Being a ghost meant screaming without a voice. It meant watching the world move on while I was stuck in the spaces between heartbeats, tethered to the people I loved who were slowly destroying each other.
The kitchen was a chaotic symphony of clanging pots and hissing steam. Adley was there, perched on her crate, her small arms submerged in gray, greasy water. She looked so much like me in the dim light—the set of her jaw, the way she blew a stray curl off her forehead. But her eyes... those were all Holden.
The service door swung open, and two warriors dragged a woman in. My spirit flickered, dimming with grief. Liana. My baby sister. They had put her to work, a test of loyalty for a slave who had refused to speak. She looked skeletal, her once-vibrant hair dull and matted, her hands trembling as she reached for a stack of dirty plates.
Then, she froze.
Liana’s gaze had drifted across the room, landing on the small girl struggling with a pot twice her size. The color drained from Liana’s face. She didn't see a rogue child. She saw the past. She saw me.
"Molly?" she whispered, the name cracking on her dry lips.
The stack of china in her hands slipped. The crash was deafening, shattering the rhythm of the kitchen. Shards of white porcelain exploded across the tile, but Liana didn't flinch. She was already moving, scrambling over the broken pieces, ignoring the cuts slicing into her bare feet.
"Molly's baby!" Liana sobbed, falling to her knees beside the sink. She grabbed Adley, pulling her wet, soapy body into a desperate embrace. "You look just like her. Oh, Moon Goddess, you're alive."
Adley stiffened, then melted. I had told her stories of Aunt Liana—the one who used to braid flowers into our hair. "Auntie Li?" Adley whimpered, burying her face in Liana’s ragged shirt.
For a second, amidst the filth and the fear, there was love. Pure, unadulterated love.
Then the air turned to ice.
"What is the meaning of this?"
Holden stood in the doorway. He didn't see a family reunion. He saw a hysterical slave attacking a servant, surrounded by destroyed pack property. His Alpha aura flooded the room, dark and suffocating.
"Get off her!" Holden roared.
He crossed the room in two strides, gripping the back of Liana’s shirt and ripping her away from Adley. Liana screamed, reaching out, her fingers brushing Adley’s one last time.
"It's her!" Liana shrieked, her eyes wild. "Holden, look! It's Molly's—"
"Silence!" Holden’s voice was a physical blow, using the Alpha command. Liana choked, the words dying in her throat as her wolf was forced to submit. He shoved her toward the warriors. "She’s unstable. Throw her back in the cells. If she breaks anything else, take it out of her rations."
"No!" Adley cried out, stepping forward.
Holden turned on her, his golden eyes cold and unyielding. "And you. Clean this mess up. Now."
He didn't wait for an answer. He stormed out, leaving my sister in chains and my daughter in tears. I hovered between them, helpless, my soul fracturing further.
***
That night, the fever came back with a vengeance.
The stress of the reunion had burned through Adley’s fragile reserves. She lay on her wooden bench in the servants' quarters, trashing in her sleep. Her skin was on fire. The wolfsbane and sage paste I had applied weeks ago—the only thing hiding her identity—was sweating out of her pores, dissolving into nothing.
And then, the scent broke free.
It started as a whisper, then a roar. Vanilla and rain. My scent. The unique, undeniable fragrance of the Moonstone Pack’s Luna, the scent that had once driven Holden wild with desire. It poured off my daughter’s feverish skin, filling the damp room, seeping under the door, and drifting through the ventilation shafts of the great house.
Upstairs, in the master suite, Holden gasped.
He sat up in his massive bed, his chest heaving. He wasn't dreaming. He inhaled sharply, his pupils dilating.
"Molly," he breathed.
He was out of bed in a second, not bothering with shoes or a shirt. He tore open his door, his nostrils flaring. He thought I had come back. He thought I was here, in his house, finally ready to explain, finally ready to come home.
He ran. He didn't walk; he sprinted, following the invisible ribbon of vanilla through the dark corridors. I floated behind him, my heart breaking for the hope I saw on his face. He hated me, yes, but beneath the hate, the bond was still screaming.
He slammed into the servants' hallway, skidding to a halt outside the door where the scent was strongest. He threw the door open, his chest heaving, his eyes scanning the darkness for a woman’s silhouette.
"Molly?" he called out, his voice raw.
But the room was empty of women. There was only a small, shivering heap on a wooden bench.
Holden froze. The confusion on his face was painful to watch. The scent was overpowering here—vanilla, rain, and the metallic tang of sickness. It was coming from the child.
He walked forward slowly, like a man approaching a bomb. He knelt beside the bench. Adley was whimpering in her sleep, her brow slick with sweat.
"Impossible," Holden whispered.
He reached out, his hand trembling, and brushed a damp lock of hair away from her forehead.
*Zap.*
A spark of static electricity, blue and bright, snapped between his fingers and her skin. It wasn't just static. It was the blood bond. The ancient, undeniable connection between a sire and his pup.
Holden jerked his hand back as if burned. He scrambled backward, falling onto his calm, his back hitting the wall. His eyes flashed—not human gold, but the glowing, feral yellow of his wolf.
*"Pup!"* his wolf roared in his mind, loud enough that even I felt the echo. *"Blood! Mine!"*
Holden shook his head, clutching his chest where his heart was hammering a frantic rhythm. He looked at Adley, really looked at her, and for the first time, he didn't see a rogue. He saw the shape of her nose. The curve of her chin.
He saw me.
"No," he choked out, the denial rising like bile. "She rejected me. She left. She wouldn't... she wouldn't have kept this from me."
But the air didn't lie. The vanilla swirled around him, mocking his ignorance, while his daughter burned with fever, waiting for the father she had finally found to save her.
