Aiden Perspective:
The world returned to him in pieces.
Light first too sharp, like knives through glass.
Then the sound the hiss of chains shifting against stone, the low hum of voices he could never place.
And then her scent.
Faint. Distant.
The kind that clung to the edges of dreams.
He moved or thought he did but the body that obeyed wasn't his own.
The air tasted wrong, clean and hollow, like the inside of a temple long abandoned.
Somewhere deep inside, the wolf stirred, clawing at the edges of his mind.
Wake up.
She's calling you.
The whisper almost reached him. Almost.
But then another voice flooded in softer, coaxing, cruel.
"Sleep, my faithful one. You've done enough."
The chains tightened not around his wrists this time, but around thought itself.Every time he tried to remember her name, the sound turned to ash on his tongue.Every time he tried to see her face, light bled over it, white and erasing.
He wanted to scream.
Instead, he smiled or the thing the illusion wearing his smile did.
The curse holds, the other voice rasped. He believes in the illusion. He serves with love.
But beneath that perfect obedience, something still bled through.
A tremor. A name.
Not spoken, but felt — like lightning under skin.
Sylvia.
The moment it surfaced, agony tore through him.
The mark on his heart flared gold, burning the false calm away.
Chains rattled. The room shook.
The wolf within roared, breaking against his ribs like a storm.
For a heartbeat, he saw it all the facility, the white corridors, her chained and fighting.
He saw her blood, her eyes, her mark mirroring his own.
He remembered why he loved her not as command, not as bond, but as truth.
And then it was stripped away.
White light again.
A single hand brushing his temple.
"Forget."
The word slid into him like cancer slowly consuming its victim.
He gasped, reaching toward something he could no longer see.
The vision fractured. The wolf screamed inside him.
She's awake. Don't let them—
And then silence.
When he opened his eyes, he was lying on his bed , chains unbroken.
The mark at his heart dimmed, flickering once, as though uncertain.
Aiden exhaled slowly.
Calm again. Controlled. Forgetful.
Yet far beyond the walls of his cell, the moonlight trembled.
And for a brief, impossible instant, the chains hummed answering a pulse that wasn't his alone.
Somewhere, Sylvia breathed his name in her sleep.
And though he could no longer hear her, the wolf inside him did.
It waited.