Michelle didn't sleep. How could she?
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Lord Ash's amused smile—that expression of a predator who already knew exactly how he'd break her mind, trap her in her own logic, make her confess dark truths she'd spent years burying to be an independent girl.
"Great," Michelle whispered to the darkness of her borrowed room. "Because my mind is such a stable, well-organized place. This will go wonderfully." The sarcasm didn't help. It barely ever did.
It was the kind of bitter humor she'd developed as armor for amusement the same tone she'd used in her tiny office on the fourteenth floor when pulling another all-nighter, the same deflection she'd employed when coworkers asked if she was okay after staring blankly at her screen for twenty minutes. I'm fine. Just tired.Always an excuse. Never the truth.
Her thoughts kept spiralling back like a gravitational pull she couldn't escape. Back to Earth. Back to before.
To the therapist's office she'd stopped attending after Dr. Martin had looked at her with too much understanding and said, "Michelle, you're not living. You're just... existing between tragedies. Waiting for the next one."
To the apartment in Capitol Hill. Seventh floor, corner unit, excellent natural light that Michelle never got to enjoy because she was at the office sixty hours a week minimum—sometimes seventy, sometimes eighty when she could convince herself that exhaustion was better than thinking and feeling.
The apartment had been expensive. Too expensive for someone her age, really, but the company paid well and Michelle had no one to spend money on, nothing to save for, no future she could envision clearly enough to plan for except for her research thesis and work. So she'd signed the lease and moved in with the kind of efficiency that came from practice—from moving through life without leaving fingerprints, without putting down roots that could be torn up with unpacked boxes. So many boxes.
She'd been living there for two months when she vanished into this world, and she'd never fully unpacked. Kitchen essentials, yes—coffee maker, few cutlery for one. Work clothes, obviously, all hung in careful order: blazers, button-downs, slacks in neutral colors that helped her disappear into corporate backgrounds.
But the boxes labeled "Books" and "Photos" and "Alexis's Things" remained sealed, stacked in the closet like emotional time bombs she couldn't defuse in this lifetime.
What was the point of unpacking? What was the point of making it home when home was just another temporary place she would eventually lose? When home was just a word for something that got taken away, over and over, until you learned to stop reaching for it?
Her apartment had been clean and empty in all the ways that mattered. No photos on the walls—too painful to see their faces every day, to wake up and be reminded of everyone who wasn't there anymore. No decorations—too permanent, too much like commitment to a life she didn't deserve to build. No plants—she'd just kill them anyway through neglect, add more death to her tally.
Nothing that suggested a human being actually lived there instead of just sleeping between work shifts, existing in the mechanical routine of survive-work-sleep-repeat.
Her coworkers thought she was dedicated. Driven. "The youngest senior engineer in the company," they'd say with a mixture of admiration and unease. "Brilliant, but cold. Impossible to get close to." Thus she could hardly make good friends.
They'd invite her to happy hours, and she'd followed and then disappear with the bare minimum of engagement required to not seem actively hostile.
They didn't know why. Didn't know that every laugh in the break room sounded like Alexis. That every time someone brought their kid to the office, Michelle saw Sophie's gap-toothed smile. That the guy in accounting who painted on weekends made her physically nauseous because it reminded her of how crazy of an artist Alex used to be, confidently reserved but careful and alive in ways Alex would never be again.
They didn't know about the time even before that.
Her mother—sure, her sweet and charismatic star mother—who'd had a voice like honey and heartbreak, who'd sung at Carnegie Hall and thrown it all away for a stagehand man with kind eyes and empty pockets. About the apartment that always smelled like rainforest and poverty, where Michelle learned that love could be beautiful and suffocating in equal measure. Because her father, whose adoration had curdled into obsession, whose love had burned them all alive until he took her mother away from her.
And then Aunt Carolina—her mother's best friend, the only person who'd shown up at the hospital after the fire, who'd fought the social workers and the system and her own grief to take in a traumatised ten-year-old who woke up screaming every night. Even though Michelle was an absolutely obedient and beautiful child gathering attention since little she could not open up to anyone nor could she sing after losing her mother as if that part of her artistic tendencies also got buried along her.
Though Aunt Carolina's laugh, bright and determined helped but followed that year... even that got tainted when her husband had left her pregnant and alone, when the cancer diagnosis came, when life kept taking and taking and she kept giving anyway.
The most affected were the twins—Carolina's children, Alex and Alexis same as Michelle's age was also suddenly saddled with a damaged girl who couldn't speak for the first year, who flinched at raised voices and open flames and the casual affection they offered so freely.
Her step-sister Alexis, who'd been all wild curls and wilder spirit, who'd crawled into Michelle's bed during nightmares and held her until the shaking stopped, who'd taught her that sometimes they could laugh even when everything hurt.
