Evelyn
I’d come to check on Celestine, as I always did around this time of day.
The ritual had become second nature, a habit formed over years of caregiving, of worrying, of trying to make up for things I couldn’t name.
I reached her doorway and stopped.
Her voice drifted through the crack in the door in a sharp tone.
It was different from the soft, shaky one I was used to.
“…loyalty,” she was saying.
“…investigate…
strike…”
I caught the words in pieces and though they didn’t make sense together, something about the way she spoke them made the hair on my arms stand up.
And then she mentioned Aysel.
The sound of my daughter’s name in that voice, sent a cold spike through my chest for reasons I couldn’t explain.
There was no context.
No reason for alarm.
The poor girl wasn’t well.
Everyone knew that.
She rambled sometimes, said strange things.
It was part of her illness.
That’s all it is, I told myself firmly.
Just another episode.
Nothing more.
But my fists were clenched tight in something akin to fear.
I pressed my lips together and forced myself to breathe.
You’re being ridiculous.
Suspicious of a sick girl.
What kind of person does that make you?
The words from inside had stopped.
I pushed the door open and the sight of Celestine dissolved every doubt I’d had in an instant.
She was seated in the old leather one armchair she’d insisted on keeping with her arms wrapped around herself like she was trying to hold her own pieces together.
Her eyes were glassy, unfocused, staring at something in the corner of the room that wasn’t there.
“Kael,” she whispered, her voice cracking.
“Kael, I’m sorry.
I’m so sorry.
Please don’t…
don’t leave me again.
I can’t bear it.
I can’t….”
My heart clenched.
She was seeing her dead mate again.
What had I been thinking?
How could I possibly suspect this girl, this poor, suffering girl, of anything malicious?
She was sick.
She was damaged.
She needed care, not accusation.
“Celestine,” I said softly, stepping into the room.
“Celestine, sweetheart.
It’s okay.
You’re safe.”
She didn’t seem to hear me at first.
Her gaze remained fixed on that empty corner, her lips still moving in silent conversation with a ghost only she could see.
I crossed to her side and knelt before the armchair, reaching out to take her hands.
They were cold.
“Celestine.
Look at me.
I’m here.
You’re not alone.”
Slowly, her eyes shifted to focus on my face.
The glassiness faded, replaced by confusion, then recognition flickered in her eyes.
“Evelyn?” Her voice was small and fragile.
“What…
what happened?
I was just…
I was talking to Kael, and then…”
She blinked rapidly, looking around the room as if seeing it for the first time.
Her brow furrowed in distress.
“Was I having another episode?
I thought I was getting better.
I thought the new medication was working.
But I was…
I was talking to him again, wasn’t I?
Like he was really there?”
The anguish in her voice cut through me like a blade.
I squeezed her hands tighter.
“It’s okay.
It happens sometimes.
The medication takes time to build up in your system.
You’re not backsliding, Celestine.
You’re healing.
These are just…
bumps in the road.”
She nodded slowly, but her eyes still held that wounded look, that desperate need for reassurance that I’d seen a thousand times before.
“I don’t want to be like this forever,” she whispered.
“I don’t want to be a burden.”
“You’re not a burden,” I said automatically.
“You could never be a burden.”
But even as I spoke the words, something in the back of my mind whispered: She could have been talking about something real.
Something concrete.
You heard what you heard.
I shoved the thought away firmly.
The phone in my pocket began to ring and I pulled it out, glancing at the screen.
Damon.
I almost didn’t answer.
Celestine was still shaking.
But the call was coming through at an unusual time, and Damon rarely called me directly.
Something must have happened.
“I need to take this,” I said apologetically.
“I’ll be just outside the door.
Will you be alright for a moment?”
Celestine nodded, still looking small and lost in her chair.
“I’ll be fine.
Go ahead.”
I stepped out into the hallway, closing the door behind me to give her privacy, and pressed the phone to my ear.
“Damon?
What’s wrong?”
His voice came through sounding strained.
“Evelyn.
I need to know something.
Do you know where Aysel lives in New York?”
I paused.
I didn’t know where my daughter lived.
I had never known.
All these years, and I’d never once asked.
Never once cared enough to find out where my own daughter was staying, how she was living, whether she was safe or happy.
The truth of it wrapped around me like a vice.
“I…” I faltered.
“I don’t know, Damon.
I don’t…
she never told me.
I never asked.”
There was silence on his end.
I could picture him standing somewhere, phone pressed to his ear, processing what I’d just said.
The same shame that was flooding through me must have been washing over him too.
Her mother.
Her fiancé.
Two people who were supposed to love her, protect her, care about the details of her life and neither of us knew where she actually lived.
