The Echoes

The dreams started the night the furnace was fixed.

They weren't nightmares, exactly, but they were loud. Elara dreamed of mud. Of the smell of cordite and sulfur. She dreamed of a sky torn apart by screaming engines.

In the dream, she wasn't an illustrator. She was wearing white, stained with red. She was running across a field, carrying a bag. A whistle sounded—high and shrinking.

*Incoming.*

She dove. But she didn't hit the ground. Someone hit her first. A massive weight slammed into her, covering her body, shielding her from the blast. Fur. Wet, coarse fur against her cheek. A heartbeat thundering like a drum.

Elara woke up gasping, her heart racing.

"Loud," she whimpered, pressing her hands over her ears. "Too loud."

The silence of the Victorian house pressed back. It was morning.

Elara shook off the dream and climbed out of bed. She needed to distract herself. She decided to tackle the attic—the one room Gabriel hadn't renovated yet.

The attic was dusty and crammed with the detritus of her great-aunt’s life. Elara moved boxes of moth-eaten clothes and stacks of old *National Geographics*.

Under a loose floorboard in the corner, she found a metal lockbox.

Curious, Elara pried the rusted latch open with a screwdriver. Inside, there were no jewels or money. Just a stack of letters and a sketchbook.

Elara opened the sketchbook. The paper was yellowed and brittle.

The first few pages were standard anatomical studies—hands, feet, eyes. The work of an art student.

Then, she turned the page and dropped the book.

It was a portrait. Charcoal on paper.

The man in the drawing was leaning against a jeep, smoking a cigarette. He wore a uniform from the Second World War. His sleeves were rolled up. He had a hard jaw, a heavy brow, and a scar cutting through his left eyebrow.

It was Gabriel.

Not someone who looked like him. It *was* him. The exact set of his shoulders. The way his eyes held a mixture of danger and kindness.

At the bottom of the page, in handwriting that looked terrifyingly like her own, was an inscription:

*My Wolf. Normandy, 1944.*

"Elara?"

She spun around.

Gabriel was standing at the top of the attic stairs. He was breathing hard, as if he had run all the way from the shop. He smelled of distress—a sharp, ozone scent.

"I heard your heart rate spike," he said.

Elara held up the sketchbook. Her hands were shaking. "Who are you?"

Gabriel looked at the drawing. All the fight went out of him. He slumped against the doorframe, looking centuries old.

"I'm the one who waits," he said softly.

He walked toward her, slowly, palms up. "Elara, please. Don't be afraid. I didn't tell you because... because you usually don't remember until the end. And the remembering usually hurts you."

"1944," Elara pointed to the date. "You haven't aged a day."

"I am Lycan," Gabriel said. "We age slowly. But that’s not the point. The point is you."

He stopped in front of her. He reached out and touched the sketchbook, his finger tracing the charcoal face.

"You are a Returning Soul," he explained, his voice breaking. "We are mates. Fated. In every life, you find me. In 1918, you were a nurse. In 1944, you were a field medic. In 1969... you were a journalist."

"And what happens?" Elara whispered, tears spilling down her cheeks. "Why don't I remember?"

"Because you die," Gabriel choked out. "Every time. Before we can have a life. Before we can be safe. There is a... a Shadow. A curse. It hunts fated mates. It feeds on the tragedy of separation."

He grabbed her shoulders, his grip desperate.

"I have buried you three times, Elara. Three times I have stood over your grave and waited for the wheel to turn. I can't do it again. I won't."

Elara looked into his eyes—the amber eyes from her dream. The eyes of the wolf that had shielded her.

The cold inside her cracked. The memories didn't flood back, but the *feeling* did. The familiarity. The bone-deep knowledge that this man belonged to her, and she to him.

"The dream," she whispered. "The wolf. That was you."

"I tried to shield you," Gabriel said, tears tracking through the dust on his face. "But the bomb was too close."

Elara dropped the book and threw her arms around his neck. She buried her face in the crook of his shoulder, inhaling the cedar and smoke.

"I'm here now," she sobbed. "I'm here."

Gabriel wrapped his arms around her, lifting her off her feet, crushing her to his chest. "I have you. I have you."

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