My Lycan Mate of Suicide Forest

"Don't worry, Selah, we won't tell your father about you and Sage unless you agree to it," Graeme said, causing an objection to bubble up in Sam's throat that the Beta then choked back down when Graeme shot him a silencing glare. "How do we bring my memory back?"

Lucas rapped his knuckles on the door frame of the office entrance, leaning on it and wincing afterward. He wasn't resting enough to allow his ribs to heal as quickly as they could.

"You lost your memory?" he asked, having overheard the question. "You might want to, uh, keep your door shut in the future," he added when three pairs of eyes turned to glare at him. Graeme growled as Lucas began limping in.

"Don't worry, I won't tell anyone Alpha," Lucas groaned before collapsing into one of the chairs in front of the desk.

"What happened to you?" Graeme scowled.

"Ah, just a vampire. No worries. Zoe is back," he told them. "She wants to speak with you, although if you can't remember anything…"

"We are working on it," Graeme snapped. He knew how Lucas felt about him, and he didn't imagine it had changed now that he was Alpha.

"Zoe?" Selah muttered. "Shouldn't she have the same fate as the elders? What do you mean she is back?

"She was taken by the vampire and then apparently vanished from there like our other alyko did, arrived back at her original pack, escaped, and then used a portal to return here to help us," Lucas explained.

"Wait… are we talking about the same Zoe?" Selah asked, shifting forward in her seat.

"I don't know. Are we?" he chuckled.

"Andreas' little minion who is like a creepy replica of Zagan?" she asked.

"A lot has happened," Sam piped up from the side, mostly for Graeme's benefit who looked thoroughly lost and then alarmed at the thought of a Zagan replica being here. "Maybe we should focus on the memory issue if it is an easy fix. Then we won't have to explain so much."

"Zoe is alyko. Whatever hold that vampire bastard had on her was broken when Andreas attacked her. She's back to her old self now," Lucas told Selah, doing his best to defend the broken girl who saved his life.

"And now she is powerful enough to use portals?!" Selah asked, completely shocked by this news. "That's not a common thing—that's… before August, my mom was the only one known to be able to do it. Not even my brother…" she trailed off, eyes going wide with the small detail she just let slip.

"Your brother is alyko?" Lucas asked.

Selah groaned, plunging her head into her hands. Well, what was the harm in speaking of what Sage was capable of now? He was with Zagan anyway.

"Yes," she said. "He is an exceptional alyko—he will probably surpass my mother one day. But we have been careful in making sure he doesn't use his abilities… he is the whole reason why I came here and helped Zoe and Andreas, acting like a stray with these proclivities toward genetics so I would have insider knowledge about how to protect him and keep him safe, and look how it turned out." She threw her hands up in the air helplessly.

"We will get him back, Selah," Graeme assured her.

"I think Zoe saw your brother while she was with Zagan," Lucas said. "She asked me if Sage and August had returned, too."

Selah's eyes went wide and she stood quickly, almost knocking the chair over in the process. "I have to talk to her," she said. "Where is she?"

"She wants to talk to Graeme," Lucas replied.

"She will speak with me, too, whether she wants to or not," Selah snapped. If Zoe had seen her brother, she wanted to know about it—about where he was kept, how he looked, how he was being treated…

"Now just hang on," Lucas said, struggling to get up from the chair. "You aren't going to go in there and upset her. She just fought for her life tonight, and she's all torn up…"

"I'm sorry, who are you?" Selah scoffed. Why was this male protecting Zoe? Did he know what she had been involved in here? She was hardly some damsel in distress.

"Graeme, will you tell her?" Lucas appealed to the Alpha, eyebrows raised expectantly, but Graeme just stared at the male in front of him. "Oh do you… sorry, do you not remember me?"

"How could I forget you, Lucas?" Graeme glowered at him. In his memory, Lucas was still the male who hated him and made a point to let him know every time he visited.

"Lucas was babysitting Zoe for us for several days leading up to Samhain," Sam explained to Selah who was squinting at Lucas, failing to understand how he fit into this whole situation.

"Babysitting? I was guarding her," Lucas corrected. A babysitter? Please.

"You were guarding her?" Selah repeated. "Lucas, do you have any idea the kinds of things that Zosime has been involved with here? She is just as much of a monster as Zagan."

"Maybe Zosime was, but that girl was manufactured by the vampire. When Andreas bit her…"

"Andreas marked her?" Selah's mouth dropped open.

"No," Lucas screwed up his face. "Gross. Are you serious?"

"That's what was intended," Selah shrugged.

"No, he fucking mauled her face because she was trying to reveal the truth about how he has been aborting fetuses in this pack for years," Lucas spit.

"They have been aborting fetuses," Selah corrected. "They, Lucas. Not just Andreas."

"You knew about it?" Graeme asked.

"I-I… yes, but…" Selah stuttered, seeing the fierce expression on the Alpha's face. "I didn't help…"

"Zoe was in some kind of twisted alternate persona that Zagan created. What's your excuse?" Lucas asked.

Selah looked around at all three males who were now focused on her, their eyes accusing.

"Who was I supposed to tell?" she replied, chuckling at the impossibility of her situation. "Who was there to step in and take leadership? Graeme wasn't here then. Why do you think I finally took the chance to go and save Livvy? Because finally there was someone to appeal to. Finally Graeme was here, and he had returned with an alyko mate, so I knew if I showed you evidence of what had been happening—if Livvy could tell you and I could show you the lies—then something could finally be done about it. There was someone here to take on the elders and help shut this all down. But before that…" she shrugged.

Graeme let out a heavy sigh. "You're right. I understand. I should have been here for everyone in this pack, and I wasn't, so that's on me. We will go talk to Zoe and see what she knows, but first…"

"Uh, can I say something?" Lucas held up his hand, wincing as he did.

Graeme groaned. "Yes Lucas?"

"She is different now, right? Zagan is the one who named her Zosime after he created her and erased her memories and filled her with all the creepy intelligent stuff, and I would say she is dealing with a fair bit of resentment and self-loathing…"

Graeme growled a 'get-to-the-point' warning.

"… So naturally, she hates the name he gave her. When she opened this impressive portal that brought her back here to help us, she felt that she was renamed. And we should all respect that," Lucas told them, nodding his agreement with his own statement.

The three others in the room just stared at him.

"What was she renamed?" Selah asked, breaking the silence, an expression somewhere between fear and awe on her face. "And what element of nature renamed her?"

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