Chapter 106: Tell me about the dreams

Dorian sat up, his expression turning serious. "What secrets are you talking about?"

Alyssa mistook his sudden seriousness for annoyance. She peeked up at him from under her lashes. "Are you mad?"

"No," he said, shaking his head quickly. "I’m not mad, my love. I promise."

"Are you sure? You sound mad."

He cupped her face and pressed a soft kiss to her lips, reassuring her without words. "I’m sorry if my tone sounded harsh. Of course I’m not mad. I could never be mad at you."

Alyssa held back the urge to tell him that he might feel differently once she laid out everything she had been hiding.

"Okay," she began slowly. "Well, it started with the dreams. I’ve been having these dreams for a while now. They started when we were in Ashgard."

Dorian frowned as pieces of memory surfaced. "Do you mean the ones that woke you up in the middle of the night?"

She nodded. "Yes, those dreams. Only they weren’t just dreams. They were memories of a past life."

Dorian sat up further, his full attention locked on her. "You remember your childhood with your stepmother?"

"No," she said quickly. "Not that. I still can’t remember my childhood with Ingrid. I’m talking about the life I had with my real parents. And not just my memories. Theirs, too."

She sighed and ran a hand through her hair. "I don’t want to keep secrets from you. I would have told you eventually, but I needed to understand what they meant first. After what happened with the rogues in Ashgard, I think I finally got it."

Dorian drew close and gently pulled her against his chest. "Tell me about the dreams. All of them."

And she did. She told him about the first dream, the burning cabin and the dark wolf where she had been only a toddler. Then she explained the dream where she had witnessed her own birth, alongside the erratic flashes of memory that hit her out of nowhere.

Dorian listened without interrupting. When she mentioned the Stonecrest pack, it confirmed why Kalista had called Alyssa ’Rachel’. She had truly seen someone who looked identical to Alyssa years ago.

The pieces finally were clicking together, validating his own lingering suspicions.

"I still don’t know how I came to live with Ingrid," Alyssa concluded. "That memory feels like it’s blocked by a wall of solid steel. It’s impenetrable no matter how hard I try to push past it. I don’t remember anything about my father, only that he remarried and died a year later. Whenever I try to reach past that, my head hurts."

Dorian leaned down, pressing a soft kiss to her hair. "Don’t force it. It will come when you least expect it. As for the dreams, something may be triggering them."

"What do you think is triggering them?"

He sighed deeply. "I don’t know. Your mind may have suppressed your childhood memories to protect you from the trauma you went through, but witnessing your own birth? I don’t know how that’s possible."

"Whatever it is," Alyssa whispered, "I think it has to do with what I am. Being a Hybrid and all."

Dorian went quiet, his mind racing. They still had no idea what her mother was. It was already established that her father was a Lycan. A powerful one, given Dylan’s confirmation that Alyssa’s dormant Lycan DNA outweighed his own.

But her mother? That was the one variable he feared, terrified of the possibility that Alyssa could be connected to the Onyx bloodline.

"There’s something else," Alyssa added suddenly in a small voice.

The shift in her tone sent a spike of dread straight to the pit of his stomach. He looked down at her. "Something else?"

She nodded slowly, knowing this was the part that would push him over the edge.

"That night in Ashgard, after the rogues attacked, I was the one who made the villa collapse."

Dorian bolted upright so fast his arm nearly struck her face. His gaze darkened, his eyes frantically searching hers.

"What do you mean you collapsed it? Cade told me it was the rogues."

"It wasn’t the rogues," she said quietly. "It was me. I felt it. This insane surge of power rushed through me. I felt it move through my body. It was so intense, I can’t even explain it. And then, there was an entity."

She told him everything; about the entity that had gotten burned when it touched her skin; about Wren and the sorceress. She kept her gaze averted as she spoke, but as she reached the end, she forced herself to look up into his eyes.

"It wasn’t the sorceress who saved us that night," she said. "Cade thought it was, but it wasn’t. It was the other woman, the one we saw at the market."

She licked her lips before dropping the truth. "She said she was my mother."

Dorian went rigid. He pulled away from her, a deep scowl marring on his face as he swung his legs off the bed and began to pace the room.

"I know I should have told you," Alyssa pleaded, the words tumbling out. "But I was confused! Ingrid told me my parents were dead. I didn’t know what to believe."

"That’s not an excuse, Alyssa," Dorian said. His voice remained calm, but the anger underneath was unmistakable. "You should have told me. We returned from Ashgard weeks ago. Even if you were confused, you should have come to me. Don’t you trust me?"

"Of course I trust you!" she said softly. "You know I do. I just... I didn’t know what to think. I’m sorry."

The tremor in her voice struck him harshly and tore at his heart. He stopped pacing, dragging a hand through his hair and letting out a deep sigh.

What the hell was he doing?

He was standing here demanding transparency from her when he had done the same thing by hiding the truth about the baby they lost. He was such a hypocrite. He had no right to get upset.

"I’m sorry," he murmured suddenly, stepping back toward the bed. He pulled her against his chest, dropping gentle kisses across her cheeks. "I shouldn’t have snapped. I understand why you kept it to yourself."

He cupped her face, his thumb brushing away the moisture beneath her eyes. He couldn’t bear to see her cry. "I’m sorry, okay?"

She offered a small, tentative smile and nodded. "It’s okay."

He kissed her again until he felt her melt completely in his arms. Then he lay beside her, one hand playing with her hair.

"Did she tell you anything else? The woman who claimed to be your mother, I mean."

Alyssa nodded. "She said her name was Wren, which only confuses me more because the woman in my dreams, the one Aunt Kalista helped, is Rachel. Both women look so much like me, but they’re different in their own ways. When she saved Cade and me, she said something about bloodlines and hidden powers. She told me to be careful because I was different, and that I couldn’t trust anyone."

"Did she say what she was?"

"No. Only that she would come for me when my powers started to awaken." She let out a weary breath. "It’s all so overwhelming. I don’t even know what to think."

Dorian remained silent, his mind spinning from the weight of what she had shared. He realized that he needed more answers as soon as possible, before whatever slept inside Alyssa woke up entirely and caused a disaster.

...

In the early hours of the morning, while the room was still steeped in darkness, Alyssa carefully slid out from beneath Dorian’s arm. She needed to pee, so she quietly padded into the bathroom.

She finished, flushed, and turned toward the door. But suddenly, her reflection caught her eye in the mirror. She froze and let out a sharp gasp.

Her eyes widened, her breath hitching in her throat as she gazed in horror at her arms and chest.

"What is this?" she whispered.