While step-brother Alex, quiet and artistic, who'd understood grief in his bones because his father's abandonment had carved its own wounds. Who'd sit with Michelle in comfortable silence, painting while she stared at blank notebook pages, both of them trying to heal in parallel without words but also scared for Carolina.
About little Sophie, born a year after Michelle arrived—premature, tiny, perfect. The unexpected joy in a house full of loss. The baby who'd called Michelle "Mimi" before she could say her own name, who'd trusted Michelle with the absolute faith only children possess.
Those few Sunday dinners that felt like family even though Michelle knew—knew—it didn't deserve them. Because when Carolina recovered, they lost little Sophie. Somehow that convinced Michelle to doubt if she was a curse wearing a child's face, that everyone who got close to her paid for it eventually.
And she'd been right.
Aunt Carolina, wasting away in a hospital bed, refusing treatment for the cancer that came back, refusing to fight, refusing everything except the chance to finally stop. It was then Alexis started looking at Michelle with eyes that held nothing but exhausted resentment: "You should have burned with your mother."///
The sudden but constant devastation ripped them apart. Tragedy after tragedy her family member gone. Especially hard on the twins, abandoned by father, mother suffering cancer and then losing their little sister within two years. That kind of loss changes people, doesn't it?
Alexis pulled away from Michelle, she stopped sharing her secrets. Somehow listening to rumors and started blaming Michelle, even if she never said it out loud. Alexis looked at her and saw the orphan they'd taken in, the stranger who'd been there when Sophie died.
Alexis never said out loud—she didn't have to. Michelle felt it. The distance growing. The sister-by-adoption becoming a stranger. But Alex... Alex did something different, didn't he?
Michelle's breath caught as she recalled those dark days. Alex got closer, and two started spending more time together. Studying, doing house chores, balancing extra classes and those long late night talking. Supporting each other and Aleixs through grief while sharing things they couldn't tell anyone else. While without realising when their friendship become something else? Something forbidden...
Maybe it was always there. Maybe it happened gradually. She don't know. Not even sure if Alex ever feel that same way? As she never... ever dared acted on it. She couldn't. Not just because she was his adopted sister but because Catherine had taken her in, given you a home, and falling in love with her son felt like a betrayal of that trust. So she just... didn't. She stayed friends and pretended it wasn't there...that have been a different kind of torture.
"It was what was right," Michelle thought firecely whenever she recalled those struggling phase she felt ashamed for being weak and selfish. " Aunt Catherine gave me everything. I wasn't going to destroy that home—" but she did eventually.
And now she had nothing and no one left there, Michelle told herself, pressing her palm harder against her chest where her heart was beating too fast, too hard. No family waiting. No one who'd notice if you vanished.
Michelle's chest tightened—that familiar vise of grief and guilt and something darker, something that felt like drowning on dry land. She pressed her palm against her sternum, trying to ground herself in the present, trying to remember that she was here, now, in this impossible world with its dragons and werewolves and beast lords.
But grounding herself in the present meant acknowledging what was coming. The trial. The Den of Unveiled Truths. Lord Ash with his ancient eyes, ready to drag these memories into the light and make her confess what she'd always known: That she was poison. That love was a death sentence for anyone stupid enough to offer it.
That she'd killed them all, not with her hands, but with her presence, with the curse that clung to her like a second skin.
At early age Michelle had realised that she couldn't afford to dwell on them for longer and in great details. On the ghosts. On the memories. Because thinking about them too much left her with an unbearable, unbreakable streak of heartache that made her lungs stop working properly, that made her want to curl into a ball and never move again, that made her understand why Aunt Carolina had chosen to just... stop.
But she also couldn't afford to not think about them. Because they were the answer to every question Lord Ash would ask. They were the truth behind every wall she'd.
Michelle forced herself to breathe. In for four counts. Hold for seven. Out for eight. The technique Dr. Martinez had taught her before Michelle stopped going to sessions because therapy required honesty and honesty required pain Michelle wasn't willing to inflict on herself voluntarily.
But now you don't have a choice, she thought bitterly. Every moment you should have been better, faster, smarter, less cursed.
Her hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against her thighs, willing them to still, but they wouldn't obey. Nothing would obey. Her body knew what her will was trying to deny: She was terrified.
Not of dying—she'd made peace with that possibility... but of breaking. Of having every carefully constructed wall torn down. Of being forced to feel everything she'd been running from for years.
That her survival had been the cruelest joke of all.
The walls of her borrowed room were closing in.
Michelle could feel them pressing against her ribs, squeezing the air from her lungs despite the breathing technique, despite her best efforts to stay calm. The darkness was too thick, too heavy with memories that wouldn't stop replaying.
I can't breathe. I can't—
She stumbled out of bed, her legs unsteady, and fumbled for the door. Her hands were still shaking so badly it took three tries to turn the handle. When it finally opened, she practically fell into the hallway, gasping like she'd been drowning.
