My Lycan Mate of Suicide Forest

"Your name wasn't Zosime before?" Lucas asked.

She slowly shook her head.

"What was it?"

"It doesn't matter," she dismissed it, avoiding his increasingly curious eyes.

"W-why? Do you prefer Zoe?"

She screwed up her face. She didn't prefer it since it was him who gave it to her. But… she didn't have a better alternative.

"It's fine." She fidgeted with the tape on her wrist that was keeping the IV catheter in place. "There's still a lot I don't remember."

"I'm going to let Graeme know you're awake," he told her, pulling out his phone. "Is there anything I can get you?"

"Ice water?" she asked.

"How about some ice for your face?" he finished texting on his phone and looked back up to catch her feeling the stitches again.

"Will that help?" she asked timidly.

"Yes, I think so."

"Okay," she agreed.

"All right, I'll be right back," he assured her and left the room.

Once he was gone, Zoe let out a long exhale and whimpered. Then the prickle of welling tears had her sobbing into her hands with the freedom she suddenly felt accompanied by the ache of painful memories.

What had this life been for? She had been unloved, feared, and hidden and then turned into a frozen tool to be used, feared, and hidden. But at least now she was free. She was free.

She wiped away the tears and looked at the sun out the window. Maybe she could actually be truly free for once in her life.

Lucas returned with a large cup of iced water and an ice pack for her swelling.

"Thanks," she smiled, taking a long drink of the water before gingerly raising the ice pack to her face. "What now?" she asked.

"Maybe we should wait for Graeme to come. He's just outside the pack house with August since the pure fire was lit this morning," he gestured out the window. "Do you mind filling them in on what you remember?"

She shook her head silently. She didn't know what the pure fire was, but she didn't have the desire to know either. It was like all of her curiosity had been depleted with the intense scientific digging she had been involved in for years. Now she was just exhausted. Her brain was back, it was hers, and it wanted to rest.

August entered first and brought with her a palpable concern and warmth that Zoe had never noticed. It was like a calming haze that followed her, gravitating toward whoever was her focus at the time. The Luna stood clasping her hands together at Zoe's bedside before grabbing a chair and pulling it up to sit next to her.

"I'm so sorry this happened, Zoe," she said softly and took Zoe's hand in hers, patting it between her own.

"You know, don't you?" Zoe thought aloud.

"Know what?" August tilted her head to the side.

"I was alyko. You know," she smiled with a soft laugh and looked into her lap. "That's why you're being so nice now."

"Pearce told me," Graeme answered from the doorway.

Zoe nodded her head in understanding.

"You remember?" August's mouth dropped open in surprise. "Or did you always know and couldn't tell us?"

"I didn't remember," she shook her head. "Not until this morning."

August glanced at Graeme with a frown. How strange was it that Andreas' bite is what had allowed Zoe to suddenly be able to remember her origins?

"Are you feeling… more like yourself now?" August asked, nudging gently with her words. "Lucas said you were able to sleep and that you hadn't previously when he was staying with you."

"More like myself?" Zoe laughed. "I'm sorry, I just… I don't know who that is. Is it this girl with the stitches in her face? Is it the one named Zosime? Is it the one before? It was so long ago. I don't… I'm sorry, I just don't have any clue."

August squeezed the girl's hand. What could she possibly say to that?

"I do feel free though," Zoe sighed and removed the ice pack from her face. "Like my mind is my own again."

"And how does that feel?" August gave her a cautious smile.

"Like a huge relief," the girl admitted. "And also like I've missed decades of sleep. It's exhausting realizing so much that was hidden from me."

"I'm curious about something," Graeme pushed himself off of the door frame he had been leaning against.

Zoe's eyes followed him, too tired to fear the Alpha but she knew she should.

"The scientist Zosime. Was that you? Or was that something created?" He stood with arms crossed examining her, waiting to evaluate her response. Waiting to scent the degree of her honesty.

All the research they had done, all the time spent obsessing over theories and ways to test theories… all the reading and tracking and plotting and manipulating… it all came flooding back at once, crashing into her consciousness like someone else's memories, and then she was bent over heaving, vomiting it out in the form of bile onto the floor.

Graeme gave Lucas a nod to get something to clean it up while August stood next to the girl, rubbing her back soothingly.

"I guess that's our answer," Graeme grunted and August shot him a glare.

"Oh I'm sorry," Zoe pulled back with a hand over her mouth and August handed her a towel. "Why are you being so nice to me?" the girl looked at August in disbelief. "Do you know half of the things I've done?"

"I… I don't know. But if you were manipulated, Zoe, it wasn't our fault."

"Please, don't call me that," the girl whimpered, tears forming in her eyes.

She thought it would be okay to continue being addressed that way, but when she heard August say the name, there was just something unbearable about it. Accepting that name as her own meant accepting the things that she had done as her own.

"I didn't care," Zoe said. "Everything we did… I knew the results, I understood logically how people would be affected, but I just… I didn't care. He took that from me."

A look of concern passed between August and Graeme as Zoe pressed the towel against her mouth.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered the apology to no one in particular.

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