Or at least, I’ve lost the version of myself, the woman obsessed with years of research before she ended up in a hospital bed with some kind of amnesia, the woman who photographed an impossible creature mid-flight, who wrote about dragons and curses and helping someone named Raze with enough conviction to make it the centerpiece of an investigation thatconsumed her entire spare bedroom and probably most of her waking hours.
The clock on my nightstand reads 11:47 p.m. when I finally tear myself away from the wall and shuffle toward the bathroom, exhaustion pulling at my bones despite the restless energy that’s kept me pacing for hours. Sleep comes hard these days, fractured and insufficient, haunted by images that dissolve the moment I try to examine them too closely.
I’m reaching for my toothbrush when I hear it.
The soft metallicclickof my apartment door unlocking.
My hand freezes halfway to the bathroom cabinet, every muscle in my body locking down as adrenaline floods my system with the sudden, brutal awareness that someone is inside my home without permission, moving with the quiet confidence of predators who know their prey won’t be able to escape before they strike.
I should call the police.
I should scream.
I should grab something to defend myself with and barricade the bathroom door until help arrives.
Instead, I find myself moving silently back down the hallway toward the living room, drawn forward by a curiosity stronger than self-preservation, following instincts I don’t remember developing but that feel etched into muscle memory deeper than conscious thought.
Two figures stand in my living room, silhouetted against the streetlight filtering through my curtains. One is tall and broad-shouldered with a presence that fills the space despite his absolute stillness, power coiled beneath skin too pale in the ambient light. The other is muscular, moving with a predatory grace that makes my hindbrain scream‘danger’even as something deeper, something I can’t name, whispers ‘familiar.’
The broader one speaks first, his voice a low rumble that vibrates through my chest like distant thunder. “Well… this is interesting.”
And the muscular one turns toward the spare bedroom doorway, toward the wall covered in my obsessive research, and goes utterly, perfectly still in a way that speaks to shock so profound it momentarily overwhelms even predatory instinct.
I step into the living room, and both figures whip toward me with inhuman speed.
Blue eyes meet mine across the darkness—cold and furious. And underneath the anger, something that looks almost like relief before it’s buried beneath glacial rage. “What the fuck is this, Roxy?” The voice is familiar in a way that makes my knees weak, though I can’t place where I’ve heard it before. I can’t attach it to any memory that survived the accident or the hospital or the three weeks of trying to rebuild a life from fragments and guesswork.
But I know him.
I know him.
Recognition slams into me with physical force, memories flooding back in a torrent that steals my breath and nearly drives me to my knees.
The clubhouse.
Iron chains burning my skin.
A crystal dome with an impossible flame.
Faces, names, violence, andbelonging.
Captivity that became something else, something fierce, claiming and absolutely forbidden.
Raze.
President of the Kings of Anarchy MC.
An ice dragon, cursed by a witch to contain his rage.
The man, the creature, I was supposed to help and then leave, before everything became complicated and I fell in love with amonster who kissed me like I was salvation and claimed me with frost-kissed touches that should have killed me, but instead made me feel more alive than any moment in my entirely human existence.
The witch wiped my memory.
She tookthisfrom me.
Tookhimfrom me!
“I…” My voice comes out rough, shaking with the force of remembering, with the weight of three weeks spent mourning something I couldn’t name and searching for answers that were locked inside my own skull. “I know you.”