Page 47 of Framed and Forgotten
A V R I L
“Koen is mywhat?!”
I almost choked on my tea when Elijah spoke the last words I’d ever expected to hear. After my ex-mate’s unexpected reappearance and my beta’s interruption, my gamma insisted he wanted to talk to me in private. I was hesitant about leaving Koen unsupervised with the rest of my team, but he assured me I had nothing to worry about.
In my room, Elijah pressed me to sit down while he prepared me some tea. I was sick of my friends treating me like some damsel in distress, but when he promised to explain everything, I relented. I sat, took a sip, and waited for him to spit it out.
Elijah proceeded to tell me the most bizarre story about how I had fallen in love with Koen, saved him after Whispering Hill’s tragic demise and brought him to our secret haven. What followed, according to my gamma, was even more ludicrous: Koen had supposedly helped me overcome challenges, fought beside my pack, and, ultimately, I had marked him, miraculously turning him into an Ashen Wolf.
At first, I was sure my third-in-command had to be messing with me. Everything he’d said was too absurd to be true. But was I really the only sane one when everyone else seemed to havelost their minds? I was smarter than to assume that. If my entire pack was acting the exact same way and I was the odd one out, then the problem was likely me.
When I stopped to analyze his story, I couldn’t ignore that it explained some things - the questions about a mate mark I had no memory of, the masculine clothes in my closet, and the intoxicating scent woven into them, as if they belonged there. Could it be true? Could I have forgotten an entire love story with Koen?
“Argh!” I groaned as a sharp pain throbbed in my head.
Come to think of it, I’d been having a lot of weird headaches lately. Strangely enough, they always seemed to hit harder whenever Koen was mentioned. The more I thought about him, the worse they got.
An instant later, Elijah’s arms were on my shoulders, brushing my skin soothingly. “Don’t try to understand it. Searching for proof of something you can’t remember won’t do you any good,” he instructed me.
I forced my eyes open, breathing through the discomfort, just in time to hear him add, “Just believe me.”
Staring into his eyes, I saw nothing but honesty. I trusted Elijah and all my friends with my life. If he told me his mother was a dinosaur, I’d believe him.
“His mother being a dinosaur would be more believable than this,”Kea pointed out, her voice trembling as she, too, struggled to come to terms with what we’d just heard.
However, like me, she couldn’t deny what we had felt when we were naked on top of Koen less than an hour ago. The attraction I felt toward him, the sparks that set my skin on fire… They couldn’t be explained any other way.
“Don’t worry, though,” he continued, releasing me once my pain was gone. With a gentle smile, he assured, “We’ll find a way to reverse the spell and restore your memories.”
I instantly stiffened. As fear took over, the words rolled off my tongue as if they had a mind of their own. “What if I don’t want it to be reversed?”
Even if I believed what he’d told me, did I actually want to resume my romance with Koen? Clearly, despite everything we had shared, he had put me through so much pain that I felt the need to erase him from my mind. He had compromised my focus, and that was something I couldn’t afford - not when I was the leader of the Ashen Wolves.
Elijah stared back at me in shock, but before he could cloud my already confused mind, I explained, “I spent too long hating Koen, and for good reason. Besides, from what you told me, it sounds like I’m better off without him.”
“Avril, I know you can’t understand it now, but you and Koen…” He sighed lovingly, his eyes glistening as he concluded, “You were epic.” After a brief pause, he went on, “Koen changed you for the better. He complemented you. He made you happier. He supported you-”
“But it seems he also had a habit of leaving me high and dry,” I observed bitterly, the anger I had harbored toward Koen for years surfacing.
“Avril-” he tried again, but I stopped him.
“I appreciate your concern, Eli,” I said sincerely before my tone grew more serious. “But please, don’t do anything until I decide for myself whether I want to remember the brief life I shared with Koen.”
I could see it in his eyes - he wanted to argue. His lips pressed into a thin line as he tried to hold his tongue, to contain the urge of trying to convince me. In the end, he lowered his head in agreement.
“Thank you for telling me everything. I…I need some time to think,” I declared. With a final nod, he reluctantly left, giving me space to digest the truth and consider my decision.
K O E N
It didn’t take me long to realize that my goal would be harder to achieve than I’d hoped.
While Elijah spoke with Avril, I suppressed my overwhelming need to see her and decided to make the most of my time by going to Vereya. The spell my mate had used to forget me was in one of her books, and as a druid, she had the most experience with magic in the entire pack. If anyone could give me deeper insight into the situation, it was her.
Imagine my frustration when, right off the bat, she hit me with the least encouraging piece of information I could have heard.
“There is no way to reverse the spell,” she stated, the heavy rue in her voice doing little to soothe my stress.
“What do you mean it can’t be reversed?” I demanded, my tone more menacing than I had intended. Every new obstacle between me and my mate only fed my beast’s impatience, causing the line between friend and foe to blur in my mind.
