The first thing to pierce the fog was the sterile sting of antiseptic, so sharp it was a taste in the air, scraping against the back of her throat. The second was the silence thick, insulated, and expensive, the kind of silence found only in high end private medical suites, where the outside world is deliberately muffled.
Althea tried to shift. Panic flared. Why couldn't she move her left leg? A dull, insistent ache, deep and throbbing, flared to life in that limb, a brutal, physical anchor to a reality she did not recognize. Her entire body felt heavy, alien, and restrained by soft, unfamiliar sheets that smelled faintly of industrial laundry detergent.
Her eyes flew open, unfocused, then darted wildly around. The ceiling was too high, too white, dominating her field of vision. The medical equipment monitors beeping softly in the corner, IV bags dripping with relentless precision, blinking lights casting clinical shadows was terrifying. What is this place? A cage? A laboratory? Her thoughts were fragmented, primal, lacking the coherence of true language.
She searched the vault of her mind for a reason, a name, a memory anything. She found nothing. It was a vast, echoing blankness. She didn't have the words for I don't know yet, only the profound, animalistic terror of the void. I'm nobody. I'm lost. There is nothing before now.
A sound at the door a soft, mechanical hiss made her flinch violently, pulling against the IV lines in her arm.
The door whispered open. A woman in a neat blue uniform a nurse, a label her mind vaguely supplied, yet still frighteningly foreign entered with a precisely arranged tray of food. The nurse, whose name tag read 'S. Reynolds,' wore a standard clinical scent inhibitor; her presence was a clean, neutral slate.
Nurse Reynolds stopped short. Her eyes widened, losing their professional calm for a split second. Althea was awake earlier than expected, and her distress was evident.
"Good afternoon, dear," Nurse Reynolds said, her voice soft but immediate, designed to be calming. "You're awake."
Althea's eyes were wide, fixed on the stranger. She didn't recognize the blue uniform as benign, only as an authority figure approaching. She tried to pull herself upright, hissing slightly as the effort jarred her injured leg.
Her throat was a desert. She opened her mouth, and the sound that escaped was a raw, terrified croak, not a question. "No! Who What is this?" Her voice was thin, reedy, utterly without the Dominance she was supposed to possess.
The nurse stopped her approach and placed the tray down sharply on the side table. This was not the expected gentle re entry.
"It's alright, you're safe," Nurse Reynolds repeated, taking out her phone and punching a quick code. Her professional demeanor returned, now tinged with urgency. "Please try to remain calm. You are in Providence Crest Hospital. You've been resting for a long time."
Althea wasn't listening to the words, only the cadence. Hospital? Resting? She looked at the sterile, expensive room, feeling trapped. If I'm safe, why am I broken? Why do I feel like I just crawled out of a hole?
She tried to move her fingers, staring at the thin, elegant hands that looked like they belonged to someone else. "I don't know… I don't know anything." A single, hot tear of pure, existential confusion tracked down her temple. "Who am I?!"
The nurse ignored the question, focusing entirely on the emergency protocol. She took another step back, instinctively giving the distraught patient space.
"Your doctor is being paged right now, dear. Dr. Liu will be here in just a moment to explain everything," the nurse said, her voice now firm. "You suffered a severe neurological trauma. I need you to just lie back for me."
Althea didn't know how to lie back. She only knew how to be scared. The presence of the nurse a stranger who knew things about her that she didn't was terrifying.
A sense of profound, aching truth settled over her. I am an empty space. The name, the identity, the past it was all locked away, and this stranger had the key.
The door hissed again, and a moment later, Dr. Liu arrived, moving quickly but calmly. He was a kind, middle aged physician whose presence was reassuring, projecting a sense of sterile competence. He immediately registered Althea's extreme distress.
The One Week Reality Lag: The Cost of Amnesia
Dr. Liu and Nurse Reynolds worked for nearly an hour to gently sedate Althea slightly and explain the baseline reality she was injured, she had a brain trauma, and she was safe. They withheld the full extent of her identity, knowing that bombarding her with information would be counterproductive to recovery.
