The house is dark when we finally make it home, the kind of quiet that feels heavy and expectant. Cade stayed behind at the pack house for what he called "additional security discussions," which is code for drinks with Marcus and the elder council members while they dissect pack politics without the women present. I stopped being offended by the exclusion years ago. Now I'm just grateful for the space.
Lyric is asleep against my shoulder, her breath warm against my neck, the stuffed wolf clutched tight in her small fist. She didn't say another word after that whispered "we'll try again," and I didn't push. Some part of me doesn't want to know what she meant. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
I carry her upstairs to her bedroom, a space that's exploded with the cheerful chaos only a seven-year-old can create. Drawings cover every available surface—mostly of people connected by golden lines, elaborate tangles of threads that she insists she can see. Dr. Wen suggested it might be a manifestation of her wolf's early emergence, some kind of heightened pack bond sensitivity.
But as I lay Lyric down and she immediately curls around the stuffed wolf without waking, I can't shake the feeling that it's something more.
I pull the covers up to her chin and brush a curl back from her forehead. She looks so young when she sleeps, so vulnerable, and my heart clenches with the familiar ache of maternal protectiveness. Whatever strange things she says, whatever unsettling knowledge she seems to possess, she's still my daughter. Still the person I love most in this world.
"Sweet dreams, baby," I whisper, even though I know her dreams have been anything but sweet lately.
The nightmares started about two weeks ago. She wakes up crying, talking about fire and darkness and people who aren't there anymore. When I ask her about them in the morning, she just looks at me with those ancient eyes and says she doesn't remember. But I think she does. I think she remembers everything, just like she said.
I leave her door cracked open the way she likes it and head to my own bedroom at the end of the hall. The master suite is larger than I need, decorated in the neutral tones that Cade prefers. There's nothing of me in this room except my books stacked on the nightstand and my reading glasses on the dresser. It's his space that I happen to occupy.
I change into pajamas and wash my face, going through the motions of my nighttime routine while my mind spins. The déjà vu from the council meeting still clings to me like cobwebs, impossible to brush away. I've answered Marcus's questions about the treaty records before. I know I have. But when? How?
My phone buzzes with a text from Cade: Going to be late. Don't wait up.
I don't bother responding. He won't notice either way.
Instead, I climb into bed with my laptop and pull up the digital archives I've been building. Years of work, scanning and cataloging and cross-referencing every document in the physical Archives. It's tedious work that no one but me cares about, but it's mine. My legacy, my contribution, my proof that I matter.
I open the file containing the Silverpine lineage records, intending to review the Blackwood corrections Lyric helped me make. But as I scroll through the genealogy charts, something catches my eye.
There's a notation I don't remember adding.
It's small, easy to miss—a comment attached to Cade's entry in the database. The text reads: Bond formation: 2019, October 15th. Artificial construct verified iteration 72.
My blood goes cold.
I didn't write that. I would never write something like that. Artificial construct? Iteration 72? What does that even mean?
I check the metadata. The comment was added three days ago. By me. According to the system logs, I was logged in at 2:47 AM, working in this exact file.
But I wasn't. I was asleep three days ago at 2:47 AM. I'm always asleep at that hour.
Aren't I?
My hands are shaking as I search for other anomalies. It doesn't take long to find them. There are dozens of strange notations scattered throughout the records, all added in the middle of the night over the past two weeks, all signed with my user credentials.
Bond strength: deteriorating. Sixth month mark approaching.
Reset trigger: Archive destruction. Pattern holds.
Lyric remembers. She always does.
Finn Ashwood: Location confirmed. Contact initiated.
I don't know anyone named Finn Ashwood.
The rational part of my brain insists there's an explanation. Maybe I've been sleepwalking, working while unconscious. Maybe the stress has finally gotten to me and I'm having some kind of episode. Maybe someone hacked my account.
But the irrational part—the part that's been growing louder since this afternoon—whispers something else entirely.