The estate was silent. Dark except for the soft glow of enchanted lanterns that lined the corridors, casting everything in shades of blue and silver that reminded her too much of moonlight on water, of the ocean that had taken Alex.
She needed air. Real air. Not the suffocating atmosphere of her room with its borrowed furniture and temporary safety.
Michelle moved through the hallways on instinct, her bare feet silent against the polished wood floors. She didn't know where she was going—just away. Away from the bed where she couldn't sleep. Away from the thoughts that circled like vultures. Away from herself, if that were possible.
She found a door that led to a garden—small, private, surrounded by high walls covered in night-blooming jasmine. The scent hit her like a physical blow.
Jasmine. Vanilla. Stage makeup.
Mom.
Michelle's knees buckled.
She caught herself against the doorframe, but barely. Her vision was swimming, dark spots blooming at the edges. Time had become elastic, meaningless. The garden spun. The ground tilted.
Oh, Michelle thought distantly. I'm going to pass out. More like resignation. Of course this would happen. Of course her body would betray her now, when she needed to be strong? She'd lost count. Her legs gave out completely.
She was falling, the ground rushing up to meet her, and some detached part of her mind calculated the angle of impact, wondered if she'd crack her skull if this was how it ended—not in a trial, but alone in a garden that smelled like her dead mother.
But the impact never came.
Instead, there were arms—strong, warm, catching her mid-fall with a speed that shouldn't have been possible. The scent of pine forest and something wild, flooded her senses. A low growl rumbled through the chest her cheek was pressed against, but it wasn't threatening. It was... worried?
"Foolish human," a voice muttered, rough with sleep and irritation and something almost tender. "What are you doing out here?"
Michelle tried to answer, but her tongue was too heavy. Her mind was thick with exhaustion and emotion and the overwhelming relief of not being alone, even if she should be, even if getting close to anyone was dangerous.
She was only partially aware of being lifted, cradled against a chest that radiated heat like a furnace. Of movement—smooth, quick, purposeful. Of doors opening and closing. Of being lowered onto her bed. She was back in her bed.
"Should have been watching closer," the voice continued, still rough but quieter now. Gentler. "Knew you weren't sleeping. Could smell the fear from three rooms away. Anxiety. Grief." A pause. "You're going to make yourself sick before you even get to the trial."
Michelle's eyes fluttered open—when had they closed?—and through the blur of exhaustion, she saw him.
Alpha Riven.
He was crouched beside her, his amber eyes glowing faintly in the darkness, concern etched into features that were usually so carefully controlled. His hair was loose, falling past his shoulders, and he was dressed in simple sleep clothes that somehow made him look more dangerous, not less. More real.
"Riven," Michelle whispered, the name barely audible.
"Shh." He reached out, hesitated, then pressed his palm against her forehead like checking for fever. His hand was calloused, warm, grounding.
"Thought so." Riven's jaw tightened. "...nightmare are no good to anyone. " His thumb brushed across her forehead—a gesture so unexpectedly gentle that Michelle's throat tightened. "Sleep, Michelle. I'll stay until you do."
She wanted to argue. Wanted to explain that sleeping meant dreaming, and dreaming meant drowning in memories she couldn't escape. That every time she closed her eyes, she saw their faces. That rest wasn't rest when it was haunted.
But exhaustion was a tide she couldn't fight anymore.
Her eyes closed despite her best efforts. Riven's presence was a warm anchor in the darkness—his breathing steady, his scent familiar in a way that shouldn't be possible given how recently they'd met. Pack, her tired mind whispered. He smells like pack. Like safety.
Dangerous thoughts for someone cursed.
"Don't," she managed to whisper, though she wasn't sure if the words made it past her lips. "Don't stay too close. Everyone who does—"
"Dies?" Riven's voice was dry, almost amused. "I'm harder to kill than your average human. And I'm not going anywhere."
Michelle wanted to warn him. Wanted to explain about Sophie and Alex and Alexis and everyone else who'd thought they were safe around her, who'd loved her and paid for it.
But unconsciousness was pulling her under like a riptide, and she was too tired to fight.
The last thing she felt was Riven's hand in her hair—a brief, careful touch—and his voice, so quiet she might have imagined it.
Then darkness claimed her, and Riven didn't dare loose his grip on her. His hand remained tangled gently in her hair, his other arm wrapped protectively around her shoulders as if his presence alone could ward off the nightmares that had been plaguing her. He could feel the exact moment her body finally surrendered—muscles unclenching one by one, breathing evening out into the deep rhythm of true rest.
Only then did Michelle sleep without dreaming.
Riven stayed frozen in place in a position that would make his muscles scream by morning, but he didn't move. Couldn't move. His wolf prowled restlessly under his skin, agitated by the scent of her distress, by the way she'd collapsed in the garden like someone who'd been running on fumes for far too long.
Foolish human, he thought again, but there was no heat in it. Only a bone-deep worry that had no place existing for someone he'd known such a short time.