The next seven days were a psychological ordeal, a slow, grueling process of re entry into a universe she instinctively felt was not hers. This wasn't a quick fix trauma; this was a cognitive void, a deep and terrifying lack of understanding of fundamental existence, layered with the crushing weight of an overwhelming, foreign celebrity identity. The brain, Althea slowly realized, doesn't simply reboot; it rebuilds itself neuron by agonizing neuron.
Days One and Two: The Primal Confusion
For the first two days, Althea was barely functional, oscillating between primal fear and profound exhaustion. Her world was reduced to the immediate physical sensations and the two people who tended to her.
Physical Alienation: She spent hours staring at her own limbs. The long, slender fingers, the smooth skin they looked beautiful, but they felt disconnected, like borrowed equipment. She couldn't reconcile the movements she commanded with the foreign machine that executed them.
The Food Ritual: The nurse had to patiently coax her through eating. Althea recoiled from the utensils; the concept of using a fork, of opening her mouth for a specific substance, was a bizarre, learned ritual that her mind had discarded. She had to be patiently taught, hour after hour, how to raise a spoon to her mouth, how to chew, how to swallow. It felt like learning to breathe for the first time.
The Mirror: When the nurse finally held up a handheld mirror on the second afternoon, Althea stared at the reflection with the detached curiosity of an infant. It was her face, yet it was not her. It was an objective form, a mask. She couldn't connect the feelings in her chest the terror, the emptiness to the beautiful, elegant stranger reflected there. The face was too sophisticated, too confident for the terrified ghost inside.
Days Three and Four: Cognitive Filter Activation
By the third day, rudimentary logic and linguistic structures began to re emerge, painfully slow, like rust being scraped off a long abandoned machine. Her vocabulary expanded slowly from single words to simple sentences of necessity.
Basic Glossary: She started to solidify the words: Hospital, Nurse, Doctor, Bed, Water, Pain, Yes, No. She used them tentatively, testing the sounds against her strange new voice box.
Pattern Recognition: She started to understand that the people in the white coats and blue scrubs were trying to help her. Her fear of them shifted toward a wary, dependent acceptance.
The World is Continuous: She understood the sun rose and set, that there was a 'before' that everyone else remembered, and a 'now' that only she experienced. This realization was deeply isolating.
Days Five, Six, and Seven: The Burden of Identity
The next three days were defined by the crushing weight of the 'Althea Vale' identity and the profound sense of loss.
Mourning the Void: She began to actively mourn the memory she didn't have. Before, it was merely a blank space. Now, it was a profound, echoing loss the knowledge that an entire life, an entire personality, was irrevocably gone. She realized that everyone else in the room had a continuity that she lacked. They remembered yesterday, last week, last year. She only had this moment.
Functional Basics: By the seventh day, she could feed herself slowly, ask for the bed to be adjusted, and track the time on the wall clock. The shell of Althea Vale was starting to house the terrified, newborn consciousness.
Accepting the Loss: She finally, truly accepted the words: I am a person who has lost her past. This realization was the final step out of the primal fog and into the isolating, terrifying reality of amnesia.
On the afternoon of the seventh day, when Nurse Reynolds had finished cleaning her up, a sense of profound, exhausted defeat settled over Althea. She was ready, she realized, to receive the next layer of information.
Day Seven: The Doctor's Final Diagnosis
Dr. Liu returned, pulling up his seat. His expression was serious, carrying his thick, confidential looking folder.
"Althea, thank you for waiting," Dr. Liu began, his tone respectful. "Now that you have adjusted to your surroundings, we need to talk about your condition in full."
He paused, opening the folder to reveal crisp medical documents. "You suffered severe physical trauma, thankfully mostly confined to a complex fracture in your left leg and deep bruising. But more significantly, you suffered a neurological one. You have what we term Severe Retrograde Amnesia, specifically the localized type that affects autobiographical memory. Simply put, you've lost access to your past your identity, your relationships, your life story. It was caused by the sheer psychological shock of the accident, combined with the physical blow to your temporal lobe. The good news is that your procedural memory the ability to learn and perform tasks, even the basic ones you've been working on remains functional."
Althea nodded slowly, the clinical explanation providing structure to her terror.
"Now, for the details that define you," Dr. Liu continued. "Your public persona is Althea Su, the celebrated singer and model. But your legal name, for all medical and familial matters, is Althea Vale, the heir to Vale Hotels and Resorts. That's a significant commercial and social responsibility, Althea. You are famous, wealthy, and powerful."
