Chapter 129

Elroy POV

I had been walking to Olivia’s Lily Room to have a serious talk with her when I first heard the wafting sound.

I had been thinking hard about our new goals. We needed to support the WPI, of course, but that wasn’t enough. I saw that the Pack needed a restructuring of opinion and of attitude.

But how was I to achieve that? How did one wolf, even an Alpha, change a social attitude? Was it possible even to the Goddess?

It was odd to think of a sound like a smell, but the waving aroma of that voice appeared in my mind just like a comic with that little curving line from a pie to a little boy. I didn’t raise up on tip-toe, but I did feel like I was floating down the hallway as the voice continued.

As I walked, I was drawn back into a memory, one I had so long and so deeply denied that I had almost managed to bury it from everyone, including myself.

I had been taken. I didn’t remember how. I had been out howling at the moon, and then I wasn’t.

I did remember the reek of the cell I was kept in. I remembered the dirty straw left there as though I were an animal. I remembered finally using the straw to cover up my waste.

I remembered the echoing halls. There were so many others around us. Their screams and howls and pleading filling every crevice of the walls, my ears, and my spirit.

I had only been a subject for the wolves in white coats. I remembered how I screamed at them. I remembered how I had condemned them all to death. I remember the hatred I felt and the misery they made me feel.

They subjected me to electric shocks. They drew my blood. They starved me and kept me from sleeping for days on end with sirens and drugs. The days in captivity blurred into each other not only in my memory but also in my mind now as I stood in that hallway trying to remember what I so very much wanted to forget.

Looking back now, in shame, I recalled days of gray walls, the reek of feces, terror, and rotten flesh, along with the sounds of wailing wolves and pleading pups. I had been horrified that even the younglings were subjects of those Goddess-cursed experiments.

And, even worse somehow, I remembered there were humans in those cells. They had died quickly, so I remembered one of the white-coated wolves saying made them bad subjects.

I would have done anything to save them. It was like listening to the slaughter of children.

No, it had been worse.

I had never before concerned myself with humans. I had been a child myself at the time, and that strange race of other territories had featured only in books and movies, and never favorably. They had seemed to me like odd little half-wolves. I hadn’t really thought of them as sentient, consenting creatures.

But as I listened to them trying to reason, and bargain, and beg, I heard voices that might as well have been those of wolves. I heard adults talking and reasoning. I heard them talking about the pointlessness of it all. I heard them call on their own gods for guidance.

And then I heard them dying.

I had assumed that I and the dozens of alphas around me in the cells were going to die. Near the end, I couldn’t even find the energy to care about myself, let alone the others. They had used everything alpha in me against me. I still had no idea how those betas had known what to do to make me feel that way.

I knew now Olivia had been drawn into Ravencrest’s disgusting experiments. She had saved two of the specimens, which I knew because she had told me. I had wanted to tell her at the time that I had been one of the wolves her work had eventually rescued, but I was too ashamed.

To have been trapped like that, to have been reduced to nothing but a specimen in an experiment: it was too humiliating to admit to myself, let alone to her. What sort of Alpha did it make me that I had been trapped like a guinea pig?

I remembered Olivia on our mating day: her silver wolf, her silver light, her incredible power, and her effortless connection to the Goddess. I wasn’t worthy of her.

And now, as I stood in the hall listening to the rise and fall of that enchanting sound, a phrase of music like something from the past played over and over, I remembered sitting in that horrific cell, waiting to die. I remembered praying to the Goddess to take me into her embrace when I passed on.

I remembered making peace with those who had wronged me. I remembered realizing I was not just an alpha but an Alpha. I remembered making a vow that when I escaped I would lead my Pack to power, to peace, and to glory.

I tried now, but I couldn’t remember just how I had come to be in that cell. I remembered being a proud alpha in a glorious household. I remembered doing my studies and pleasing my tutors. But then I was just there in a cell. I had thought I would be there forever.

I also couldn’t remember who was in the cell with me, though I did remember others crying and begging.

And then, in a flash, I finally remembered how I left that Goddess-forsaken place.

A silver wolf had appeared, frightened like we were but also shining and glorious. I remembered her standing there in her fur, and then there was a flash of silver, and suddenly I was strong. I did not remember just where I was, but I remembered the power of it all and how I raced out into the forest and away from the terror of the cells.

I could smell the grass beneath me as I ran even now. I could remember the shine of the Waxing Gibbous moon on my back. I could feel the pull of my weakened lungs. I could taste freedom on my tongue like sugar.

And then there was a faint niggle in the back of my mind: guilt. I had left something behind. And then, no, I realized: I had left someone behind.

Iwas taken out of my memories by a voice: “I hope you will forgive me.”

Who was that, I wondered? Who was talking?

“But I can see you carry your injuries still,” the voice continued.

Again, following the curl in the air of that sound, I stepped forward and could see inside the eastern parlor. It was a quietly decorated room, I thought, which was an odd thought, though that feeling quickly passed.

Ines and Emma were sitting at a table. Cold coffee things littered the surface between them. The sunlight was streaming through the windows like a fanfare.

But the sunlight was golden.

As I stood there, a silver light filled the room. I felt pain and relief at the same time.

It was the same light that had healed me in that cell, I realized.

Emma wasn’t just my fated mate. She had been my savior.