"I have to go away for a few days," Blake announced to the family over breakfast the following morning. "To visit the Elmwood pack."

The day had started warm and sunny. Shafts of early morning light softly illuminated Hannah's bed covers, and woke her before her usual nightmare could really get started. It was a morning that invited extra time under the soft, cotton sheets and breakfast in bed. Unfortunately, Hannah had opened her eyes to a world that demanded she get up and participate instead of lazing around all day.

"They don't have telephones?" Sarah asked her nephew, disapproval written across her face. She picked up a slice of toast and began to butter it aggressively.

"This warrants more than a phone call, Aunt Sarah," Blake replied through gritted teeth pouring a glass of orange juice for Hannah, who looked decidedly pale that morning.

She'd woken feeling drained and tired. A niggling headache had formed at some point during the night, and refused to go away even after taking the medication Doc had prescribed to counteract them. Given the choice, she would have burrowed deep under the covers and refused to come out. Instead, she slipped into an empty chair and attempted to follow the conversation, smiling gratefully at Blake.

"Ridiculous. You can't run off every time you feel like it," Aunt Sarah said.

Blake stiffened, his features set like stone and Asher, a strong black coffee clutched in one hand, cast their Aunt a warning look which, as always, she chose to ignore.

"You have responsibilities here. Send Marcus," she said shortly.

Blake took a deep breath and held his temper, which Hannah felt sure was a safer option than arguing with her. She wanted to ask when they were leaving, but her headache had stepped up a notch since venturing downstairs, clammering for attention against her skull. She could really do with going back to bed.

"Marcus will be coming with me," Blake informed Sarah, selecting a slice of toast of his own. He offered the plate to Hannah who shuddered and shook her head, wincing as she did so. "Along with several of our warriors, and Ash," he continued, his eyes scanning Hannah with concern.

She avoided his gaze and sustained her pretense of normality by reaching for an egg and placing it oh-so-very carefully on the pristine white plate in front of her. She stared at it blankly.

Now, how to get into it?

She supposed she could break the delicate shell with a spoon - if she weren't afraid the sudden movement would shatter what remained of her ability to function. Maybe, if she stared at the egg long enough, the pounding in her head would sense her predicament and reach out to do it for her.

"Hmph. I don't like it," Sarah sniffed, unable to resist expressing her disapproval of his plan. Her voice clattered amongst the fine china like she was throwing each piece against the wall.

"You don't have to like it," Blake snapped, his patience wearing thin. "You just have to keep an eye on Sky and Hannah while I'm gone."

"I don't need –" Sky started indignantly, but closed her mouth when Asher shook his head at her warningly. She pouted and expressed her dissatisfaction with the situation by banging the serving trays noisily as she searched for her breakfast.

Hannah wasn't the only one who winced.

"Please don't do that, Sky," Asher asked plaintively, one hand pinching the bridge of his nose. "It's far too early for that amount of noise." He took a sip of his scalding drink and shuddered, shielding his eyes from the sun that shone determinedly through the windows.

"Rough night, was it?" his aunt asked, her lips tightened in a thin line of disapproval.

"No," he said wearily. "Just... long." He took another swig of the caffeine filled beverage and rolled his shoulders back, working out some of the kinks in his neck. "A couple more of these and I'll be raring to go," he assured her.

Sarah scrutinised him from behind her toast, her sharp eyes running up and down the exhausted wolf's body, missing nothing. "I'll pour you some herbal tea," she declared, offering him the pot that sat in front of her. "Nothing better for the constitution than tea."

Asher shuddered and shook his head. "Coffee, Aunt Sarah. Just Coffee, thank you." He drained his cup, ignoring the dissatisfied look his aunt sent his way.

Hannah looked at him through pain-filled eyes. If possible, he looked worse than she did. Pale skinned, with deep shadows under his eyes, more prominent than even his brothers - who's tired eyes suggested he hadn't been sleeping much recently either.

How long can a wolf keep going without sleep? she pondered to herself, mulling over the real possibility that half the room might soon collapse out of sheer exhaustion. She opened her mouth to say something about it, but the pain in her head tapped her sharply on her shoulder, reminding her of the impossibility of concentrating on anything else.

