[Dylan’s POV]
My brother runs a meeting the way most people breathe—automatic, efficient, and no wasted motion. Border patrol rotations, supply chain numbers, a water-rights dispute between two elders that predates my birth… Leon cycles through it all without a single misplaced word.
That's exactly what's killing me.
The man across from me remembers every clause of every treaty we've ever signed. But hasn't once mentioned since the night before the wedding the woman he spent seven of those years turning down political matches over.
He talked about Skyler constantly while we were at the Crescent Ridge territory. About his plans for her since he met her again and she turned out to be the woman. His mate.
And now… nothing. As if she never existed in his world.
I wait until he's between items—casual and easy, just a younger brother Dylan doing what Dylan does best, which is talking.
"Hey, I was thinking about the Moon Goddess Festival the other day—the one where Dad went, before everything..." I trail off and let the silence work.
Leon's pen stops mid-notation, not dramatically—just pauses. The way a machine catches when something fouls the gears.
"What about it?" His voice is flat, mildly curious, as if I’m asking him about the weather.
"That whole period after… I mean, you came back different, man." I lean back, performing ease while every nerve in me watches his face. "Turned down the Ashworth match, the Delgado offer, the thing with the Meridian Alpha's daughter."
I keep my body open, relaxed, as if what comes next is just another piece of office chatter.
"You told me there was someone—a girl you met that night, one who rewired everything in you. You spent seven years trying to…" The color drains from his face.
Not gradually—it just leaves. Then a thin red line appears at his left nostril, darkening fast.
What. The. Hell?
“Dylan, we have more urg…” He blinks and loses the sentence he was building.
For three awful seconds my brother, the most articulate person I've ever known, stares at me with the blank confusion of a man who's walked into a room and can't remember what brought him there.
"I..." He swipes the blood with the back of his hand and stares at the red smear like it's offended him. "What are you talking about… there was no girl. I don’t recall anything like that."
His voice snaps back to normal like a rubber band—crisp, composed, and already moving.
"Can we get back to the eastern border? Harmon's team flagged movement near the tree line."
One second he's bleeding from a memory his brain won't release, and the next he's asking about patrol rotations like the last thirty seconds got deleted from the recording.
I nod, pull up the report, and finish the briefing on muscle memory alone, while my whole body buzzes with anxiety. Everything else in me is already out of this chair, already halfway to Dr. Fielding's office. Already building the case that's been assembling itself since Crescent Ridge.
The medical office smells like antiseptic and burnt coffee. He looks like he hasn't slept properly since we arrived, and honestly, I'd feel targeted by a mirror right now too.
"The stress diagnosis was wrong." I close the door and stay on my feet, because sitting implies a discussion and this is more of an ambush. "I need you to hear all of it before you respond."
He sets his mug down. He's known me since I was sixteen and wrapped a truck around a fence post, so the braced look he gives me is well-practiced territory.
"Leon’s got memory loss, you knew that?” Dr. Fielding watches me with unnatural patience and shakes his head ‘no’. “Yeah, you didn’t. And that’s because it’s surgical, Doc. Not global—surgical."
I'm pacing, can't help it—my body runs thinking when my brain gets overwhelmed.
"Pack law, childhood, combat training—every tactical function is perfect. Ask him to recite Ashworth and he'll annotate it for you. But personal memories from one specific period are gone." My hands won't settle, so they go into my pockets. "A woman he spent years looking for, turned down three political marriages over… nothing."
I tell him what happened in the briefing today. The white face, the nosebleed, the three-second blackout followed by a seamless snap to border reports. Dr. Fielding leans forward and I watch the stress diagnosis crumble behind his eyes in real time.
"The hemorrhagic reaction concerns me." He removes his glasses—the gesture he reaches for when he's demolishing his own conclusions. "Before the wedding… I attributed his symptoms to acute stress—fever, tachycardia, loss of consciousness."
He holds the glasses up to the light, inspecting them like they've personally wronged him.
"But a nosebleed triggered by a conversational promp…. It’s a different mechanism entirely."
"It's not stress." I grip the back of the chair until I feel the wood grain through my palms. "He can run a pack meeting flawlessly but can't remember why he searched for one person for seven years."
I lean forward, holding his gaze across the desk.
"That's not overwhelmed or stressed, Doc. That's edited."
The word hums in the space between us. Dr. Fielding replaces his glasses like he’s just rebuilt his entire framework from the ground up.
"This doesn't match any neurological pattern I know." His voice drops into the register he reserves for the kind of news nobody wants. "Selective erasure with a physical defense response when blocked content is accessed… that's not organic."
He meets my eyes, and the certainty there makes my stomach drop. "That's something external—something done to him. A substance, a toxin?"
My pulse kicks hard against the inside of my wrist. My fingers dig into the chair back, knuckles whitening.
"I can't identify the mechanism from a standard exam." He raises a hand before I can push. "But the reaction tells me two things—forcing the memories back won't work, because the block is self-protecting and hurting Alpha Leon physically."
He lowers the hand, and the gravity in his face makes my stomach tighten. "Push harder, and you risk seizures, hemorrhaging—possibly irreversible damage."
My throat works around the next words, muscles tight, refusing to cooperate. "What else? There has to be something that might help him."
"The mate bond." Dr. Fielding chooses each word like something that might shatter if held wrong. "If Leon has a true mate you know about… That bond is the strongest anchor. I’d consider prolonged proximity that will give his mind its best chance of healing naturally. Mates can heal each other in moments of need."
He watches my face, then continues. "The memories want to surface. But they need a pathway that won't trigger the defense, and the mate bond is the only force powerful enough to open that door without destroying what's behind it. If he has none… well, I guess on time might heal him."
I stand still and let that settle into my bones. Someone did this deliberately—precisely, skillfully. Leaving my brother functional everywhere except the one place that matters to him most.
"Thank you." Steadier than the rest of me feels, which qualifies as a minor miracle. "I'll take it from here."
"Dylan." His voice catches me at the threshold, and the weight in it stops my hand on the frame. "Whoever did this had access, motive, and knowledge well beyond conventional medicine."
He holds my gaze for a beat that says everything his professional tone won't.
"This was not amateur work."
The corridor is long, and I walk it slowly, turning pieces. Who had access? Anyone in that pack house the night before the wedding. Who had a motive? Anyone threatened by Leon's attachment to a certain wolfless woman.
The woman who delivered said glass… I round the corner and walk straight into something warm that yelps.
Medical files scatter across the tile and Skyler is staring up at me, blue eyes unguarded for exactly one heartbeat before the walls slam into place.
The woman the doctor just told me is the only key to my brother's mind.
And the last person who put a glass in Leon's hand before everything he knew about her disappeared.