Chapter 79 Rewriting The Narrative
The next day, Dr. Voss doesn’t start the session the way she usually does.
No questions about sleep.
No charts.
No careful checking of my pulse like I’m something that might explode if handled wrong.
Instead, she slides a notebook across the small coffee table between us and places a pen on top of it.
“I want you to write,” she says.
I stare at the notebook like it’s a trap. “About what?”
“Your life,” she replies calmly. “But not the way you usually tell it.”
I cross my arms. “You’ll need to be more specific than that.”
She nods, like she expected the resistance. “Two versions.”
I blink. “Two?”
“Yes.” She leans back slightly in her chair, hands folded in her lap. “First, I want you to write the version of your life as the Council would tell it.”
My stomach tightens instantly.
I don’t move. I don’t breathe.“That doesn’t sound therapeutic,” I say flatly.
“It isn’t comfortable,” she agrees. “But it’s necessary.”
I glance down at the blank page. It feels obscene somehow, like I’m being asked to cooperate in my own dissection.
“And the second version?” I ask.
“The one you remember living.”
Silence stretches between us. My fingers curl slowly around the pen.
“Take your time,” she says. “I’ll be here.”
The pen feels too heavy. The page too white.
But eventually, I started writing.
I label it. Subject L-17. Hybrid anomaly.
The words come easier than I want them to.
Born of illegal experimentation. Engineered through forced cross-species mutation. Result of unethical research conducted under private grants.
My jaw tightens as I write.
Unstable. Dangerous. A catalyst for hybrid attacks. Survived where others failed due to abnormal physiology.
I pause, my hand shaking.
Weapon potential: extreme.
I swallow hard and keep going.
Emotional attachments compromised. Bond with Alpha King Darius is considered a liability. Requires monitoring, containment, and evaluation.
I stop.
My chest feels hollow, like something vital has been scooped out and replaced with cold air.
“That’s enough,” she says softly.
I dropped the pen as if it burned me. I don’t look up.
“That’s how they see me,” I say, my voice flat. “A mistake that didn’t die.”
She doesn’t correct me.
She slides a second page toward me.“Now,” she says gently, “write the life you remember.”
This one is harder. My hand hovers over the page. Because what I remember isn't real, and my mind refuses to recall what really happened.
When I finally write, the words are messier. Crooked. Uneven.
My name is Lyra.
I stop, startled by how much that alone matters.
I lost my father at a young age, and I grew up in foster homes. Some were kind. Some weren’t. I learned early how to disappear.
Images flash, packed bags, unfamiliar ceilings, the smell of strangers’ homes.
My father was kind. He made me breakfast. He told me I was special.
My chest tightens.
I loved him. I have to pause there, my vision blurring.
I wasn’t an experiment. I was a daughter. The pen digs into the paper.
I laughed. I made friends. I ran from things that scared me.
Fred’s face flickers through my mind. The way he looked at me before everything shattered.
I survived because I had to. I stop writing. My hands are shaking now.
Dr Voss waits until my breathing evens out before speaking.
“Read them,” she says.
I let out a humorless laugh. “Why? They don’t even sound like the same person.”
“That’s the point.”
Reluctantly, I read the first version aloud. My voice is distant, like I’m narrating someone else’s autopsy.
Then the second.
My throat tightens halfway through, but I finish. When I’m done, the room feels too quiet.
“What do you notice?” the shrink asks.
I stare at the pages.
“They don’t match,” I say.
“Why do you think that is?”
I exhale sharply. “Because the Council doesn’t care who I am. They care what I represent.”
“And what do you represent to them?”
I don’t hesitate this time. “Fear.”
She nods. “Exactly.”
I look up at her, something clicking into place.
“They’re not reacting to what I’ve done,” I continue slowly. “They’re reacting to what I could do.”
“Yes.”
“And they decided who I was before I ever got a chance to decide for myself.”
Her gaze is steady. “How often do you think that’s happened in your life?”
The answer comes too easily.
“Always.”
Foster systems. Councils. Scientists. Packs.
Even Darius, in his own way.
I flinch at the thought.
The shrink leans forward slightly. “Now I want to show you something.”
She reaches for the notebook and turns to a clean page.
“There’s a third version,” she says. “One you haven’t written yet.”
I frown. “I already wrote two.”
“Yes,” she says. “One shaped by fear. One shaped by memory.”
She taps the blank page.
“But the truth often exists between memory and evidence.”
I stare at the page.
“What does that even mean?”
“It means,” she says carefully, “that your father can have done terrible things and you can have been a loved child.”
My breath catches.
“It means you can have been experimented on and still have agency now.”
I shake my head. “That sounds like a contradiction.”
“It’s complexity,” she corrects. “Trauma doesn’t erase choice, it obscures it.”
She lets that sink in before continuing.
“You’ve been swinging between two extremes,” she says. “Victim… or monster. Experiment… or weapon.”
I feel exposed. Seen.
“What’s the third option?” I ask quietly.
She meets my eyes.
“Survivor,” she says. “With agency.”
The word lands differently than I expect.
Survivor. Not a broken little girl. Not a dangerous monster.
Alive.
“And what does that change?” I whisper.
“It changes who gets to define you,” she replies. “You do.”
I look back at the pages.
At the cold language of the Council.
At the fragile truth of my memories.
And then at the blank page waiting between them.
Slowly, I pick up the pen again.
I write one line.
I’m still living.
Not because someone made me.
Not because someone failed to kill me.
Because I endured.
For the first time since the trial, something inside me loosens.
I’m not just a victim of my past.
I’m not just the Council’s nightmare.
I am still here.
And that means I get to decide what comes next.