After the rogue attack, I couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t think. The air in my lungs felt too tight, like something invisible was squeezing every breath out of me.
Felicia was gone. Again.
Not just from the festival, not just out of reach — gone, like wind between fingers. And she’d taken them. Our sons.
I’d only just begun to understand what I’d lost, and now I was losing it again.
I went back to the Seer.
The chamber was cloaked in shadow, candles guttering against unseen drafts. She sat in her usual place, her white eyes reflecting no light, yet seeing more than I ever could. I didn’t wait for her to speak.
“Show me,” I said hoarsely. “I don’t care how. I need to see them. I need to know if they’re safe.”
The Seer’s hand moved slowly, fingers brushing across the crystal orb on the table. Wisps of fog gathered within, then bloomed with color. The scene was immediate, painful, intimate.
Felicia. In a modest room I didn’t recognize. Her hands moved in practiced urgency as she packed a small suitcase, her movements trembling.
Danny sat on the bed. “Where are we going, Mommy?”
Her voice cracked. “Somewhere safe for a while.”
Gods, her face—drawn, pale. She wasn’t sleeping either.
Danny tilted his head. “With Uncle Orion?”
“No, sweetheart,” she said, kneeling to meet his eyes. “Uncle Orion has to protect the pack.”
“I want to protect the pack too!” he beamed, puffing out his chest.
I smiled without meaning to. That spirit — that was mine.
In the corner, Max was playing with a carved wolf. Then he asked, “Are we going to Daddy’s pack?”
Felicia stopped. The suitcase slipped in her grip.
She turned her back as she said, “No, not Daddy’s pack.”
My heart clenched. Danny’s next question cut deeper than any blade. “Mommy, who is Daddy?”
Felicia froze. The air around me went still. She turned slowly and said, “We’ll talk about that someday.”
My fists clenched. Someday? After all this time, I didn’t even exist in their story. She sent them off for a bath and stood there, staring at that suitcase like it held her entire world. The vision shifted — a knock at the door. Orion entered, his face grim.
Felicia’s voice was a whisper. “That attack wasn’t random, was it?”
“No,” he replied. “They were after your children.”
The room tilted under my feet.
Orion continued, “I don’t think you should stay. Lucien offered you and the boys sanctuary.”
Lucien.
Even hearing his name made my jaw tighten.
Felicia’s face darkened. “I barely know him, Orion.”
“I don’t trust him either,” Orion admitted. “But his pack is stronger. Until we know who sent those rogues, you need to consider what’s best for your sons.”
Felicia’s silence was heavy. She didn’t want to go. I saw it. But she was going anyway.
The orb dimmed, and the Seer’s voice rasped like dry leaves. “She walks away, not from hatred. But from fear. For their lives.”
I stepped back from the orb, every nerve raw. I didn’t blame her.
But that didn’t mean I could let her go.
***
The room around me was dead quiet, but my heart wouldn’t stop racing. I stood like a statue in front of the Seer’s crystal orb, refusing to move, refusing to blink.
“Keep going,” I said, my voice low and raw. “Don’t stop showing me.”
The orb’s glow deepened, and the image shifted.
I saw her again. Felicia. She was in a small kitchen, sunlight spilling through the window, though her shoulders stayed tight with tension. Her back was to the boys, her hands working quickly at the stove. The smell of eggs sizzling reached through the magic — or maybe it was just memory playing tricks.
Danny’s voice piped up. “Mommy, is breakfast ready?”
“Almost, sweetheart,” she said softly. That smile she gave — gods, I could tell it was forced. But it was there. For them.
Then he walked in.
Lucien.