Ryatt
The bartender at the quaint inn we’re staying at for the night pours me another glass of whiskey neat. I nod my thanks as little jolts of pain run up my spine, skittering like mice. It took three jumps to get from that hell-hole where my daughter was born back to Rifthold. I was barely standing by the end of it, and after two full days traveling on foot, we’ve finally made it to a familiar pack, a familiar village, and are back in the Roguelands.
We’ll be close enough to Veiled Valley that I can spirit us the rest of the way there after another day of travel.
I turn back to the table where I’ve just left the Alpha and Beta of this pack to finish their platters of roast beef, bread, and stew. Granger already retired to bed an hour ago, and the witch, still unnamed, is visiting with the local healer.
Westfall has made himself scarce during our journey here and is fine acting as a scout while we navigate the Roguelands. Something has to be done, however. He’s on edge and flighty. I can tell he wants to talk to the witch but won’t.
It’s like he can’t bring himself to believe it. I understand his hesitation.
The witch doesn’t remember anything about her life up until twenty years ago.
I sip my whiskey and let it bloom through my veins. It numbs the ache in my bones but does nothing to clear my head. After tasting the whiskey in Maatua, I’ve lost my taste for the bitter, young whiskey found in the Roguelands.
I set the unfinished glass down and throw a few coins on the bar before walking toward the stairwell to the rooms above the tavern.
I pause at the door to our room. Ella is singing softly, some song about a clock and a mouse running up it. I’ve never heard her sing before. She’s not very good, but I still fight a smile as I slowly, quietly, enter the room and shut the door behind me.
Ella glowers at me from across the room when the floorboards creak under my weight. She’s sitting up in bed with Kenna resting against her shoulder. Ella is also completely undressed from the waist up, and her breasts are….
Tantalizing. To say the least.
I grind my teeth as I start taking off my leathers, trying not to stare too long at my beautiful mate, but it’s hard not to.
“Let me take her,” I whisper. “You haven’t touched the food they brought up.” I ease onto the bed dressed in undershorts and a loose top. The mattress is softer than I expected, uncomfortably so. Just a few more days and we’ll be home, in our own bed, and I don’t plan to leave it until it's absolutely necessary.
Kenna squirms a bit in my arms before resettling with a long, dramatic sigh. She opens her eyes with a scowl, giving me a glimpse of those gray irises that are starting to fade from view. She’ll have something of mine, at least. Her little scowl and clenched fists remind me of my wife, however.
“I’m not very hungry. I went to the bakery with the witch before coming up here for bed,” Ella sighs as she reaches for her shirt.
“How is she?”
She shrugs. “She has no inclination that Westfall is losing his mind over her. She’s rather oblivious, actually. I wonder if there’s something wrong with her, you know? It’s almost like she’s been stripped raw and was left that way.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like… you know how we feel when our powers run dry? That emptiness?”
I nod. It’s how I feel right now, honestly. I wonder if I’ll ever have them back, at least like they were before.
Ella lies back against the thin pillows and curls into herself, wrapping one of her legs around mine. “She’s like that all the time. Those clouds in her eyes… it’s magic, I think. Something is trapping her in her own head, her own body. I think she should go to the coven, Ryatt. Giselle and the Mystics will be able to help her.”
My head rocks back and forth in agreement. That’s actually the plan.
I haven’t told Westfall, though.
“Have you talked to your dad?”
“Westfall?”
Ella gives me a look. “Who else, Ryatt?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“I think you should demand an audience with him tonight. Once we’re in Veiled Valley, I’m sure he’ll find excuses to ignore this situation completely.”
“He’s already doing that,” I counter.
“You’re his Alpha, remember?”
I look down at my daughter and sigh. She’s asleep and looks very cute in a soft, red knit onesie one of the women in this village made for her. News of her birth has spread like wildfire through the Roguelands. Our bags are full of gifts for our princess.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Tonight,” Ella says, giving me a little nudge. “I need to start calling this woman a name, anyway. Calling her the witch is getting old, and it will be entirely too confusing when we bring her to the coven.”
I gently lay Kenna down on the bed between us. She stretches her tiny arms over her head and slumps back into sleep.
Rain patters softly against the window as I redress, a little vexed that Ella is forcing me back out in the rain to try to track down my father and ask about his love life, but if our hunch is correct, this witch is my mother, and that means Westfall’s mate–the woman who sacrificed herself so he and I could live–has been alive all these years.
I haven’t given it much thought because when I do, it’s painful. I don’t remember her well. I feel guilty about that, especially when the memories I do have stem from nightmares of our time in Kane’s clutches.
The forest surrounding the village is dark and damp as I walk along, no light to guide my path. I pick up Westfall’s scent eventually and decide against shifting to track him down. He’s around. He’s been staying close under the guise of scouting, but if I want to sleep in bed with my mate tonight, I need to talk to him.
