Chapter 71 Dead inside
I didn’t answer the knock.
I didn’t even turn my head toward the door.
The room was dim, the curtains still drawn the way I’d left them days ago,or maybe weeks. Time had stopped behaving properly. It stretched and collapsed whenever it felt like it, leaving me stranded somewhere between waking and sleeping. Between remembering and refusing to remember.
Another knock came, firmer this time.
“Go away,” I said hoarsely, my voice scraping against my throat like it hadn’t been used in years. “I’m not interested in seeing anyone.”
Silence.
Then the door opened anyway.
I felt it before I heard it,the shift in the air, the subtle pressure of someone else’s presence crossing the threshold. I clenched my jaw, anger flaring weakly beneath the heavier weight of exhaustion.
“I said….”
“I know what you said,” Mara replied gently.
Her voice stopped me.
I turned my head just enough to see her standing there, framed by the doorway, her expression unreadable in that careful way she always wore when she was trying not to scare someone. She closed the door behind her without asking permission and leaned her back against it for a moment, as if bracing herself.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “Luna.”
The title landed wrong. It felt like a lie pressed against my skin.
“I’m not your Luna,” I muttered, turning my face back into the pillow. “I’m not anything anymore.”
Mara didn’t argue. She crossed the room instead, slow and deliberate, like she was approaching a skittish animal that might bolt if startled. I heard the soft scrape of her shoes against the floor, the whisper of fabric as she moved.
“I’m tired of seeing you like this,” she said,not harshly, but firmly. “And no, before you snap at me, I don’t mean angry. I mean disappearing.”
There was a pause.
Then I heard the curtains.
The metal rings slid along the rod with a sharp, decisive sound, and suddenly the room flooded with light.
I hissed and squeezed my eyes shut, pain flaring instantly as the sunlight stabbed behind my eyelids. It felt too bright, too invasive,like the world was forcing itself on me when I wasn’t ready to exist in it yet.
“Mara,” I snapped weakly. “What are you doing?”
“Letting the sun in,” she replied simply.
I groaned and rolled onto my back, squinting hard, my vision swimming as my eyes tried to adjust. The light painted everything in gold,too warm, too alive for how dead I felt inside.
“Congratulations,” I said bitterly. “You’ve blinded me. Hope that was on your to-do list.”
She ignored the sarcasm and moved to the window, tugging the curtains wider until there was nowhere left for the darkness to hide.
Then she turned and looked at me properly.
I must have looked awful. I hadn’t bothered to check a mirror in days, but I could feel it,the hollowness under my skin, the way my body felt heavier and thinner at the same time. Like I was unraveling slowly, thread by thread.
Mara sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Well?” she asked softly. “Talk to me.”
I laughed. It came out sharp and broken, nothing like humor.
“Talk to you about what?” I said. “The part where I just found out my father wasn’t a father at all, but some evil scientist who turned his own child into a monster? Or the part where I apparently have a missing mother and a twin sister who vanished like ghosts while I lived my entire life believing I was alone?”
My throat tightened, but I pushed through it.
“Or maybe the part where I’m basically a walking Frankenstein creation who deserves exactly what she gets?”
Mara didn’t flinch.
I swallowed hard, anger and grief tangling together in my chest.
“So yes,” I continued, my voice rising. “I think I deserve to be left alone. I think I’ve earned the right to lie here and wallow in my pain without people dragging sunshine and hope into my room like it’s supposed to fix this.”
Mara shifted closer.
Then, without asking, she reached out and began stroking my hair.
The simple, maternal gesture broke something in me.
Her fingers moved slowly, soothingly, like she’d done this a thousand times before,for frightened pups, for grieving wolves, for people who didn’t know how to survive what had happened to them.
“You don’t deserve this pain,” she said quietly. “And you’re not a monster.”
I turned my head away, blinking rapidly.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” she said firmly.
She leaned closer, her voice lowering. “Darius knew the truth would break you.”
That made me stiffen.
“He had no right,” I snapped.
“I know,” Mara said. “But listen to me anyway.”
She paused, choosing her words carefully.
“He didn’t know why your mind hid what it did,” she continued. “Only that it had. Minds don’t erase memories for no reason, Lyra. They bury things because surviving them once was already too much.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, images pressing against the back of my skull,white lights, restraints, screams I couldn’t place.
“He couldn’t imagine what you went through,” Mara said softly, “for your own mind to decide it was safer not to remember.”
My chest hitched.
“That doesn’t make it okay,” I whispered.
“No,” she agreed. “But it makes it human.”
I opened my eyes slowly and looked at her.
“Are you a shrink now?” I asked dully.
Mara snorted. “Absolutely not. If I were, half this pack would be locked in padded rooms.”
Before I could respond, the door opened again.
I stiffened instantly, panic flickering through me.
Another woman stepped inside,tall, composed, with dark hair pulled back neatly and eyes that missed nothing. She wore neutral clothes, unassuming, but there was something about the way she held herself that screamed control and calm.
“That’s my job,” the woman said mildly.
I frowned. “Excuse me?”
She offered a small smile. “I’m Dr. Elara Voss. And yes,” she added, anticipating my reaction, “I’m what you’d call a shrink.”