What if I did write these? What if there's a part of me that remembers something I'm not supposed to know?
I close the laptop with more force than necessary and set it aside. This is ridiculous. I'm spiraling over nothing, creating problems where none exist. I'm tired, that's all. Exhausted from long hours in the Archives and Lyric's nightmares and the constant low-grade disappointment of a mate bond that never quite feels right.
Sleep. That's what I need. Everything will make more sense in the morning.
But sleep doesn't come.
I lie in the dark, listening to the house settle around me, and I can't stop thinking about those notations. Artificial construct. Iteration 72. Reset trigger.
And Finn Ashwood. Who is he? Why does his name feel important, like something I should know?
Around midnight, I hear Cade come home. His footsteps are heavy on the stairs, the sound of someone who's had a few drinks and isn't trying to be quiet. The bedroom door opens and he comes in, smelling like whiskey and the pack house. He doesn't say anything, just strips down to his boxers and climbs into bed on his side.
There was a time when he would have reached for me. When coming home late meant apologies and kisses and whispered conversations in the dark. Now he just turns his back and within minutes, his breathing evens out into sleep.
I stare at the ceiling and wonder when we stopped trying.
The mate bond should be pulling me toward him, creating that instinctive need for physical closeness. Instead, I feel nothing but the familiar hollow ache of disappointment. Is this normal? Do other mated pairs feel this same disconnect? Or is something fundamentally broken between us?
Artificial construct verified.
No. That's crazy. Mate bonds aren't artificial. They're biology, instinct, fate. You can't fake a mate bond. It's impossible.
But Lyric can see threads that shouldn't exist. And I'm having visions of events that haven't happened. And someone—maybe me—has been leaving cryptic messages in my own archives about iterations and resets and deteriorating bonds.
What if impossible isn't impossible anymore?
I must drift off eventually because I wake to Lyric screaming.
I'm out of bed before I'm fully conscious, my bare feet hitting the hardwood as I sprint down the hall. Cade is right behind me, all traces of sleep and alcohol gone, replaced by the sharp alertness of an Alpha responding to a threat.
Lyric's room is bathed in the soft glow of her nightlight, and she's sitting up in bed, tears streaming down her face, her small body shaking with sobs. The stuffed wolf has fallen to the floor.
"Baby, it's okay, I'm here." I scoop her into my arms and she clings to me with desperate strength, her fingers digging into my shoulders.
"It's burning," she gasps between sobs. "Everything's burning and you can't stop it and we have to start over again but I'm so tired, Mommy, I'm so tired of starting over—"
"Shh, it's just a dream. You're safe. Nothing's burning."
"It's not a dream!" She pulls back to look at me, and her eyes are wild with something that looks too much like knowledge, too much like certainty. "It happens every time. The man comes and you find the truth and then it all burns and we reset and I wake up seven again and we do it all over and I can't—I can't keep being seven forever—"
"Lyric, you need to calm down." Cade's voice is firm but not unkind. He crouches beside the bed, his presence commanding even in pajama pants and nothing else. "Take a breath. Whatever you dreamed, it's not real."
She looks at him, and something flickers across her face. Recognition? Sadness? "You never remember," she says softly. "You never remember loving her. Not until the end, and by then it's always too late."
Cade and I exchange glances. His expression mirrors what I'm feeling—confusion, concern, and a growing sense that something is very wrong with our daughter.
"Remember loving who?" I ask gently, brushing tears from her cheeks.
"Each other." She says it so simply, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "You loved each other. Before. When everything was real. Before it all started breaking."
The room feels too small suddenly, the air too thick. Cade's jaw tightens and I can see him struggling with how to respond. How do you tell your child that her parents' relationship is fine when it's not? How do you explain a mate bond that exists but doesn't feel like it should?
"We do love each other," Cade says, but even I can hear the hollowness in it.
