Chapter 6: Touch of Truth
1006 Words
The day after the contract signing, Serena woke up with a pressure behind her eyes that wouldn't quit. Not pain exactly, but something else — a sensation like someone was tuning a radio inside her skull, and it got worse when Selene knocked on her door with a breakfast tray. Not worse, she realized. Louder. Like the girl's presence was a frequency her body was trying to pick up. "You look terrible," Selene said cheerfully. "Damon wants to see you. Something about pack introductions. Everyone's been talking about the training ground thing. Gideon says you could have killed the redhead." "I could have," Serena said, reaching for the toast. Her fingers brushed Selene's hand by accident.
The world tilted. Not the room — the world. Colors bled at the edges of her vision, sound dropped out, and in the sudden roaring silence she saw something that wasn't there. Selene at eight years old, sitting on a dark staircase with her hands over her ears while voices shouted somewhere below. A woman screaming. A door slamming. And then young Damon — maybe fifteen — kneeling in front of her, saying words she couldn't hear but could feel. I've got you. I've got you. The vision snapped and Serena was back in her room, her hand frozen halfway to the toast. "You okay?" Selene was staring at her. "Yeah," Serena managed, her voice rough. "Just tired." Selene shrugged and left, and Serena stared at her own hand — the one that had just pulled a memory out of a fourteen-year-old girl like a thread from a sweater. What the hell was that?
She found Damon in his office, the cracked desk replaced with an identical obsidian slab. He was at the window with his back to her, the way he always stood when he didn't want to be read. "You wanted to see me." He turned. "Pack introductions. The senior members need to meet you formally." He studied her face. "You look pale." The pressure behind her eyes was pulsing louder the closer she got to him, like standing next to a speaker at full volume, and she stopped three feet away with the roar almost unbearable. "Do you feel that?" He frowned. "Feel what?" "The hum. The pull between us. It's louder today." Something flickered in his expression. "You're imagining things." She stepped closer. Two feet now. "When I touched your hand during the signing, your pulse was at least a hundred and twenty. You felt it. Don't lie to me." His jaw locked. "What do you want me to say?" She looked him in the eye and said, "I want you to tell me why your memory has a photo of my mother."
The words landed like a grenade. Damon went completely still — not the stillness of control, but the stillness of a man who'd just had the floor ripped out from under him. "What did you say?" She held her ground. "When we touched, I saw something. It was too fast to understand at the time, but this morning with Selene the pieces clicked. Every time my skin touches someone, I see their memories. And in yours, I saw a photograph. A woman with silver hair and silver eyes. She looked like me." He stepped toward her, his face pale. "Serena." "How do you know my mother?" "Serena, stop." She didn't stop. "Who was she to you? Why were you holding her photograph?"
His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist — not hard, not threatening, desperate — and the moment skin met skin, the Mate Bond detonated between them. The visions came all at once, a flood of memory pouring through the bond. Damon at nineteen over his father's grave, jaw set the same way it was now. Damon at fifteen holding a crying eight-year-old Selene on a dark staircase. And then the image that stopped her heart — Damon at twenty-three, a file being placed in his hands, a photograph of a woman with silver hair and silver eyes clipped to the front, and handwriting she'd never seen: Celeste Moonveil. Silver Moon bloodline. Status: Deceased. Daughter: Location unknown. Find her. The vision shattered and they both stumbled back, him against the desk and her against the wall.
"You've been looking for me," she said, and her voice was shaking. "Since before we met. Before the Severing. You've been looking for me for years." The mask was gone from Damon's face entirely. What was left was a man who'd just been stripped naked. "Yes," he said. "Why?" He straightened, and the mask tried to come back but wasn't working anymore because the cracks were too deep. "My mother was killed by the same people who killed yours. The Moonshadow Council didn't just murder Celeste Moonveil. They murdered my mother too, and I've been trying to prove it for six years. I didn't know you were Celeste's daughter when I found you in the snow. I only knew you were my Mate. The rest I put together after." He looked at her, and for the first time she saw something in his eyes she hadn't expected. Fear. Not of the council, not of the war coming. Of her leaving. "Did you kill my mother?" she asked. "No." "Do you know who did?" "Yes." She pushed off the wall. "Then we find them. Together. Not for the contract, not for the Mate Bond. Because they took something from both of us, and I want it back."
She walked to the door, then stopped. "One more thing. When I was in your memories, I saw faces. Your senior circle. One of them didn't feel right — the way people look different when they're hiding something. I've spent three years learning to read wolves who wanted me dead. Someone in this pack is not what they seem. We should find out who before the council does." She left him standing in his office with his mask in pieces and a dead woman's photograph burning behind his eyes.
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