Moonbound

Chapter Five

Axel

The doctor who finally came to discharge her had the harried, over-caffeinated look of someone working the tail end of a double shift, and delivered her diagnosis like she'd said it a hundred times already that week.

"Mild concussion, sprained ankle. You're lucky, all things considered. Given the memory gaps, I'd like you to have someone stay close for the next few days. Someone to keep an eye on symptoms, make sure the amnesia isn't masking anything worse." She glanced between me, Lowen, and Celeste, clearly trying to work out what exactly the three of us were to each other. "Family coming to get you?"

Celeste's hands twisted in her lap. "I don't — I don't actually know how to reach anyone. I don't remember a family. Or friends. Or where I live."

"No wallet contacts, no emergency numbers?"

"There was nothing personal in it besides my ID," Celeste said quietly. "No photos on the phone I recognize. It's like I stepped into this body a few hours ago."

The doctor's mouth pressed into a thin, sympathetic line. "We can hold you for observation, but honestly, a hospital floor isn't going to do much for memory recovery. Familiar environments help. Calm ones."

"She can stay with us," I said, before I'd fully decided to say it out loud.

Lowen didn't argue, which told me everything about where his head was at, whatever mess he had waiting for him back home.

Celeste looked between the two of us, something wary creeping into her expression for the first time since she'd woken up. "I don't even know you. Why would you—"

"Because we pulled you off a subway track two hours ago," I said, gentler than I meant to. "Because right now you don't have anyone else, and neither of us is about to leave you here alone in a hospital with no memory and no name that means anything to you. We've got space. We've got quiet. And you'll have your privacy, nobody's going to push you into anything you're not ready for."

She studied me for a long moment, and I got the distinct feeling she was weighing instinct against logic and coming up genuinely confused about why the instinct kept winning.

"Okay," she said finally, quietly. "Okay. Thank you."

Something in my chest settled into place, low and warm, the wolf finally exhaling.

The pack house sat on the edge of the city, close enough for convenience, far enough back from the road that the trees swallowed most of the traffic noise before it reached the porch. Celeste went quiet in the car somewhere around the tree line, staring out the window like the house rising up ahead of us was tugging at something she couldn't name.

"It's beautiful," she said softly. "Familiar, almost. Is that strange?"

"Not as strange as you'd think," Lowen said, meeting my eyes briefly in the rear-view mirror.

We got her settled into one of the guest rooms — soft light, a window that looked out over the back tree line, nothing sharp-edged or clinical about it. She sat on the edge of the bed like she wasn't sure she was actually allowed to relax into it.

"Can I ask you something?" she said, once I'd set her bag down by the closet. "And I want an honest answer, not whatever you think is going to keep me calm."

"Ask."

"What are you? Both of you. There's something — I don't know how to explain it. You don't smell like other people. You move like you're listening to something I can't hear. And when you caught me looking at you in the car, your eyes did something. Flickered. Gold, almost." Her hands were folded tight in her lap. "I might not remember my own name, but I know I'm not imagining that."

Lowen and I traded a look. This was always going to come up fast, she wasn't fully human, whatever else she was, which meant her senses were sharper than any ordinary person's would've been, concussion or not.

"We're werewolves," I said. No point softening a truth she'd clearly already half-caught on her own. "Both of us. Alphas, actually, which is rare for twins. This house, the people you'll meet here — it's a pack."

I watched for fear. The recoil. The scream, maybe, or the scramble for the door. Instead, her expression did something much stranger: a flicker of surprise, and then, underneath it, something that looked almost like relief.

"That's — that actually makes sense," she said slowly. "I don't know why it does. It just does."

"You're not afraid?" Lowen asked.

"Should I be?"

"No," I said. "Never of us."

She nodded slowly, eyes distant, chasing some thread that wouldn't quite come into focus. "There's something else, too. Something underneath, I can't place it, but it doesn't feel like fear. It feels like... recognition. Like my body already knew this before you told me."

Neither of us said what we were both thinking that whatever she was, human wasn't the whole story, and werewolf wasn't the whole story either, and there was a third thing folded in underneath both that neither of us had a name for yet.

"Get some rest," I told her instead. "We'll figure the rest out together. You're safe here. That part I can promise you completely."

She managed a small, tired smile before her eyes started to slide shut, exhaustion finally catching up to her all at once. Lowen and I let ourselves out quietly, and it wasn't until the door clicked shut behind us that either of us spoke again.

"She felt it," Lowen said. "The pull. She doesn't understand it yet, but she felt it."

"Yeah." I dragged a hand through my hair, the weight of the whole night finally settling into my shoulders. "So did I. So did you."

"I need to talk to Vivyan." His voice had gone flat, resigned. "Tonight. Before this gets any messier than it already is."

"You don't owe her a delay," I said, though I already knew he'd give her one anyway, because that was who Lowen was steady, fair, incapable of ending three years with someone by half-measures even when the moon goddess herself had made the decision for him.

"I owe her the truth," he said. "However, it lands."

I didn't argue with that. I just hoped, for all our sakes, that it landed softer than I suspected it was going to.