WYATT'S POV
Three hours past midnight and Wyatt still hadn't slept.
His office was dark except for the glow of his laptop screen. He'd been staring at it for the last two hours without moving. His collar felt too tight. His chest wouldn't expand right. Every time he blinked, he saw her face in the emergency room. The shock in her eyes. The recognition. The way her entire body had responded to him before she'd forced it away.
He knew her.
This was the problem. He knew her. His wolf knew her. But his mind insisted it was impossible. He'd been engaged to Victoria for as long as he could remember. He'd never met a woman named Lena Morrison. Never been to whatever place held the memories his wolf was screaming about.
Yet his body remembered everything.
Wyatt pushed away from his desk and started pacing. His office was on the third floor of the packhouse. Expensive furniture. Floor-to-ceiling windows. A space designed to project power and control. Right now it felt like a cage.
He could feel Victoria sleeping two rooms over. Could smell her perfume lingering in the air. His father had made it clear they should be sharing a bed by now. Consolidating the union. Proving their commitment to the alliance. Wyatt had been moving into the arrangement slowly. Letting it happen. Telling himself it was what had to happen.
Until tonight.
Until he'd smelled rain and lake water and the kind of recognition that made his wolf lose its mind.
Wyatt grabbed his laptop and opened it with more force than necessary. He typed her name before he could talk himself out of it. Lena Morrison. RN. North Ridge Pack Hospital. The staff directory pulled up immediately.
There.
Her photo filled the screen. It was just a standard hospital ID photo. Her dark hair pulled back. Her face calm and professional. But even in that simple image, he could see the vulnerability beneath the surface. The sadness she was trying to hide. The strength that came from surviving something that should have broken her.
He stared at her photo for so long his eyes started burning.
The memories pushed harder. Not full memories. Just fragments. Pieces that didn't fit anywhere in his timeline. A woman laughing. Hands on his chest. The feeling of coming home. All of it attached to this face. All of it impossible.
His wolf clawed at him from the inside. Demanding. Furious. Desperate. It wanted him to get up right now and find her. Claim her. Mark her. Make sure no other male ever smelled her without understanding she was taken.
Wyatt closed his eyes and forced his wolf back down. He was the Alpha. He controlled his instincts. Not the other way around.
But his hands were shaking.
He opened his eyes and looked at her photo again. Lena Morrison. The name was familiar in a way that made his chest tight. Like his soul recognized it even if his mind refused to accept the connection.
What if the rogue attack had done more damage than he'd thought? What if his memory loss wasn't just a gap but actual confusion about timelines? What if something had happened during those missing days that he needed to remember?
What if this woman was the reason his wolf had been going insane for three months?
Wyatt pushed his chair back and started pacing again. He couldn't do this. Couldn't pursue a connection with a woman he didn't know just because his wolf was responding to something primal. He was the Alpha of North Ridge. He had responsibilities. Commitments. A future already planned by people more powerful than him.
Victoria's family was important. The alliance was important. His pack was important.
This woman was a stranger.
But his wolf kept screaming that she wasn't a stranger. That she was the most important thing in his entire life and he was sitting in his office instead of going to find her.
Wyatt pulled up her hospital schedule on his laptop. Night shift tonight. Emergency room. She was probably somewhere in the hospital right now. Just floors below him. Working. Living her life. Completely unaware that he was sitting in his office in the darkness, staring at her photo like a man losing his mind.
He could go find her.
He could walk downstairs right now. Find her on the night shift. Ask her if they'd met before. Ask her what she knew about the missing pieces of his memory. Ask her why his entire body was responding to her like she was his mate.
Except she wasn't his mate.
Victoria was his mate. Victoria with her perfect breeding and perfect family connections and perfect understanding that love was a strategy, not an emotion.
Wyatt closed the laptop with more force than necessary. The screen went dark. He sat in the blackness of his office with his head in his hands and felt like he was drowning.
Three months. Three months his wolf had been screaming. Three months he'd been ignoring the instincts that told him something was fundamentally wrong with his life. Three months of fragmented memories and impossible dreams and waking up at night feeling like he was losing someone crucial.
And tonight he'd finally found her.
Her name was Lena Morrison and she worked in his hospital and his wolf would never let this go.
The sun was starting to come up when Wyatt finally left his office. His phone buzzed with messages. Pack business. His father wanting updates. Victoria asking where he was. All of it felt distant and irrelevant.
He showered. Changed clothes. Got ready to face another day of pretending his life made sense when nothing made sense anymore.
River was already in the kitchen when Wyatt got downstairs. His brother looked tired. Pack politics never slept. Neither did the people responsible for managing them.
"Long night?" River asked.
Wyatt didn't answer. He just pulled out his phone and made the call. River watched him carefully as he waited for the other end to pick up.
When it connected, Wyatt didn't wait for greeting. He spoke before he could overthink it.
"I need you to find out everything about a hospital nurse named Lena Morrison," Wyatt said. His voice sounded harsh. Demanding. Like he was giving an order that couldn't be refused.
River's cup of coffee froze halfway to his mouth.
"Lena Morrison?" River echoed. "The new transfer from Riverside Town?"
"That's the one."
River slowly lowered his coffee. When he looked at Wyatt, there was something in his expression that looked like understanding. Like he'd just figured out something important.
"What are you looking for?" River asked carefully.
Wyatt didn't have an answer. He didn't know why the woman who'd been a receptionist at the North Ridge hospital for literally one shift was suddenly the most important mystery of his life. He didn't know why seeing her face for five seconds had upended everything he thought he understood about himself.
He just knew that he had to know everything about her.
"Just find out," Wyatt said. "Where she came from. Why she transferred. Who she knows in Riverside Town. Everything. And River? I need it today."
He hung up before his brother could ask more questions.
River stared at him for a long moment. Then he said quietly, "This is about what happened in the emergency room last night, isn't it?"
Wyatt didn't answer. Didn't trust himself to speak.
River set down his coffee and pulled out his own phone. "I'll make some calls. But Wyatt, be careful. If this girl is who I think she might be, there could be complications."
"Complications with what?"
River looked at him like he was asking the wrong question. "With everything. With Victoria. With your father. With the alliance that's supposed to keep this pack safe."
Wyatt turned away from his brother. He didn't care about Victoria. He didn't care about his father's politics. He didn't care about alliances or pack safety or anything except the fact that a woman named Lena Morrison existed and his entire life suddenly made no sense because of it.
His wolf was finally quiet. Not satisfied, but quiet. Like it was waiting for the next move. Like it understood that things were about to change fundamentally and it had been patient long enough.
The hunt had begun.