Darkness moved like slow water around him, warm and strangely gentle. It wasn't the suffocating blackness of battlefields or night watches — it was softer, like a memory trying to reach him through time.
Kael blinked, and the world shifted.
He was standing in a forest clearing he knew but didn't recognize. The trees were younger, smaller, their branches swaying with the innocence of untouched years. The air smelled of pine sap, fresh earth, and summer berries warmed by sunlight.
He looked down.
His hands were small. Scabbed from climbing rocks and falling on roots. His wolf — barely awakened at that age — hovered inside him like a timid whisper instead of the iron-strong presence he knew now.
Child Kael swallowed.
The silence around him hummed with something familiar and comforting… like a heartbeat he had once rested against but forgotten.
A soft voice drifted in the wind.
A hum. Quiet. Sweet. The kind of melody children make when they believe no one is listening.
Kael walked toward it — drawn without knowing why, drawn without needing to.
Then he saw her.
A girl no older than six or seven sat on a fallen tree trunk. Her hair was tangled from running through bushes, and her little boots were muddy, but her eyes—
Even as a child, Elara's eyes held a softness most wolves never had: calm, curious, gentle. They glowed like moonlight caught in water.
She was humming to fireflies.
Actual fireflies.
They blinked around her as if answering her, as if the forest itself leaned in to listen.
Kael felt something in his chest twist.
He didn't have a name for it then. He didn't know that feeling could mark a soul long before a bond, long before adulthood.
But he remembered it now.
He stepped forward, trying not to crunch the leaves beneath his feet.
Elara turned, startled for only a second — then she smiled. A small, shy, earnest smile.
"Oh… you're the boy from the ridge pack," she said.
Kael's heart kicked in his chest.
"You're picking berries alone?" he asked, voice cracking with the awkwardness of childhood.
"I'm not alone," she whispered.
She gestured with a sweep of her tiny hand, and several fireflies drifted closer, circling her like protective stars.
"The forest likes me."
Kael didn't know why that made sense.
But it did.
She reached into her basket — overflowing with badly picked berries — and nudged it toward him.
"Want one?"
Kael hesitated. Ridge wolves weren't soft. They didn't accept berries from strange little girls who smiled like sunshine. But something about her felt… right. So he took one, their fingertips brushing.
A spark.
Faint. Quick. But real. Like a distant echo of something their future selves would bleed for.
Elara watched him shyly.
"You look sad," she said.
He stiffened. "I'm not."
"You are." No judgment. Just truth. "But it's okay to be sad."
Her voice was so sure, so steady, it startled him.
No one ever told Kael Thorn that sadness was allowed. Not his teachers. Not his training commanders. Not even his parents.
But this tiny girl with berry-stained fingers said it like it was the simplest fact in the world.
She reached out — fearless — and touched the back of his hand.
Warmth spread through him like sunlight under the skin. His wolf stirred, curious, leaning toward her.
"I see you," she whispered.
Kael's breath hitched.
"W-why?" he managed.
Elara tilted her head, studying him with soft eyes far too knowing for a child. "Because someone has to. And I think… you won't let yourself ask for it."
That truth landed like a stone in water.
She smiled again — small and glowing.
"One day, you'll be really strong. Everyone will look to you. But you should still have someone who sees you."
Kael swallowed. "And… that's you?"
Her cheeks pinkened as she nodded. "If you want."
The fireflies pulsed brighter around them, like they were blessing the moment.
The clearing began to blur. Elara faded into light. The warmth slipped away like sand through fingertips.
Don't go…
His wolf — grown now, tethered to a man rather than a boy — spoke through the dissolving dream.
You always knew her. Before the bond. Before the pain. Before everything.
The world shattered into brightness.
Kael woke with a sharp inhale.
His neck screamed with stiffness. His back ached from staying in the same position for hours. His hair fell across his forehead, and he blinked blearily at the dimly lit healer's room.
It was quiet.
Still.
Safe.
He looked down.
His hand was wrapped around hers.
Elara.
He had fallen asleep sitting beside her — his body slumped in a wooden chair he had refused to leave since yesterday. The morning light filtered through the curtains, bathing her sleeping form in a warm glow.
Her chest rose and fell steadily. Her color was better. Her wolf was recovering.
His thumb brushed her knuckles instinctively, absorbing the warmth of her skin. She felt real. Solid. Here.
Not the dream.
Not the memory.
But the same girl.
Kael exhaled — slowly, shakily.
The dream clung to the edges of his mind like fog. Not a fantasy. Not imagination.
A memory.
A buried one, lost beneath years of war, duty, and the bond he once believed fate had denied him.
He leaned closer, unable to stop himself.
Her hair fell across her cheek, soft and loose from sleep. A faint freckle marked the edge of her jaw — something he had never noticed, yet somehow felt familiar.
His thumb stilled on her hand.
"You've always been there," he whispered, voice cracking despite himself. "Even when I didn't know."
Elara shifted slightly. Her fingers tightened around his without waking.
Kael froze, breath suspended, heart stumbling into a faster rhythm.
Her hold was small, almost fragile — but the instinct behind it was anything but.
"I'm here," he whispered, almost a vow. "Rest. Just rest."
He brushed his knuckles gently against her hairline, smoothing it without waking her.
For the first time in years, he didn't feel the pull of responsibility dragging him to his feet. Didn't feel the weight of a pack expecting its Alpha to be everywhere at once.
Here — holding her hand — he felt grounded.
Anchored.
Whole.
He rested his forehead on the back of her hand, closing his eyes.
"If the Moon wanted to remind me," he murmured, voice thick with emotion he rarely allowed himself to feel, "she succeeded."
Elara breathed softly, steady and peaceful.
Kael stayed like that — unmoving, unwilling to let go — until the sun rose fully outside, painting the room in gold.
He didn't know yet what waking would bring.
He didn't know if Elara would remember the same things he did.
He didn't know how much time they had before danger reached them again.
But in this moment…
His childhood.
Her presence.
Their hands intertwined—
It all felt like fate finally circling back.