Chapter 4

Arya

“So she’s finally back?”

“I guess so. The Lycan King says it’s her, and who are we to question him?”

“She does look like the girl in the pictures. . . .”

The voices of the two women talking pierce my consciousness. I can’t recognize the voices and I know I should be in a state of panic right now, but my body is too weak to respond. I relax and try to allow myself to fall back asleep, but then I remember the man who called me his daughter.

I lie there, trying to remember something beyond that. Where I was from, how I ended up here. But I got nothing. Blank. My mind is empty.

Panic floods my chest. I try to open my eyes, but they feel glued together. I want to sit up and move, but I can only feel the soft mattress under my body. I feel paralyzed. Helpless. I struggle to get out of this haze, but then I feel two pairs of hands on my shoulders.

I shudder awake, gasping for air and grasping my chest.

The first thing I see is white. All white. The walls, the sheets, the floor. . . .

Even the dresses of the women standing in front of me.

I flinch at the sight of them, backing away until I nearly hit my head on the headboard. So much pain is flowing through my body right now that I can’t see clearly, but there’s no mistaking the utter beauty that these women have.

Am I dead? Am I in heaven? Are these two women actually angels?

But why do I still feel so much pain?

“Who are you?” I demand, but my voice is so soft that the threat hardly matters. “Where am I?”

They both bow.

“I’m sorry, your Majesty,” the red-haired one says. “We didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Just please answer--wait, what?” I swallow hard. “Did you just call me your Majesty?”

She bows again. “Well, you are our princess. The Princess of the Lycaon Kingdom.”

I blink hard. I have a strong urge to clean my ears because I really have no idea if I heard her correctly. “Princess of what, now?”

The other girl steps up and prepares to explain, but then the door opens the strange man from the night before enters the room.

I can’t help it. I squeal and leap out of bed, ready to run if this man tries to do something weird, but he’s not alone. Holding his hand is a petite but regal-looking woman who is staring at me like she can’t believe her eyes.

I don’t know them at all. But why do they feel so familiar?

They both stand from a considerable distance away, like they don’t want to make me feel alarmed. That makes me relax enough to sit back on the bed.

But I won’t be able to really breathe easily unless I find out who they are. “Who are you? And what am I doing here?”

They exchange glances and say, “We are your parents.”

“I’m King Samuel,” the man says. “And this is my wife, your mother, Queen Helena.”

“I don’t know you.” I take a deep breath. “I don’t . . . I don’t know who I am.”

They glance at each other, then the woman says, “You are our daughter. You’re Arya.”

I want to scream and tell them that they’re lying, but I can’t deny the feeling of comfort and familiarity that came with the name they called me. Arya. It feels like me. It feels like a small thread stretching from me to the past I can no longer reach. On top of that, I can feel an inexplicable connection to them, even though I don’t know them.

Still, it’s a lot to take in. I can hardly breathe. I still have this nagging feeling that I should be somewhere else.

As though reading my mind, Queen Helena steps forward and offers a small smile. “I know this is a hard thing to grasp, and I don’t expect you to take it calmly. But we are not here to harm you. We’ve been looking for you since the day we lost you in the woods, when you were still a baby. Every night we scour the area to find you . . . and finally last night, we did.”

“So you mean to say that you lost me as a kid and I’m . . . what, old now?”

“Eighteen, to be exact.” Queen Helena smiles, but then sadness invades her features. “We lost you for eighteen years. But you are here now, and we will find out where you’ve been.”

“How do you know I’m not some random girl who just got lost?” I ask. “I don’t remember anything.”

King Samuel cracks a smile. I open my mouth to ask him what he finds funny, but he says, “My dear, we can never deny your scent. It’s distinct only to the royal family of Lycans.”

I frown. “Lycans?”

“Yes,” Queen Helena says. She seems eager to explain. “We are just like wolves, but of a higher order. More powerful. More formidable.”

For some reason, that makes something click in my mind. I remember that I’m a werewolf, but a weaker one. A really weak one. Colors swirl in my head and I almost conjure some memories, but they break off and form something else.

Then a face flashes in my mind, the face of a boy. It vanishes as soon as it comes, but it brings pain in my chest.

I stay silent, staring at my hands as I twist them around the covers. I can’t believe I ended up here. What will happen if they find out that I’m actually just a weak werewolf? Will they throw me out?

Because I feel like I have been thrown out before.

I start to cry, and the royal couple rush toward me. They both wrap me in their arms, saying comforting words that I can no longer hear.

I pull back away from them, not wishing to get attached only to be hurt again. “Can I please leave?”

“I’m sorry, but you can’t,” Queen Helena says. “This is your home now, Arya.”

King Samuel clears his throat. “I know you might have some mixed feelings. I know you don’t remember anything about your past, but we will help you recover your memories.”

Queen Helena takes my face with both of her hands and looks at me softly. “You are our daughter no matter what. We will find out what and who brought you back to us.”