Seth sinks slowly into the nearest chair, looking like he might be sick. “My parents. My sister. They’ve been—” His voice cracks. “Twenty-five years.”
Nobody speaks. What can you say to that?
“You’ve only been gone a year for us,” I say softly. “But twenty-five for them.”
“They’re gone,” he whispers. “Aren’t they? My parents, they’d be—” He stops, jaw clenching. “They thought I was dead this whole time.”
Auren doesn’t confirm it, but he doesn’t deny it either. The silence is answer enough.
I watch Seth struggle with it—the weight of decades lost, of a family that mourned him, of an entire life that moved on without him. He looks so young, but he’s lived through more time than any of us realized.
The room feels hollow, grief hanging in the air until Auren’s voice cuts through it.
After a long moment, Auren clears his throat gently, and we all turn to look at him. There’s something in his expression—understanding.
“There’s something else,” he says quietly. “Something that might help you understand why I knew you’d come here. Why I was waiting.”
He stands, setting his cup down carefully.
He hesitates—as if deciding whether to ruin what’s left of the night.
“First, you should know how I knew you’d come.” He looks at me. “How I knew the real Bree would find her way to this house.”
Something in his tone makes my chest tighten.
“Because this is where your mother came,” he says quietly, “when she escaped the Void.”
The world stops.
“What?”
The air shifts—colder, charged—as if the room itself knows what’s about to happen.
Auren steps back, and a door I didn’t notice before—set into the far wall—opens.
A woman steps through.
Dark hair. Green eyes. A face I’ve seen in every mirror, every photograph, every dream where I tried to remember what love felt like before it walked away.
My mother stands in the doorway, alive and real and looking at me like I’m the ghost.
My lungs forget how to work. No one moves.
“Hello, Bree.”
Chapter 20
Bree
The silence stretches so long I forget how to breathe.
She’s real. She’s here. She left me.
All three truths exist at once, and I don’t know which one to hold onto.
Claire’s gaze sweeps the room—taking in Auren, the guys arranged protectively around me, Gray’s massive white wolf form near the wall, the way I’m sitting on Theo’s lap and still look like I might bolt at any second. Her expression shifts through a dozen micro-emotions too fast to name before settling on something that looks like understanding.
“Was it the fox or the snake that guided you here?” Her voice is softer than I remember, careful.
