parents, although I hadn’t understood why back then. Even now, I couldn’t make sense of it.

Where were the parents of all those children? How had we ended up in that cursed place?

Damian undoubtedly knew the answers. He was four years older than me, and the doctors had always referred to us as a pair.

My earliest memories began with the day we first met. Amid those sterile white walls and the endless stream of unfamiliar faces that had come and gone throughout my childhood, he was the only person whose scent I could recognize.

The only familiar scent in an otherwise strange world.

He had colored my days with vivid, beautiful memories, giving me something to hold on to. It didn’t matter whether a particular day had been terrible, filled with painful injections and examinations, or relatively pleasant, when the doctors left us alone.

As long as he was there, everything was bearable.

A sharp throb shot through my temple.

Little bird. Run. Freedom. Father?

Then another image surfaced.

A man arriving at the clinic, introducing himself as our new father and taking us away to a huge, unfamiliar house filled with servants and an endless list of strict rules.

Rules we were expected to follow without question. Disobedience was met with brutal punishment.

It was only a brief reprieve from the daily examinations, but even then, we weren’t allowed to stay together. We were forced to sleep in separate rooms.

No one understood the bond between us.

We weren’t what that powerful man wanted us to be. Damian and I weren’t siblings. We weren’t related by blood.

We were mates.

And the man who had taken us away wasn’t our real father, no matter how stubbornly he insisted otherwise. He repeatedly told us that we were his children now, that we were a family, and that his mate would be arriving soon.

Then, one fateful day, he took us out on his yacht for a trip along the coast.

The sea had been restless that day. I distinctly remembered the strange feeling of unease that had settled in my stomach, a warning I couldn’t explain but one that had turned out to be terrifyingly accurate.

My breathing faltered.