Otherwise, Ella will likely force me to sleep outside in my wolf form–in the rain.
“Have you been following me?” Westfall comes into view as I hike up a sharp embankment. He’s standing between two large, jagged rocks, redressing. He pulls a shirt over his head before I can glimpse the spidery network of scars on his back and chest, similar to mine, but deeper. Scars forged by years of being tied up and whipped by Kane’s warriors.
“It’s not healthy for someone of your age to be in their wolf forms for long at a time.”
His eyes meet mine through the darkness, a soft blue glow. “I’m barely fifty.”
I shrug.
He clears his throat and sits down on a boulder to put on his boots. “What is it, Ryatt? Or is this a conversation that requires I call you Alpha?”
“I think you know what conversation we’re about to have.”
He exhales, resting his elbows on his knees. I lean against a rock face opposite of where he’s sitting and cross my arms over my chest, ignoring the rain.
“She is your mother,” he says, knitting his fingers together. “I have no doubt about it.”
“Then why avoid her?”
He meets my gaze. “She has no idea who we are to her, and I believe it’s best we keep it that way.”
“Why? She’s been alone–”
“Whatever happened to her for her to lose her memories is a blessing, Ryatt. I’d rather live like this, knowing my mate is alive but doesn’t recognize me at all, then have her remember everything that she went through and have to relive it in her nightmares like I do.” His voice is cool, collected, but sharply edged.
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Can you handle this? Knowing that she’s here? Alive? She is your mate, yet you’ve decided to ignore that bond.”
“The bond is severed, Ryatt. I felt it snap that night I stole you out of Rifthold. You were the only reason I didn’t turn back and fall on someone’s sword so I could go with her. I thought she died.”
“So she can’t even feel that your mates?”
“No, she can’t.”
“Can you?”
He’s quiet for a long moment. “I thought what I felt all these years was just… a piece of it that lingered after she died. A memory. But hearing her voice, seeing her… I feel it. It’s driving me mad. It’s why I’ve been out in the woods.”
“I need you around.”
“I can’t,” he says with so much raw emotion I can taste the despair. “I can’t. She can’t remember, okay? I don’t want her to remember.”
“But you could have decades with her now. You could have the life you both deserve!”
“At what cost? She’s… she’s fine now. She doesn’t remember, so it doesn’t hurt. I can’t hurt her, Ryatt. I can’t–I won’t allow it.”
“She doesn’t deserve this.”
“She is my mate. It’s my decision.”
“She is also mymother, and Kenna’s grandmother, and you’d deny her of that? Really?”
He shakes his head. “Even if I wanted to, I don’t know if there’s a way to unlock those memories.”
“She’s going to the coven, not the valley. Giselle and the mystics can help her.”
He looks at me, conflicted.
“She might have done this to herself, Ryatt.”
My stomach twists. I hadn’t thought of that.
He nods to himself. “I believe she actually did. She wiped the slate clean.”
“How is that even possible?”
“Who knows? But I understand why she did it. She knew she would die, and if she didn’t, she faced a life of torture under Kane’s rule. He wouldn’t have killed her. No, he would have done far worse for as long as possible. How she escaped, I don’t know. We never will know because we’re not going to force her to remember. She chose this.” He believes it, too. That certainty is laced through every word he says. “Meanwhile, I will be fine.”
“You don’t seem fine.”
He chuckles darkly. “It’s my duty to protect her, even if that means staying away from her and not risking her memories coming back. I must ask you, as your subject, to leave the coven out of this, for now.”
“And if we find that she didn’t do this on purpose, and she was somehow… cursed, and lost her memories, what then?”
He sucks his lower lip between his teeth, letting go with a pop. “I don’t know.”
“We’ll bring her home to Veiled Valley then. I’ll tell Ella.”
I straighten, preparing to walk back down to the village, but then stop and turn back to him. “I look at my mate and my daughter and I finally understand why you did this. Why you hid who you were from me for so long. I get it now. I’m… I’m thankful for it. Grateful, even.”
His eyes shine in the dark.
I continue, “Your actions gave me the greatest shot of actually surviving this place. You built me to be a king, sacrificed your own title. You were supposed to be the Alpha of Veiled Valley, weren’t you?”
He shakes his head. “My older brother. He was next in line. He died, alongside my father and my mother, shortly after I was captured and taken to Rifthold.”
I nod.
He continues, “I couldn’t claim the throne while you were young because Kane knew I had you. He would have found us, and you had to be able to fight and take care of yourself.”
So he waited until I was a teenager to take me to that cave to find the sword his father must have stashed before his death at the hands of Kane’s forces. I ascended the throne Westfall was entitled to, that he gave up, to keep me hidden until I was ready.
“I think you’ve sacrificed enough for one lifetime, Dad.”
Westfall looks at me like I just struck him. His surprise is written clearly, even in the dark. I’ve never acknowledged him as my father.
Until now.
I turn and walk away.