Chapter 37 Also about the rogue wolves
Celine’s POV
“Celine… Celine!”
Lila’s voice pierced through the haze like a desperate prayer. My eyes snapped open, and the world lurched back into focus — shadows, sweat, her trembling hands holding my face as though she’d pulled me out of the grave.
Had she?
“Those eyes…” I whispered, breath trembling, words half-swallowed by the air between us. The image still burned in my mind — eyes that didn’t belong to this world.
I’d been sweating before looking at the mirror, but now, it felt like I was bathed in it—my gown soaked, as though the water from the pool had seeped into my consciousness.
I couldn’t tell if anything was real at this moment. One minute, I was staring into a large mirror, and the next, I found myself in a dark hall with werewolves patrolling, and then suddenly, back in this underground room.
“Whose eyes… whose eyes are you talking about?” Lila held my head to her chest, then turned her gaze to Seth. “What did you do to her?”
“It’s a memory mirror. It’s taking her on a trip through key events—important ones,” Seth explained.
“But look at her!” Her palms kept wiping the sweat off my face.
“I don’t know whose eyes those were, but… they looked too familiar for me to ignore.”
“Eyes of a werewolf?”
“Yes… he was looking at me as though he had deep intentions toward me.”
“If anyone was looking at you, there must definitely be an intention.”
“This isn’t as simple as ordinary intentions.”
I didn’t know how to explain it, maybe get into her head so she could experience it herself?
Maybe I didn’t even understand what I meant by “deep intention.”
But that look in his eyes was impossible to forget. I couldn’t call it dangerous. I couldn’t call it soft or compassionate. All I knew was that it was deep and consuming. Consuming didn’t always have to mean danger, right?
My head hurt.
“He was one of the rogue wolves,” I said.
“The same rogue wolves you told me about?” Lila asked.
“Yes, yes.”
She nodded, glancing at the mirror. Her eyes flicked to Seth, but she didn’t speak right away. The silence stretched, and my breathing turned frantic.
“Why the rogue wolves?” she finally asked Seth.
“Because it’s part of the past.”
“Why not some other part of the past?”
He touched the mirror’s frame. “I said key events, remember?”
But it was the part I hated the most—the past I’d refused to tell Lila. Why did it have to be one of the so-called “key events”?
The truth about that past was this: it wasn’t a mistake I’d made or a shame I wanted to hide. It was harm inflicted on me—on my mind—so that even mentioning it felt like reopening a wound for someone else’s curiosity.
I didn’t want to.
Even hearing it would turn my listener’s curiosity into horror.
“Celine, you have to understand that this is a process,” Seth said.
“You didn’t tell me this was what it was about… I didn’t sign up to dig into that.”
His eyes lingered on Lila. Did he care, or was he just doing his job? If it was a job, was he paid?
Why would he want me to go through a process he claimed would help my healing if there wasn’t something in it for him? Why did he care?
Lila kept brushing her fingers through my hair, touching my neck, her breath soft against my lips.
“It’s important you continue,” he said.
“What?” Lila glared at him.
“You still trust me, don’t you?”
“But this… this is hurting her!” Lila held me tighter, shielding me from Seth’s gaze.
That gesture—so gentle and familiar—brought flashes of something buried deep. My head resting on her shoulder reminded me of my mother, though the memory itself refused to surface.
Pity.
I breathed in her scent. Caramel. I’d never truly noticed it until now.
It was comforting. Not harsh, just enough to make me want to drift into sleep.
But Seth’s voice wouldn’t let me.
“She has to do this,” he said.
Not again.
Not when I had my arms around Lila, refusing to look at the mirror as though it might pull me in again.
And I was starting to notice that Lila had stopped protesting. Was she close to giving in?
Ugh.
“Celine, you have to,” he said, this time directly to me.
“I don’t want to go back there… It freezes me, freezes everything about me, and brings the pain alive again.”
This pain wasn’t physical.
“I understand.”
“You do?”
“I always do.”
And you still intend to force me into it?
“It’s good you do.”
I stopped looking at him, clutching Lila tighter, determined not to let him pull me away from her.
“It’s about harnessing the power of the past.”
I didn’t answer, though his words began to echo through me.
“I want the past to stay behind me.”
His lips parted slightly. “Yeah, you want that—but it keeps coming back, over and over again, leaving you confused, trying to piece it all together. Isn’t that too hard to keep doing?”
I glanced at the mirror but didn’t hold my gaze. My head throbbed. Looking at it again might make me explode.
“It’s a choice, you know.”
Then why did it feel like he was forcing me?
He touched Lila’s left shoulder. “Lila?”
She cleared her throat, her hand still threading through my hair.
And it felt like hours before she spoke.
“Celine,” she murmured.
“I…”
I wasn’t certain what choice to make.
“Why not…”
She was unsure too. Not just me.
“One more time,” she said softly.
“One more time.”
She let go of me and stepped toward the mirror. I didn’t raise my gaze, just watched her tense hands and the way her knuckles cracked before she entwined her fingers.
“Just another try,” she whispered.
I locked eyes with the mirror.
And I was back in that same pool.
I could feel myself. My mind told me it was a walk down memory lane. I was still conscious of that.
“She’s inside the bloody pool!” a man’s voice thundered, echoing through the dark hall.
The air changed — heavy, charged with fear and the raw scent of wolves. I didn’t need glowing eyes to know what they were. The sound of their boots and low growls was enough.
Light spilled faintly from an open doorway as the man barked again, “I said, the bloody pool!”
More figures emerged — four, maybe five — their silhouettes breaking through the gloom.
Bloody pool?
I looked down. The water was clear… not red, not even pink. Yet as I stared, a ripple of crimson threaded through it, blooming slowly like veins coming alive. My stomach clenched.
They came closer, and the lamp’s flame flared to life. Needles gleamed in their hands — long, sharp, silver.
My breath caught. My body refused to move.
I wasn’t just remembering. I was reliving it.