A Dinner With A Stranger I Already Knew
777 Words
Three hours was not enough time to plan a war, but it was enough time to put on armour.
I chose a deep green dress, not because it was pretty, but because green was the Ashworth pack color and I wanted every Wolfe pack eye in that room to remember exactly whose territory they were standing on.
My mother curled my hair and told me I looked lovely and I smiled and said thank you and thought about how, in another life, this same woman would be dead within the year and no one would tell me until it was too late to say goodbye properly.
This time, I promised myself that I would notice the signs sooner. This time, I would save her too.
My father found me in the hallway before we left, straightening his jacket with hands that were not quite steady. Alpha Elias Ashworth was a good man, but a tired one, carrying debts I never fully understood in my first life. I understood them now.
I had read every paper, sat through every meeting, and watched every year of our marriage as his silent partner in a deal he made before I even knew there was a deal to be made.
"You look nervous, Papa," I said carefully.
He forced a smile. "Big night. The Wolfe pack does not travel for just any dinner."
"Why are they really coming?"
His eyes flickered, just for a second, the way they always did when he was choosing which truth to share. "Alliance talks. Nothing for you to worry about."
There is nothing for me to worry about. That was exactly what he told me the first time, too, right before he signed away my future to save our pack's failing finances.
Not this time.
"Papa," I said, softer now, "if the Wolfe pack needs something from us, I would like to know what it is."
He studied me for a long moment, surprised, maybe even a little proud. "You've grown up fast this year."
If only he knew how many years I had actually lived.
The dining hall at the Ashworth manor had been transformed for the evening, long tables dressed in white linen, candles flickering along the walls, the scent of roasted meat, and fresh bread filling the air. I remembered this room from my wedding reception, though it had been decorated in Wolfe pack black then, every trace of green stripped away like my family had never existed at all.
Tonight, it was still ours. I intended to keep it that way.
I heard him before I saw him.
A low voice, calm and controlled, answering some questions from my father near the entrance. My whole body went still. I turned slow, bracing myself the way I would brace for a blow.
Kade Wolfe stood just inside the doorway.
He looked younger than the man I married, of course he did, we both were, but the shape of him was the same. Tall. Broad shouldered. Dark hair pushed back from a face that gave nothing away. In my first life, that stillness used to comfort me. I used to think it meant he was steady, dependable, and safe.
Now I knew it meant he had learned very young how to hide everything that mattered.
His eyes swept the room the way an Alpha's son had been trained to do, cataloguing exits, counting guards, and weighing threats. Then his gaze landed on me and stopped.
He did not smile. He did not look away either.
For one long, unbearable second, it felt like he was looking straight through the seventeen year old girl standing in front of him and seeing someone else entirely. Someone older. Someone he had wronged.
That was impossible. He had no memories of a life that, for him, had never happened.
And yet something in his expression made the back of my neck prickle with warning.
"Miss Ashworth," he said when my father introduced us, his voice exactly as I remembered it, low and even. "It's a pleasure."
I gave him the same practised smile I once gave him at our wedding, the one that hid everything underneath it.
"Is it," I said. Not quite a question.
Something flickered behind his eyes, gone before I could name it.
"You'll have to forgive my directness," he said, stepping closer, close enough that I caught the low woodsmoke scent I remembered from a hundred cold mornings beside him. "But I feel like I already know you."
My heart slammed against my ribs.
He could not know. There was no way he could know.
Unless, somehow, some part of him remembered too.
- Writer