“I don’t know either,” Damon finally said, his voice quieter now.
“I never…
I never thought to ask.
We were so caught up with…”
“Celestine,” I finished for him.
“Yeah.
Celestine.”
We sat in that shared shame, mother and almost-son-in-law, connected by our mutual failure.
I could ask Celestine, I thought suddenly.
She might know.
She and Aysel were close once, before the…
I caught myself.
How absurd.
How could Celestine possibly know?
She’d barely left this house in years.
She’d been too sick to maintain any real connection with the outside world.
Asking her would be cruel, a reminder of all the things she’d lost.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it.
“I should have been a better mother.
I should have…”
“You did what you thought was right.” Damon’s voice was strained.
“We both did.
We were trying to protect her from…
from everything that was happening.”
“Were we?” The words came out bitterly.
“Or were we just trying to make ourselves feel better?”
He didn’t answer.
What could he say?
We both knew the truth.
“I’ll find her,” he said finally.
“I’ll track her down somehow.
I have resources, connections.
I’ll find her, Evelyn.
I swear to you.”
“Find her and do what?”
“Marry her.” The words came out determined.
“I’ve been a coward.
I’ve been tangled up in…
in all of this.” I could hear the gesture in his voice, “Celestine, the pack politics, the fear of what people would say.
But I love Aysel.
I’ve always loved her.
I was just too weak to fight for her.”
“Make it right.” I told him.
“We have to make it right.
Both of us.
After everything we’ve done…or failed to do..we owe her that much.”
“Of course.” Then the line went dead.
I stood in the hallway for a long moment, my phone still pressed to my ear, staring at nothing.
My throat tightened painfully as my years of failures dawned on me.
I had neglected my own daughter and poured all my love into the wrong places, trying to compensate for my own guilt by caring for a girl who…
I stopped the thought before it could finish.
No.
I wouldn’t go there.
Celestine needed me.
She was sick, broken, damaged by loss I couldn’t even imagine.
I was doing the right thing by caring for her.
I was.
Wasn’t I?
I pushed the question away and went back into the room.
***
Remus
The meeting had not been planned.
I had been preparing for a meeting with my elders when one of the guards announced the presence of the temple guardians.
He had said he had an urgent message for me.
I had come expecting news of political unrest.
Instead, I found myself sitting across from Elder Orlo.
The old man’s expression was grave.
“The prophecy crystal has shown activity.”
For a moment, I simply stared at him.
Activity?
After all these years?
The crystal had sat dormant for centuries, little more than a relic surrounded by stories and superstition.
Yet the elder looked genuinely unsettled.
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
“The light within it pulsed.”
His voice remained low, almost reverent.
“Once.
Then again.
Stronger than before.
It has not responded in my lifetime.
Nor in my father’s.
Nor in my grandfather’s.”
A chill crept down my spine.
“And what does that mean?”
The elder studied me for a long moment.
“The legends are clear.
The crystal reacts to the bloodline of the Werewolf King.
It awakens when a true descendant comes into their power.”
Silence settled between us.
“The King’s bloodline,” I said slowly.
The elder nodded.
“The bloodline that was scattered centuries ago.
The bloodline believed lost.
Somewhere on this continent, an heir has awakened.”
I leaned back in my chair, my thoughts racing.
The Werewolf King.
The rightful rulers of our kind.
The bloodline every major pack had searched for and failed to find.
And now the crystal was responding at this time.
The timing bothered me.
Because too many strange things had happened recently.
My mind drifted unwillingly toward my sons.
They had been tested.
They didn’t have the awakening crystal in them.
Then I thought of my daughter, Aysel.
Even thinking her name irritated me.
She had been a disappointment from the moment she was born.
Defiant where she should have been obedient.
Reckless where she should have been disciplined.
Every conversation with her turned into an argument.
Every expectation I placed on her became something she seemed determined to destroy.
Quite literally.
The charred remains of my estate were proof enough of that.
Years of family history reduced to ashes because she had lost control.
Because she always lost control.
That girl brought chaos wherever she went.
So It couldn’t be her.
The very thought felt absurd.
Aysel lacked refinement, lacked discipline, lacked the qualities someone of such importance should possess.
And yet…
The crystal had awakened.
Come to think of it, Aysel had no injuries on her when she had told us about the rogue attacks.
For someone with a weak wolf, she could neither fight nor run away as fast as possible so how was it that she was completely unharmed.
My jaw tightened.
For years, everyone, including myself, had dismissed her as a problem to be managed.
What if that had been exactly why no one saw it?
The possibility was ridiculous and disturbing.
But still the thought lingered stubbornly.
We had all been looking away for years now, could it be that the answer was close and perhaps in this household where no one dares to look?