99 Moons with Alpha Rhaegar

HE DOESN’T REMEMBER

ELYSIA’S POV

I spent the entire morning convincing myself I was wrong.

It wasn’t him. It couldn’t be him. I was sleep-deprived and stressed and living in a castle that smelled like pine and smoke, which probably meant every man in a ten-mile radius smelled like pine and smoke. I had imagined the whole thing. My brain was simply looking for patterns in places where there weren’t any.

That was the sensible explanation.

My wolf’s response to the sensible explanation was a sound that could only be described as disgusted.

*You know what you smelled.*

“Lots of people own dark cloaks.”

*Elysia.*

“I’m not doing this right now.”

I chopped the carrots aggressively and did not think about it.

By midday, word passed through the kitchens that the Alpha King would be conducting a courtyard inspection after lunch. Some kind of weapons review with his warriors. Servants were to stay clear of the east courtyard but could move through the corridor overlooking it.

I told myself I wasn’t going.

I was absolutely going.

I found a spot near the far end of the corridor, half-hidden behind a stone pillar, and looked down into the courtyard below.

He was already there.

Rhaegar stood in the center of the space, arms crossed, watching two warriors spar with a stillness that somehow made him the loudest thing in the yard. He wasn’t in armor. Just a dark shirt, sleeves pushed to his elbows, dark hair loose. He said something low to Cain beside him, and Cain nodded without expression.

I watched his face.

I watched it the way you study a locked door, searching for any crack, any give.

After a few minutes, a servant crossed the courtyard carrying a water pail. Rhaegar’s eyes tracked the movement briefly, and then moved on.

Two more servants cut through. His gaze passed over them both without pausing.

Then I moved slightly, just enough that the shift of gray fabric at the corridor window might catch peripheral vision.

His eyes swept upward.

They passed over the window.

They passed over me.

And kept going.

Nothing. No pause. No flicker. No tightening of the jaw or brief stilling of breath. He looked at the window the same way he looked at the stone walls around it.

Like I was part of the architecture.

My wolf made a sound I had never heard from her before. Low and wounded and furious all at once.

I stepped back from the window.

Okay. So.

He didn’t remember.

I waited for the relief. I’d been expecting relief, had been counting on it, frankly, because relief was the logical response to discovering that the most powerful wolf alive had no memory of a night he’d called his biggest mistake.

The relief came.

And underneath it, sitting quiet and patient, was something else entirely.

Something that felt embarrassingly close to being stung.

Because how. How did you forget? How did you hold someone against a tree and say don’t think, just feel and then simply file it away somewhere and lose the paperwork? How did you look at a person you’d touched, even briefly, even carelessly, and see nothing?

I knew the answer. I’d always known the answer.

I was nothing to him.

I had been nothing to him that night, and I was nothing to him now. I was a servant in a gray dress who carried breakfast trays and peeled potatoes and occupied a small room without windows. Why would he remember?

*Because we remember*, my wolf said, quiet now. We remember everything.

I went back to the kitchens.

I peeled more potatoes than any one person needed to peel and I did not think about it for the rest of the afternoon.

Night came slowly.

I was in my room, sitting on the edge of my narrow bed, staring at the wall, when I heard a tap on my door. Three light knocks, close together.

I frowned. Nessa didn’t knock like that. Nobody here knocked like that.

I opened the door.

For a full second I just stood there.

Then Mira threw herself at me.

I caught her—just barely, my grip slipping before I steadied us, both of us staggering back into the room.
 Her hands fisted in my clothes, trembling hard enough to pull me with her. Or maybe that was me.

“You’re alive,” she pressed into my shoulder, the words breaking over each other. “You’re actually alive…I heard…someone said you were here, that you made it out, but no one would tell me anything and I didn’t know if it was real or just….”

Her breath hitched sharply.

“…I had to see it myself.”

“Mira.” My voice cracked. I tightened my hold on her. “Mira… breathe.”

She pulled back just enough to look at my face, her hands gripping my arms, her eyes red and swollen. She looked thinner than I remembered. Her cheeks were sharper and there were shadows under her eyes that hadn’t been there before.

“You look terrible,” I told her.

She let out a wet, broken laugh. “You have a black eye and bruised everything and you’re telling me I look terrible?”

“It’s healing.”

“It better be.” She pulled me into another hug, tighter this time, and I held on.

We stayed like that for a moment, just breathing.

Then she sniffed hard, stepped back, and wiped her face with her sleeve. “Okay. Okay, I’m fine. I’m completely fine.” She clearly was not fine.

“How did you even get here?” I whispered.

“Bribed a patrol wolf.” She waved a hand. “Don’t ask what I had to give him. The point is he had a stomach problem and I had a very effective herb blend.”

I stared at her.

“He’s fine,” she added quickly. “He just really needed to stay close to the bushes for a few hours.”

A sound escaped my throat that was almost a laugh. Almost.

“Mira, this was dangerous. If Greaves finds out you left the territory…”

“I know.” Her expression sobered. “I know, Ely. But I had to see you. And I had to give you this.”

She reached into the cloth bag hanging from her shoulder and pulled something out.

A journal.

Small. Leather-bound. The cover worn soft with age, the spine slightly cracked, the pages thick and slightly warped like they’d been near moisture once.

And on the front cover, in handwriting I would know anywhere:

*Lyra Belrose.*

My mother’s name.

My hands moved before my brain did, reaching out and taking it. It was heavier than it looked. Or maybe that was just me.

“I found it hidden in your old things,” Mira whispered. “Under the floorboard beneath your sleeping mat. After they banished you, I went back. I didn’t know what else to do with it so I kept it. I was going to burn it if anyone came looking but nobody came looking and…” She stopped. Swallowed. “I thought you should have it.”

I looked down at the cover.

My mother’s handwriting. The same looping script that had labeled her herb jars and written out her healing recipes and once written my name on a piece of bark when I was five years old and proud of learning to read it.

Lyra.

I tried to speak, but nothing came out.

“Ely.” Mira’s hand touched my arm, gentle. “Are you okay?”

I nodded. Then shook my head. Then nodded again.

She didn’t push. She just sat beside me on the narrow bed and stayed quiet, which was the most Mira thing she had ever done, because Mira was not a quiet person and her being quiet right now was the loudest way she knew to say I’m here.

We sat together for a while. She told me small things in a low voice. That Mira was still working in the kitchens. That the pack had moved on quickly, the way packs always did. That Killian had been seen with Sabrina again, openly this time, which had set people whispering.

I listened. I held the journal.

After a while, Mira had to go. She held my face in both hands and looked at me like she was memorizing it.

“Stay alive,” she said. “That’s all you have to do. Just stay alive.”

She slipped out the door, and she was gone.

I sat alone in the small, dark room with my mother’s journal in my lap.

After a long time, I opened the first page.

Her handwriting filled it top to bottom, small and careful. A date at the top, older than I expected. A line beneath it that made my chest cave in:

*If you’re reading this, my love, then I’m already gone. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything.*

I closed the journal.

I pressed it flat against my chest, both arms wrapped around it, and I sat there in the dark and breathed.

I would read it. I would.

Just not yet.

Right now I needed to be the version of myself that could survive this castle, these ninety-nine days, the Alpha King’s gray eyes passing right through me like I was made of air.

I couldn’t afford to crack open, not tonight, not yet.

So I held my mother’s words against my heart like a closed door, and I waited for morning to come.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​