"She's leaving to the city," Drake said, his voice rough, standing before Dominic Fenrir in the quiet of the rogue camp. "Took the pup boy with her."
Dominic Fenrir watched from a distance as a lone figure, small and cloaked, walked away from the edges of his territory, pushing a makeshift stroller. The 'holding location' had served its purpose. She was awake, minimally aware, but contained. And now she was leaving.
"If she wants to leave, let her," Dominic rumbled, his single eye fixed on the receding figure. He sniffed the air. The scent of the Old Blood was still there, faint in the city air, but present. "In as far as she is far away from Alpha Darius... we will keep her safe. No matter where she is." Safe from others. Safe for him.
Life for Ariana was different now. Not the stone and pine of a manor she didn't remember, not the constant, heavy presence of a mate whose name was lost to her. Just… the city. A small, cramped apartment above a noisy street, the smell of exhaust fumes, cheap food, and damp concrete her constant companions. She was alone, except for the baby boy, Kiko, who depended on her entirely for everything.
"Hungry, little one?" she murmured, rocking him gently, her voice soft, weary. "Mama will find something."
Ariana had no memory of how she got here, or how her life came to this. No memory of a powerful Alpha, a grand manor, a family filled with vipers, or even the agonizing birth of two babies. Her past was a void, a blank space stretching behind her. She had woken up in a strange place, her body aching, around someone who claimed to have... helped her. A man named Dominic. Disoriented, weak, with an overwhelming instinct to protect the tiny life beside her. She had simply found her way to the city, clinging to that instinct, armed with nothing but a few tattered clothes and a fierce determination to survive for Kiko.
"Just a little more," she whispered to herself, scrubbing floors in a darkened office building late at night. It was low-wage work, exhausting, a constant uphill battle against poverty and bone-deep fatigue. Anything to earn enough for rent, for Kiko's milk, for food.
She didn't understand why sometimes the harsh sounds of the city grated on her nerves, why she felt a strange, almost painful connection to the small patch of struggling greenery in the park, or why a sudden, inexplicable urge to run, to be free, to find open spaces would seize her.
"Just finish, Ariana," she'd tell herself, her voice tight with exhaustion. "For Kiko. Just get through this shift."
She was unaware that she was being watched. From a distance. A shadow in the periphery. Dominic Fenrir kept tabs on her. He saw her struggle, her fierce, raw protectiveness of the child. He saw that the 'Key' was still locked, her memory gone, the powerful Old Blood dormant, contained within the mundane struggle of human life.
"She remembers nothing," Dominic confirmed to Drake during a hushed conversation back at his camp. "Utterly blank."
"And the pup?" Drake asked.
"He seems... normal," Dominic replied, a hint of frustration in his voice. He was waiting. Waiting for a sign. An opportunity. Something that would reawaken the Old Blood in Ariana and unlock the power he craved. He saw Kiko not just as her anchor, but as a potential trigger for the awakening, or perhaps a future prize carrying the lineage.
He didn't approach Ariana directly in the city. He preferred to watch, to wait, to observe the 'Key' in her unexpected cage of normal human life. He ensured she was safe from other rogues who might stumble upon her, protecting his prize, but he did nothing to alleviate her hardship. Her struggle, her exhaustion, her poverty – it was irrelevant to his ultimate goal.
One afternoon, pushing Kiko's stroller through a crowded, noisy park, Ariana felt a sudden, fleeting scent on the wind – sharp, clean pine and something wild, something ancient and powerful that stirred a deep, unknown longing within her chest. It felt like a whisper of home, of something lost. She paused, looking around, her eyes searching the faces in the park, the trees, the sky, but saw only city life.
"Just the wind," she murmured to Kiko, shaking her head slightly. "Must be my imagination."
She didn't know it was one of Dominic Fenrir's scouts, moving silently through the park, catching her scent, reporting back to their Alpha.
"Alpha," the scout reported later, voice low. "The Key... she was in the Central Park. With the pup. Scent is faint, but it's hers. And the pup's."
Dominic Fenrir smiled, a cruel, satisfied expression. "Good. Keep watching. Keep waiting."
She didn't know that in a grand manor far away, a powerful Alpha sat alone in a quiet garden, by a simple stone marker, mourning his dead mate, talking to the empty air. He was unaware that she was alive, struggling in the city, raising one of his children, one of his twin sons, her memory lost to the trauma he believed had killed her and taken his other son.
Dominic Fenrir had his prize. Ariana was alive, the Key in his possession, her memory wiped clean, her power dormant. Darius was consumed by grief, believing her dead with his other son. The stage was set for a future collision, a devastating revelation that would shatter the fragile peace Darius had found in his grief and force Ariana to confront a past she didn't remember, a power she didn't understand, and a love she had tragically forgotten. The forgotten life lived on, a ticking time bomb in the rogue alpha's careful, cruel game.