Vale. The name landed with the weight of a crown, one she felt utterly unfit to wear. It was the first solid piece of her identity, and it was tied to business and property, not to a soul. It felt heavy, cold, and utterly abstract.
Dr. Liu cleared his throat, his gaze lifting to meet hers. This was the moment for the final, critical layer of truth.
"And finally, your designation. You've been on a carefully managed suppressant cocktail to aid in healing. But your medical records are clear. Your Subgender is Dominant Omega."
The words struck her with a physical force, hitting a deeper, instinctual level that bypassed her confused consciousness. Dominant Omega.
"Dominant?" Althea whispered, her brow furrowing, the simple word carrying an immense, unknowable pressure. "I feel so weak. So dependent. I can't even remember how to feed myself. How can I be… dominant?"
Dr. Liu offered a reassuring, scholarly smile. "It's a very strong designation, Althea. You are part of the very rare 3% of Omegas who possess Alpha like dominance and resilience, both physically and pheromonally. The records note your incredible scent profile and your ability to command an entire audience simply by being on stage. Biologically, your pheromones, when fully engaged, are intensely charismatic, authoritative, and almost intoxicating. They can calm a room or electrify a stadium. You are, quite literally, a very powerful woman."
Powerful. Althea looked at her own frail hand, the confusion curdling into a dark, nascent self loathing. If I was so powerful, why am I here, broken and empty? A Dominant Omega who can't remember the basic rules of her own life. I'm a failed model of myself. The dissonance between the described 'powerful queen' and the helpless woman in the bed was a canyon of self doubt. The concept of an inherent, biological dominance was terrifying because she had no idea how to wield it, or even how to feel it.
"What happened to me? I need a fact. A concrete, solid fact to hold onto," she asked, desperate.
The nurse, still in the room to assist, pulled up a news article on her tablet a blurry image of a mangled black car, the headline a lurid mix of tragedy and celebrity gossip. "You were in a serious traffic incident about three weeks ago. Heavy rain, the report said, a skid on the highway. The miracle is you only suffered a few fractures in your left leg and that bad concussion. You'll need a serious rehab program, but you're healing well. We're going to get you back on your feet, Althea."
A car accident. Althea tried to force a memory the screech of tires, the shattering of glass but her mind remained a stubborn, empty slate. She was a page ripped from the middle of a book. The front cover, the first chapters, were gone.
Day Eight: The Intrusion of Identity and the Growing Doubt
The following day, Day Eight of her re awakening, a visitor. A young woman who introduced herself as Dana, Althea's manager. She was dressed in clothes that were stylish but a little too loud, and she projected an eager, calculated confidence. She felt like a stranger dressed up in the role of a friend.
Dana was a fountain of rehearsed details, speaking in the quick, professional patter of a person used to giving interviews. She sketched a life for Althea: celebrated Omega singer and model, parents lost in a car crash when Althea was in high school. She even produced a glossy, professional photograph of them together, pinning it to the wall with a magnetic clip as if to make it true. Dana, with her slightly too wide smile, and Althea, looking cool and distant even in a casual snapshot.
"We've been working together for three years," Dana explained with her bright, professional smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Don't worry, Althea. You're a fighter, a Dominant Omega through and through. We'll get you back on stage. I've already put a freeze on all tours and negotiations. The narrative is 'a brave recovery.' It'll be great for sales."
Althea listened, nodding, but an icy doubt was crystallizing in her stomach. Dana spoke about the career, the sales, the public narrative. Never about the fear, the confusion, the sheer person trapped inside the bed. Why does she look at me like I'm a broken, expensive machine? The manager's anxiety was palpable, tied to profitability, not care.
Adding to the unease were the whispers of the hospital staff and the strange, unnerving midnight visits. The staff spoke in hushed tones, deferential but guarded, often clearing the room entirely when certain topics were mentioned. And the visits: for three weeks starting when she was still unconscious a pattern had held: in the deep, silent hours, a dark figure would slip into her room.
Always a woman. Always dressed in an expensive, tailored suit, the fabric of which looked impossibly rich even in the minimal moonlight. She never spoke. She would simply stand by the bed, perfectly still, and stare, her presence a heavy, undeniable weight in the dark.
