Chapter 9: GONE MEMORIES

CHAPTER NINE | GONE MEMORIES

ASPEN

I staggered back in shock, feeling my throat tighten at the news broken to me. “No, it can't be real. It must be photoshopped or AI. It can't possibly be real. Maybe you're wrong.”

He pursed his lips, took another look at the pictures, and looked at me. “I'm very sure about it. This image is a hundred percent real. It was taken at a real time.”

I collapsed to the ground, feeling my world crumble as the last bit of hope I had just vanished.

I was a murderer. A killer. But how? How was it even possible when I wasn’t there at the time?

“This picture was taken yesterday night, right before we boarded the bus for the academy this morning. Where were you then?” he asked.

I was quick to answer because I knew where I was. “I was at the... I was near the... I was in the...” I stuttered, my brain glitching.

My eyes widened as the realization hit me. I couldn't remember where I was yesterday night. There was a gap in my mind, starting from the time Devenity left me to head to the Golden Dragon Pack until now. I couldn't remember anything at all. All I knew was that the next morning, I took my bag and headed to the Ever West Academy.

“I can't remember,” I whispered, my head straight ahead as if I was in a trance. “I can't remember what happened the night before.”

Ronan frowned, giving me a strange look. “And the night before yesterday? Do you remember anything about it?”

I thought about those nights again. Those dark, lonely nights in my old pack, only to come back empty-handed. I couldn’t recall a single event that happened. Both the nights I was asleep and the ones I was awake,all of them were gone completely from my head.

“I can’t remember any of them. They’re gone completely, as if they were never there to begin with,” I murmured slowly, horror striking me.

“Something is definitely going on. You can’t seem to remember any nights you’ve ever had, which means someone has been manipulating you to forget them. Someone has been in your head, Aspen, and they’ve been playing with your memories.”

His words made absolutely no sense, and yet, they made complete sense too. How could someone get into my head, and at the same time, why couldn’t I remember any nights I’ve had, even the recent ones?

“There must be an explanation for this. Something doesn’t seem right.”

He snapped his fingers, as if remembering something. “Try to recall any childhood memory you have, anything at all.”

Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t recall anything from my childhood. It was as if my memory had been programmed to start on the day I arrived at my old pack. Any other memory before that had been wiped off.

It was the Alpha of my old pack that gave me the name Aspen. I didn’t even remember what I was called before.

“My memory is blank. I can only remember the day I got to Alpha Darius’s pack. I can’t remember anything before that,” I said slowly, lifting my head.

“Not exactly surprising. Obviously, your old pack was tampering with your head. That’s the only explanation for why only a specific part of your memories is intact. If it wasn’t done by your pack, then it was definitely from the one you came from.”

I just sat there looking ahead, my thoughts spinning, and none of them good. If my pack was tampering with my memories, could it have been for a reason? Could it be that they were trying to stop me from realizing something, from becoming conscious of things that happened to me, things I did, and worse, things I was being used to do?

“Do you think there’s a possibility that they also controlled me during this period? Maybe used me to do evil, and then stopped me from being conscious of it?” I asked quietly.

He was silent for a long time, and I knew for a fact that the answer was affirmative. They were most likely using me to commit crimes. Heaven knows what else I was made to do… what else was done to me during those times.

But I had one question, one whose answer I already knew deep down. Maybe I just wanted confirmation, or maybe I was looking for someone to tell me there was a possibility it couldn’t be true, but deep down, I already knew.

“Could this also mean that I could have gone after her that night, yesterday night? I could have gone after her, attacked her, killed her, and then gone back to the forest to wait for the bus? Could I have really killed her?” My voice broke, my lips trembling.

I held my lips, anxiously waiting for his answer, for him to tell me it wasn’t possible.

I just needed hope. The slightest flicker of hope.

But as usual, reality came crashing down, and a cry rippled through me as he said the words I had hoped wouldn’t fall from his mouth.

“Yes, that’s a possibility,” he responded quietly.

I broke down, gripping my chest as pain like never before shot through me. I was a murderer. I killed Devenity. And I might also have had a hand in the death of my first mate, Adrian.

How was I supposed to live with myself knowing this truth? How was I supposed to walk around knowing that I had blood on my hands?

Ronan sat on my bed, holding me as I cried my heart out. He awkwardly patted my back, silently comforting me.

He held me until all the tears stopped and I could cry no more.

“But it doesn’t matter. None of those things were done voluntarily or consciously. You were controlled into doing them, which means the real murderer is the person who was controlling you.”

His words did nothing to ease my nerves. Because the truth was undeniable. I was the one who did the killing, and I would be the one charged for it.

I held him, whispering quietly, “I don’t think it matters. It doesn’t change the fact that I killed those people.”

“It does matter. Besides, we’re not sure you were actually the one who did those things. For all we know, you might have a twin sister. You can’t remember your childhood, which means there’s a possibility you might be a twin, and she was the one in the picture.”