When we are one

Chapter 17 Anika

When I wake, Corbin is gone.

For a moment, I think I’m still dreaming. The bed beneath me is softer, smaller, and the air smells of herbs and wood smoke. I sit up slowly, my senses sharp. This isn’t our room.

I’m in a small hut, the walls curved with age, low shelves lined with old jars and bone-carved symbols. Light spills in from a thin crack under the door.

Something pulls at me—familiarity buried beneath layers of memory. I slip from the bed, careful not to make a sound, and creep toward the door.

Voices.

Faint but urgent, echoing from somewhere deeper in the hut. I follow the sound down a narrow corridor, its stone floor cool under my feet. A soft amber light glows from a room at the end. I inch closer, heart pounding, and peer through the crack in the door.

Inside, two people argue in hushed but intense voices.

And I freeze.

They look like me.

The woman stands tall and graceful, her body curved and her emerald eyes fierce with emotion. The man beside her is built like a warrior—broad shoulders, a strong jaw, and eyes the exact same shade of green.

Mother. Father.

The words hit me like a blade to the chest.

Memories I hadn’t dared to revisit flood in, faster than I can stop them. This place… this hut was once my home.

I can’t breathe.

Inside, my mother—Sable—paces furiously. “For the sake of the pack, for her safety, she must be hidden.”

“She” is me.

“The future Luna,” she adds, voice trembling. “Anika is too powerful. If they find her, they’ll kill her before she ever comes of age. I’ve spoken to the witch—she’s given me something that will suppress her powers and her wolf. It’ll hold for another fifteen moons.”

My father, Artemis, steps forward, pain etched deep in every line of his face. “You expect me to give up our daughter? The Moon Goddess gifted her to us. She’s ours, Sable.”

“What kind of parents would we be if we didn’t protect her?” Sable snaps back. “She’s not just powerful, Artemis—she’s marked. She has the blood of divinity in her veins. And that silver wolf? It’s a death sentence if she stays here.”

I can feel Silvara stir within me, her presence a mirror of my own ache.

Then—

Knock. Knock.

“Artemis,” my mother whispers. “Were you expecting anyone?”

“No,” he replies, reaching for the door. “Quick—grab Anika. Hide her.”

“Stop being paranoid,” she says with a brittle laugh. “No one knows but the witch and the inner pack.”

I already know what’s coming. My chest tightens. I want to scream for them not to open the door—but I can’t move. I’m trapped in this dream, this memory.

My father pulls open the door.

A robed figure stands in the doorway, face hidden in shadow.

Before my father can react, the stranger grabs him by the throat and—with a sound that cracks like lightning—snaps his neck.

“No!” I gasp, but no one hears me.

My mother’s scream echoes through the house as she races past me, unseen. I follow her to a small bedroom where my younger self lies sleeping peacefully, unaware of the nightmare coming.

She scoops me up, holding me tightly to her chest. Her lips brush my hair. Her voice trembles.

“Moon guide her,” she whispers. “Keep her safe.”

But it’s too late.

The robed man enters.

He walks right past me—like I’m not really there—and with another swift, brutal motion, he takes my mother’s life.

Her body crumples.

My younger self awakens with a scream so piercing it shatters the dream like glass. But the figure doesn’t grab her. He reaches out, then stumbles back—terrified.

A radiant shield flares around my younger self, made of light and silver fire. The man recoils as if burned. His hand blackens at the edges, crumbling into ash.

And then I remember.

The night I discovered my touch was death.

The night everything changed.

I had been so young—too young to understand. I only knew pain, confusion, and the hands of strangers pulling me from my home. I didn’t know then that I hadn’t just escaped…

I had teleported.

Straight into the underworld.

Straight into the hands of those who would torture me, twist me, and try to erase every trace of who I was.

I jolt back into consciousness, gasping for breath.

Tears stream down my face, the memory more vivid than anything I’ve seen in years. My hands shake. My chest aches.

The room is quiet again.

Corbin is still gone.

And now, for the first time, I remember everything.

Everything they took from me.

Everything I was meant to be.

And the war still to come.