Scent of Forever

The First Crack

You need to see this."

Dana's voice woke me before the knock finished, sharper than the easy warmth from the night before. I sat up too fast, heart already hammering, half convinced Callan had somehow followed us into the mountains.

"Nothing's wrong," she said quickly, catching my face. "Alpha wants you at the healer's house. Now, not after breakfast like I told you last night. Ines found something."

I dressed fast and followed her through the cold morning air to a low stone building at the edge of the compound, where an older woman with sharp eyes and gentle hands was waiting, the vial of my suppressant sitting on the table in front of her like something she'd already decided she hated.

"Sit," Ines said. Not unkind. Just certain.

"What did you find?" I asked.

"Do you know what this actually is?" She nodded at the vial.

"Suppressant. For my condition."

"It's a bonding suppressant," Ines said. "Meant for wolves recovering from severe injury to the shift itself. Not for long-term use. Certainly, not six years." She looked at me steadily. "Has anyone ever told you why you needed it in the first place?"

"I was unstable. After the crash."

"Do you remember being unstable?"

I opened my mouth and found I couldn't answer. I remembered the crash only in pieces — noise, light, pain — and then Callan's face, and then the tea, every morning, without anyone ever asking if I wanted to stop.

"I don't remember much of anything from right after," I admitted. "I trusted my brother to tell me what happened."

Ines reached out slowly and rested two fingers against my wrist. "May I check something?"

I nodded. She closed her eyes. When she opened them, her face had gone carefully neutral in a way that scared me more than an obvious reaction would have.

"Your wolf isn't gone," she said quietly. "It's buried deep, and it's fighting the suppressant harder than I've ever felt one fight. Whatever's under there, Elara, it's stronger than six years of dosing should have been able to hold down."

"Is that bad?" I asked.

Ines didn't answer right away, which was its own kind of answer.

A shadow crossed the doorway. Ronan stopped the moment he saw my face.

"What is it?" he said. That's not really a question.

Ines held up the vial. "This has kept her wolf suppressed for six years, on a dosage meant for weeks. And whatever's under it isn't behaving like an ordinary suppressed wolf at all."

Ronan's eyes moved to me, and for the first time since we'd met, I saw something sharper than steady calm cross his face — closer to anger, though I understood it wasn't aimed at me.

"Stop the doses," he said.

"Alpha, an abrupt stop after this long could be—"

"I know the risk. I also know what happens if we keep feeding a lie into her body because her brother built a story around a drug he had no right to give her. Taper it if you need to. I want it gone."

I sat still, my wrist resting where Ines had left it. Something under my skin — something I'd assumed was dead for six years — seemed to have heard every word and stirred.

It wasn't pain. It was closer to waking up a leg that's been asleep too long. Pins and needles, faint and far away, but undeniably there. Then, sudden, as a struck match, a flash of heat rolled through my chest hard enough that I gasped out loud, one hand flying to press flat against my sternum.

"Elara." Ronan had crossed the room without my noticing, crouched to my eye level. "You feel that."

Not a question. I nodded anyway, breathless.

"It's the first crack," Ines said quietly. "Once a suppressed wolf starts fighting back this hard, it doesn't usually stop again. Whatever your brother buried in you, Elara — it's coming up, whether he meant for it to or not."

"How long," I asked, "until the rest of it comes with it?"

"I don't know," Ines admitted. "Nobody's kept a wolf under this long before. We're finding out together."

I looked down at my own hands, waiting for the fear Callan had always promised would come with the word unstable. Instead, underneath the pins and needles, I felt something I hadn't let myself feel in six years.

I felt like I was finally waking up.

Behind Ronan's carefully controlled expression, I caught the faintest flicker of something that looked almost like fear of his own — not of me, but of exactly how much stronger I was about to become.

Before either of us could say another word, the door of the healer's house banged open, and Rory stood in the frame, breathless, his face gone pale in a way I hadn't seen since the meeting hall at Ashwood.

"Alpha," he said. "You need to come now. Lira Voss just rode through the front gate — three days early, and she's already asking who the girl in the east wing is."