Althea, terrified, would feign sleep, concentrating on the slow, steady rhythm of her breath, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs until the woman left, the click of the closing door a signal of temporary reprieve. The woman's scent, too, was aggressively masked, but Althea could occasionally catch a fleeting, deep note a strange, complex aroma she couldn't place.
This opulent, sterile suite was her "stress free environment." A room that cost a fortune, with a view of the city skyline that felt like a prison window.
"Who is paying my bills here?" Althea asked the doctor one day, the question finally breaking through her fog. Dana didn't seem capable of funding this kind of long term, high end care.
The doctor cleared his throat, avoiding her gaze. "Your guardian has been taking care of everything. They insisted on the highest possible standard of care and privacy. All funds are being managed meticulously."
My guardian. Dana said her parents were dead. Maybe my family is cursed with cars, Althea thought with a hysterical edge.
Who was this guardian? Why was she being kept here, isolated from the outside world, with only a manager who cared more about album sales than human connection? The questions fed a terrifying narrative. I must have been a monster before, to be this isolated now. Maybe I deserve this.
When she asked Dana about the guardian, the young woman fidgeted nervously, fiddling with the expensive magnetic clasp on her handbag. "You should ask the person yourself. They keep visiting you, right?" The evasion was a confirmation of her deepest fears.
The isolation was becoming a prison. Am I really alone? Should I have just died in that crash? At least then I wouldn't have to face the person I was.
Week Three: The Unveiling
Three weeks after the accident, several days after receiving her full diagnosis, the floorboards creaked softly. But this time, it was different. This time, a scent preceded the figure a rich, complex aroma that cut through the antiseptic haze, overwhelming the environmental dampeners. It was the scent of an Alpha, but unlike any she could have imagined.
It was deep and intoxicating, like grape old wine, the scent of a rare, decades old vintage deep, tannic, complex, and carrying an undertone of profound sorrow and exhaustion. It should have been intimidating, an Alpha scent that should have demanded submission, but a dormant, shattered part of her soul stirred in a terrifying recognition. It was deeply familiar, and even in her terror, Althea felt a primitive, compulsive need to draw the scent in. It was addicting.
The mysterious person was here.
Althea kept her eyes shut, concentrating on her breathing, feigning the deep, even rhythm of sleep. The woman moved closer, and Althea felt the mattress dip ever so slightly as the visitor sat on the very edge of the bed. The scent of grape old wine wrapped around her, a hauntingly familiar blanket, filling a hollow space she hadn't known was empty. She could feel the intensity of the woman's gaze on her face a scrutiny that was not predatory, but possessive, wounded, and deeply intimate.
Is this her? Is this the one who holds the key to my cage? Is she here to finally end this charade?
After an eternity of silent watching, the woman stood up, a quiet, weary sigh escaping her lips. It was a sound full of immense exhaustion, the sound of a person carrying too heavy a weight.
As the figure turned to leave, something primal and desperate the Dominant Omega's instinct for control, perhaps, or simply the amnesiac's desperate need for an anchor broke free inside Althea.
She bolted upright, the sudden movement causing a sharp, protesting twinge in her leg. Her hand shot out blindly to grab the sleeve of the elegant, tailored suit jacket. The fabric was cool, heavy, and expensive under her fingers luxurious wool that spoke of serious money and sober power.
"Stop! Who are you?!" Her voice was thin, but the command behind it the innate Dominant Omega's authority was suddenly there, surprising even herself.
The mysterious woman froze, then turned slowly. In the dim light filtering through the expensive shutters, she was breathtaking a sharp, cool beauty with eyes that held a storm of pain and exhaustion. She looked at Althea's fearful, desperate face, the face of the Omega she desperately guarded and no longer knew. A flicker of something an agony of regret, a deep, unsettling possessiveness, and a terrifying sense of ownership crossed her features.
She took a breath, and the air filled with the overwhelming, complex weight of her grape old wine pheromones, a vintage of shared history Althea could no longer taste, but which was now inescapable.
She gave the only answer she could, her voice a low, gravelly alto that was thick with suppressed emotion.
"I'm your wife."