Chapter 268 New found hope
_Rowena’s POV_
I didn’t know how long I’d been walking, I couldn’t tell if it had been hours or a day.
The forest didn’t care about time, it just kept moving.
I had no phone or watch to read what time it was and o couldn’t do that with the sun.
Everythin just kept stretching in front of me, tree after tree, shape after shape, until I couldn’t tell if I was making progress or just walking in circles.
"You’re not walking in circles," Kyra said. "I’d know."
"You can read my thoughts even better now?”
"I’ve always been able to read it anyhow and anytime. I just didn’t have a way to answer properly before.”
That still hurts to think about, all those months of feeling like I was talking to myself, praying to a version of me that couldn’t hear. I pushed the thought down and kept moving.
"You need to eat," Kyra suddenly said, a while later. "The baby needs you to eat."
"There’s nothing out here."
"There’s plenty out here. You’re just looking with human eyes."
She guided me the way she used to, back before they took her from me, except now everything felt better, more better than ever.
She led me toward a stream, showed me where the fish gathered in the corner, told me how to be still enough that they wouldn’t scatter.
My hands remembered things my mind had forgotten. I caught one, then another, and ate them raw because I had no way to make fire without drawing attention.
"Good," Kyra said. "You’re remembering."
"I never forgot. I just didn’t have you to remind me I was allowed to still be that person." I smiled, remembering back when I was at Moonreign, being a housewife and taking care of Kaelen’s family and pack.
“Those are the past now, do not dwell on it. Kaelen is prolly married now.” Kyra said and we laughed.
Kyle sent people after me, I heard them before I saw them, twice, moving through the bushes in a way that told me they shifted into their wolf forms, they wanted to sniff me out.
Kyra kept me quiet, guided my breathing until it matched the stillness of the forest around us.
"They’re circling east of us," she said. "Don’t move yet."
"How do you know that?” I was genuinely curious.
"I can feel them. Not exactly like scent or like sound but something in between. Trust me. When we find a safe spot, I’ll open your mindlink.”
I trusted her, It felt strange how easily I did that, considering how long she’d been silent, considering how much of that silence I’d spent believing I was completely alone.
But some part of me had never stopped trusting her, even when I thought she was gone.
We moved when it was safe, stopped when it wasn’t, and somewhere in the space between all that moving and stopping, I finally asked her the question that had been sitting in my chest since the moment I heard her voice again.
"Why," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. "Why did you stay silent for so long? Why didn’t you come back sooner? Was it that chemical that was injected into me?”
Kyra was quiet for a long moment, she was quiet that I thought maybe she wasn’t going to answer at all.
"It wasn’t that I couldn’t," she finally said. "Not entirely because of the chemical too. It was more complicated than that."
"Then tell me."
"When Theodore and Virella were doing what they did to you," Kyra said, "you stopped believing you deserved to survive it. You stopped fighting for yourself, somewhere in the middle of all that pain. And when you stop believing you deserve to live, it closes something. Not just in you. In me too. I couldn’t reach you because you’d stopped reaching back. You depended on Alaric finding you.”
I stopped walking, my legs just gave out from what she’d said, and I sank down against the ground.
"That’s not fair," I said. "I was being tortured. I didn’t have the luxury of believing anything."
"I know," Kyra said, gentler now. "I’m not blaming you, Rowena. I would never blame you. I’m just telling you the truth, because you asked for it, and because you deserve to understand why it took this long."
"So it’s my fault you were gone?”
"No," Kyra said immediately and in a panicked voice because she accusedme. "It is not your fault. It was never your fault. What happened to you was done to you. I’m only telling you what closed the door between us. I’m not telling you that you’re the one who should have kept it open. You were surviving the only way you knew how, and it nearly broke both of us."
Something in me cracked at that, worse than anything anyone had done to me ever. Months of grief I hadn’t let myself feel came pouring out all at once, and I put my head in my hands and sobbed, right there against a tree, in the middle of a forest I didn’t know the name of, running from people who wanted me dead.
"I thought I killed you," I said, between breaths. "I thought it was my fault you were gone, that I wasn’t strong enough to protect you, and I’ve carried that every single day since."
"I’m here now," Kyra cooed, and her voice was soft. "That’s what matters. I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere again."
"Promise me," I said. "Promise me you won’t leave. Not again. I can’t survive that a second time."
"I promise," Kyra said. "I will never leave your side again. Not you, and not that baby you’re carrying. I will protect both of you with everything I have, for as long as I exist. You’re not alone anymore, Rowena. You were never supposed to be alone in the first place."
I sat there for a long time after that, crying until I didn’t have anything left to cry with, thankfully, the men hadn’t found me yet, it gave me more time to collect myself.
I’d always been a strong woman who never breaks down. But here I was crying like a child in a bush.
I almost laughed.
When I finally stood back up, something in me felt different.
My wolf was back. I had Kyra again.
"We need to keep moving," Kyra laughed. "Alaric’s people are searching. I can feel it getting closer."
At the sound of Alaric’s name, I gathered courage again. He still needed to know I was pregnant with his child.
"Let’s go find them," I said, wiping my face with the back of my hand.
I started walking again with a new found hope.