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Chapter forty-three

Annabella

Jem took up position by the door, one shoulder against the frame, his weight balanced on the balls of his feet.

Every few seconds, his attention shifted—door, Calloway’s hands, my bound wrists, the blind corner behind the medical equipment—before returning to Esme.

Not random glances, but a pattern that missed nothing.

And despite the way his eyes monitored potential threats, they lingered on Esme with the same warmth and protectiveness I felt toward Ellie.

The door opened, and two Council enforcers guided Sam into the room. He was conscious, but barely—his eyes unfocused and vacant, blood crusted around his ears and nose, dark against his too-pale skin. His legs moved mechanically, like he’d forgotten how to walk.

My stomach dropped. This wasn’t Sam. Just an empty shell wearing his face.

“Sam?” I whispered, the word escaping before I could stop it.

His head jerked toward my voice, but his gaze slid past me, seeing nothing.

“Sam,” he mumbled. “I’m Sam. Sam Shaw. Wolf Council.” His fingers twitched at his sides as if trying to grasp something that wasn’t there. “Annabella. Annabella. Danger. Remember.”

The enforcers headed toward one of the beds, but Esme stepped forward.

“Not that one,” she said softly. “Put him here, please.” She gestured to the bed Sam had occupied before.

“Any change?” Calloway asked.

“Sam,” Sam repeated, staring at nothing. “I’m Sam. Sam Shaw. Wolf Council. Annabella. Annabella. Danger. Remember.”

The taller enforcer shook his head. “No. Same words, over and over.”

The second enforcer, a woman with short-cropped hair, pressed two fingers against Sam’s wrist as he continued his broken mantra. “His heart rate’s stabilized, at least. And the bleeding’s stopped.”

Calloway nodded to her; the two enforcers left, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Sam, sitting rigidly on the edge of the bed, rocking as he repeated those same words.

His face—that same face that had looked at me with such heat and tenderness—was empty now, like someone had scooped out everything that made him Sam and left behind only this broken recording.

“Sam. I’m Sam. Sam Shaw. Wolf Council. Annabella. Annabella. Danger. Remember.”

Calloway pulled out a knife, hesitated for only a moment, then cut the rope binding my wrists. “You try anything—anything at all—and I’ll put you down faster than you can blink.”

The skin beneath the ropes was raw and blistered, but I barely noticed as I approached Sam. My wolf whined inside me, recognizing something fundamentally wrong.

“Almost gone now,” Esme whispered, her hands hovering inches above Sam’s head, reading something I couldn’t see. “Sparkly thoughts all flying away. Only holding onto important things.” She tilted her head, studying him. “You. He’s holding onto you.”

I felt sick. This was what Lydia’s memory spell had done—broken him down to his most essential core, and somehow, in that core, he’d clung to my name. To warning me of danger.

Even after everything, he was still trying to protect me.

Esme began arranging items on the floor around Sam’s bed.

Small copper bowls like the ones Lydia had used but filled with different herbs that gave off earthy scents instead of the acrid smell of Lydia’s concoctions.

Crystals that caught the harsh fluorescent light, creating prisms across the concrete.

“Even though your mind is angry, your heart knows the truth,” Esme said as she worked. “The sparkles don’t lie.”

“The sparkles,” I repeated flatly.

Esme smiled serenely. “You’ll see.”

She gestured for me to stand beside Sam’s bed. “Memory isn’t just stored in the mind. It lives in the blood, in the bonds between people, in the fabric of who we are.”

She reached into one of the small bowls and coated her fingertips with a brown paste that smelled of sage and copper. Then she drew a symbol on Sam’s forehead—a spiral with three branches extending outward.

“The triskele,” she explained. “Mind, body, spirit. The three aspects that must be reunited.”

She drew the same symbol on my forehead, her touch light as a butterfly’s wing. The paste tingled against my skin, and my wolf stirred within me—not agitated as she sometimes was around magic, but calm, almost expectant.

“We’ll go with the breadcrumbs,” Esme continued, arranging more crystals in a circle around us. “Like following footprints in fresh snow.”

She made it sound so simple.

“But how exactly do we do that?” I asked, unable to keep the skepticism from my voice.

“Witch to navigate the pathways, wolf to hold tight to him through the sharing bond.”

“We don’t have a bond.”

My wolf’s ears pricked up. Mate.

I gritted my teeth and ignored her.

Esme just smiled. “Connections leave traces. Yours is strong.”

She positioned herself on the other side of Sam’s bed, taking my hands and placing them on Sam’s temples. His skin felt cool beneath my fingertips.

“Close your eyes,” she instructed. “Feel the path between you.”

I hesitated, then complied, letting my eyelids drop.

Though I couldn’t see Esme, I could feel her magic building—the subtle shifts in the air currents as her hands moved, the faint vibrations of power gathering, a pressure building against my eardrums like ascending too quickly in an elevator.

Something like words resonated through my bones, though Esme’s lips never moved.

The sensation was unlike anything I’d experienced before; not the harsh, invasive quality of Lydia’s spells, but something more organic, like the slow awakening of dormant seeds.

The symbol on my forehead began to warm, then tingle, then pulse in a rhythm that matched my heartbeat. A sudden pulling sensation gripped me, like being yanked underwater by a powerful current.

I gasped, my eyes flying open, but I no longer saw the containment room. Instead, I found myself in a dark, fractured space—a landscape of broken pieces and jagged edges. Shards of memory hung suspended like broken glass, some still connected by thin silver threads, others completely detached.

I turned in a slow circle, taking in the devastation. This wasn’t damage—this was fucking obliteration. Lydia hadn’t just erased information; she’d gone in with a sledgehammer and smashed Sam’s identity to pieces.

My chest tightened. No one deserved to have their mind torn apart like this—not even a Council dog who’d betrayed me.

But I had no fucking idea how to fix it.