Lyric just looks at him with those heartbreaking ancient eyes. "Not like you did. Not like you're supposed to." She turns back to me. "The Archives are going to burn in three days, Mom. You need to save what you can. The important things. The things that prove it."
"Prove what?"
"That the bond is fake. That someone wrote you together. That none of this is real."
The words hang in the air like smoke, impossible and terrifying and somehow exactly what I've been afraid to think.
Cade stands abruptly. "That's enough. Lyric, these nightmares are getting out of hand. We're taking you back to Dr. Wen tomorrow for a full evaluation. This isn't normal."
"I know it's not normal." Lyric's voice is very small. "Nothing about us has ever been normal. Not for a very long time."
She won't say anything else after that, no matter how much we coax and comfort. Eventually her eyes drift closed again and her breathing evens out, but I don't think she's really asleep. I think she's just done talking to people who won't understand.
Cade and I retreat to the hallway. He runs a hand through his hair, frustration evident in every line of his body.
"We need to get her help," he says. "Real help. These aren't just nightmares, Thea. She's saying things that are—"
"That are what?" I challenge, something hot and defensive flaring in my chest. "Strange? Unsettling? She's seven years old and going through something we don't understand. Dragging her to more doctors isn't going to help."
"Then what do you suggest? We just let her continue having breakdowns about fires and fake bonds and reset cycles?"
"She said the Archives are going to burn in three days." The words come out before I can stop them. "What if she's right?"
Cade stares at me like I've lost my mind. Maybe I have. "You think our daughter is psychic now?"
"I think she knows things she shouldn't know. I think there's something happening that we don't understand. And I think—" I pause, the words catching in my throat because saying them out loud will make them real. "I think maybe we should look into what she's saying. About the bond."
"About our bond being fake?" His voice is dangerously quiet. "You want to investigate whether our mate bond is real because our seven-year-old had a nightmare?"
"It's not just the nightmare. There are things—inconsistencies—I need to look into—"
"No." He cuts me off with Alpha command behind the word, and I feel my wolf instinctively want to submit. "You're not going to tear apart our lives because of a child's bad dreams. We're taking her to Dr. Wen, we're going to get her the help she needs, and we're going to stop entertaining these fantasies. Are we clear?"
I should argue. I should push back against his Alpha command and demand he listen to me. But I'm tired, and confused, and maybe he's right. Maybe I am reading too much into things that have rational explanations.
"Fine," I say. "We'll take her to Dr. Wen."
He nods, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. "Good. I have to be up in a few hours for patrol. Try to get some sleep."
He heads back to our bedroom, leaving me standing in the dark hallway alone.
I check on Lyric one more time. She's curled on her side, the stuffed wolf back in her arms, and her eyes are open just a sliver. Watching me.
"Three days, Mom," she whispers. "Save what you can."
I don't respond. I don't know how.
Back in bed, with Cade snoring softly beside me, I pull out my phone and open the browser. My fingers hesitate over the keyboard before I type: Finn Ashwood werewolf.
Nothing useful comes up. Just some genealogy records from other packs, none recent.
I try: artificial mate bonds.
Results about pack politics, mate bond theory, a few conspiracy theory forums that I immediately dismiss.
Then, on impulse: iteration 72.
The search returns mostly math and programming results, nothing related to werewolves or packs or bonds.
But buried on the third page, there's a link to a forum post from eight months ago, the preview text reading: ...has anyone else experienced déjà vu around mate bond formation? Feeling like you've lived this before? I keep having these dreams about iteration numbers, like I'm stuck in some kind of...
The post has been deleted. The user account no longer exists.
I close the browser and set my phone aside, my heart pounding.
Three days until the Archives burn, according to Lyric.
Three days to figure out if my daughter is having psychotic breaks or prophetic visions.
Three days to decide if I'm brave enough to look for proof that might destroy everything I thought I knew.
I close my eyes and try to sleep, but all I can see is flames.