A Fated Memory and a Mysterious Offer

BIANCA

The forest smelled like rain and moss as I walked along the familiar path. My mind drifted, lost in memories that felt both close and impossibly distant. Six years had changed everything—and nothing.

I remembered that day with perfect clarity. The day we found her.

Nora had spotted her first—a crumpled figure at the base of a cliff, auburn hair splayed across the damp ground. I'd thought she was dead until I saw her chest rise and fall.

"She's alive!" Olivia had whispered, kneeling beside the unconscious woman.

We'd carried her back to our makeshift camp, this stranger with no ID, no pack scent, nothing but the clothes on her back and a fresh wound on her temple. When she finally opened her eyes—gray-blue, disoriented—she couldn't even tell us her name.

"I don't know," she'd whispered, panic rising in her voice. "I don't know who I am."

So we called her Ruby, for the red in her hair. Our broken, beautiful Ruby.