Chapter 23 Chapter 23
Chapter 23: Lost In Memories
Chapter 23
~ Ignas
It was later, when the sky had gone darker than I remembered and even the moon seemed like it wasn't going to be coming out tonight, hiding behind thick clouds, that I found myself alone in the garden again. The place where flowers and green grew despite the blood that was soaked on its grounds. Where peace didn’t belong but tried anyway.
No. Peace did belong here. We were all in unity and the other factors that caused issues were just minor things.
The bench was cold beneath me. The wind blew against my skin and I shivered, hugging my arms close to my chest.
I remembered him. It wasn’t Lykon who was in my mind right now.
No. It wasn't.
It was him. Cali. He was my first mate.
I said his name in my head and felt something sharp twist behind my ribs. It had been years, and yet just thinking about him still hit like a blade between the lungs.
He wasn’t powerful or strong. Not like me, though. Not even close. He wasn't a warrior or a strategist or someone people would consider dangerous. But gods, he was kind. Steady. He had a laugh that cracked the tension like thunder on a hot night, and hands that were always calloused from working the land. He helped me build this pack. Brick by brick. Choice by choice.
Not just the physical one… not the territory, the walls, or the homes. Not by gathering and helping my people, not that way. He built this pack brick by brick with me in the sense that he was always there for me. He was my emotional support that time he was alive.He helped me lay the foundation of this pack. the moral one. The emotional one. When I doubted, he steadied. When I broke, he caught the pieces and never once asked me to be less than I was.
We weren’t always in love.
At first, we were just two people trying not to fall apart.
At first, we were just two people, assigned by the Moon goddess to walk a path we didn’t understand. He thought I was cold. I thought he was soft. And we were both right. But we learned. We fought. We grew. And somewhere in the middle of strategy meetings and sleepless nights, something changed.
I remembered the exact moment.
I had bent over a table, planning a counterattack against the Howl Blood Pack. My eyes were dry from staring too long, my back started to hurt from tension, and I’d just threatened to burn down three entire villages if they made one more move toward my borders. The anger had choked me. I’d felt like a hurricane that was barely held together.
And then there he was. He appeared, standing in the doorway, holding two mugs of tea he couldn’t brew for shit, and smiling at me like I hadn’t just declared war. His smile was crooked. It was always a little off, like the gods stitched it on with mismatched thread, but it was mine. He was mine.
“We’re gonna be okay, Ignas,” he’d said softly. “Even if it doesn’t feel like it right now.”
And I believed him. Gods, I believed him.
I fell in love with the way he held my rage like it didn’t scare him. With the way he knew when to speak and when to let silence say everything. I fell in live with the way he never flinched when I was so mad.
But then, he died in a raid. Just like that, he was gone. They said it was a raid. A rogue ambush on one of our outposts. A fire. They said there was total chaos and no one survived.
But they never found his body or the remains of him.
And that news, more than anything, broke me.
I remember the way my voice broke when I screamed his name, again and again, until it didn’t sound like a word anymore. Just pain. Just emptiness clawing its way out of me.
They begged me to stop.
Said I was scaring the pups. Said I needed rest.
But how do you rest when your soul is missing?
I searched for him for weeks alone. I had refused to sleep. I had even refused to lead my pack for a while. I left the pack and I ran through the burned towns and rogue hideouts. My hands felt raw. My feet were blistered. My mind cracked. Every time I thought I saw him, every time I caught a whiff of his scent on the wind reminded me of him. I would follow the scent until I couldn't breathe. I woke sniff in until my lungs gave out and my knees hit the ground.
And it never was. It never led me to him.
I saw his face in every crowd. Heard his laugh in every gust of wind. And each time I realized it wasn’t him, something inside me splintered. I buried an empty coffin and stood at its head like a good leader. I said the words. Thanked the mourners. Gave strength to the pack that was grieving his loss too.
And I smiled through it. For them. For the pack. For the legacy we’d built together.
But a part of me died the day I accepted he wasn’t coming back.
And now, here I am.
Years later.
Still leading.
Still pretending.
Still aching.
And there’s Lykon. The one who makes my hands shake. The one who makes my heart remember how to beat faster, how to want again. He’s nothing like my mate. He was so much darker. He’s nothing like Cali. Not in nature. Not in soul. He’s darker. Wilder. Pain burnt just beneath his skin like it’s part of him. Like it’s what makes him whole. And yet, when he looks at me, I felt something I haven’t let myself feel since Cali.
And that’s the problem. He feels too much. And I feel it with him.
I feel seen.
I feel wanted.
And it terrifies me.
Lykon isn’t safe. He’s a storm I can’t predict. A man with blood on his hands and a fire in his eyes that reminds me of everything I once feared in myself. But he’s also the first person since Cali who’s made me feel alive again.
I close my eyes and leaned foward to bury my face in my palms. I see my mate’s smile. The crooked one he gave me when I woke up late and he’d already made tea. Gods, that man could never cook, but he tried so hard. He burned the stew and blamed the pot. He hated how I never slept but always held me when the nightmares came.
“Ignas,” he once said, brushing my hair back. “You carry the world like it’s your punishment.”
“Maybe it is.”
“Then let me carry you.”
But I never let him.
And now he’s gone.
I press my fist to my mouth, holding in a scream that no one should hear. My shoulders shake. I don’t cry— or maybe I do, but not loudly. Not openly. But I fall apart in silence. In the kind of silence that’s too full of memories to be empty.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into the dark. “Forgive me… for moving on. For feeling anything at all.”
I know Cali wouldn’t hate me for it. He’d want me to live. To lead. To love again.
But that’s what makes this harder.
He would’ve understood.
And that understanding is what kills me now.
Lykon is still healing, still finding himself. And maybe I’m doing the same. Maybe I’m reaching for something in him I never gave myself permission to want. Maybe it’s him, or maybe it’s just that I want to feel warm again. I wanted to feel wanted. I wanted to be held.
I wanted to love him. I already did, maybe. Or maybe I’m just trying to fill the grave in my chest.
But the guilt… gods, the guilt. It lives under my skin. It whispers his name when I touch Lykon. When I let myself smile. When I dare to think I can be more than a shadow of who I was.
I stood. The wind had picked up. My tears were gone, but my heart still bled.
And somewhere inside, I knew…
If I ever love again, it will not be because I forgot my mate.
It will be
because he would’ve wanted me to live.
And maybe, just maybe, Lykon might be the flame that would thaw my frosted heart away.