"Alex will be in charge of the pack while we're away. Everything is arranged –"

Blake continued talking, outlining the plans for the pack and his household, but Hannah could no longer hear him. A part of her desperately wanted to protest and ask why she needed to stay behind – they were going to Elmwood because of her, after all. But the pain had reached such epic proportions that she was struggling to hold back her nausea. She eyed the table with steely determination. Sarah would definitely not approve of such stains upon the tablecloth.

The sharp burst of agony behind her eyes started blurring her vision, taking all the attention she had left. Her headaches came and went with irritating regularity since her head injury, but she'd not experienced anything like this since her first day in the hospital. She knew she shouldn't have gotten up this morning.

The other members of the party, remaining oblivious to the agony she was enduring, continuing to bicker and banter their way through breakfast as normal.

Asher moved on to his second cup of coffee, refusing the offer of any food this early in the day, and Sky stealthily snuck extra helpings of bacon onto her plate whenever Aunt Sarah wasn't looking. Every now and then, she'd send another pout in her brother's direction and he'd return it with a look of placid un-concern.

The slice of toast Blake waved back and forth to emphasise each point of their conversation swam across Hannah's increasingly hazy vision. She tried to focus on it. Somewhere, in the depths of her consciousness her mind expressed its disapproval. The bread remained almost as white as it had started. It couldn't really be called toast. An insult to toast, perhaps. The barest hint of colour couldn't prevent it from flopping to one side forlornly - the weight of the butter and jam too much for its lacklustre attempts to pretend that it had, in fact, seen a toaster that morning.

I could press it against Sarah's teapot and get more colour on it than that, she thought critically, registering a faint surprise that her mind could still focus on such mundane affairs. A drop of water fell onto her hand, and her attention shifted.

Where did... She raised trembling fingers to her face. Her cheeks were wet. Tears of pain were escaping her eyes to roll forlornly down her cheeks.

Blake’s somewhat alarmed attention was now squarely on her. He asked her something, but she couldn't focus enough to hear his words so she just stared at him, his increasingly concerned gaze swimming in and out of view as the pain increased behind her eyes.

Just as she was considering asking one of them to call for the doctor, a shaft of burning fire ripped through her skull - so painful that she cried out, unable to keep up any pretense of normality.

The dining room and its chattering occupants faded into the background. For the first time in weeks, a memory jumped out at her from the very centre of the pain.

A face. Just a face. But one she knew better than her own. A woman, smiling and beautiful, with long red hair that coiled around her in an elegant braid and vibrant green eyes that matched her own; older, but filled with mischief.

Hannah stared into the distance, the pain locking her in place, wholly consumed by the image that swam in front of her. Dimly, she could hear voices in urgent discussion, a hand over hers and someone calling out a name; familiar to her but, she knew with a sudden clarity she couldn't explain, not hers.

Try as she might, she was unable to respond or even fully register the panic her sudden attack had elicited among her companions. As though caught in a landslide, the memories of this woman rushed through her.

Dancing by a large open fire, her red hair flying around the open flames. Laughing as she made daisy chains in an overgrown meadow. Baking scones in a comfortable looking kitchen.

She gasped out loud, feeling a sudden relief from the agony. Like a tooth finally pulled, it was immediate and undeniably welcome. She slowly returned to the dining room, trembling with the aftermath of feelings that came with her forgotten memory.

"What's wrong?" Blake was asking, and not for the first time by the sounds of things. Cupping her vacant face in his hands, his eyes stared into her own. Somehow - in the brief moment she had given in to the pain - he had moved around the table to her side, his worried eyes scanning her body, checking for injuries.

She blinked as his face swam back into focus, and her bottom lip trembled as she realised a terrible truth.

Oh Goddess, she's dead.

"I remembered!" she exclaimed, swiping at the remnants of tears running down her cheeks. "I remembered my mother.” The words flew out of her, unbidden. “Aghaidh aingil air tha fìor-chuimhne agam air - she was beautiful!" A wrenching pain deep in her heart spoke of a terrible truth. She would never see her again.

Blake's eyes widened and he released her face, the warmth his hands left behind enveloping her, even in her despair.

"She's dead! Ban-dia! a mhàthair ghràdhaich Ise i marbh!" Hannah's face crumpled and she collapsed into him, her whole body shaking as she forced herself to hold back any more tears. She couldn't cry. Not here. Not now. Not for a heartache so private that her mind was struggling to reconcile with the sudden loss, despite her heart telling her that loss was years ago.

Unable to cling to even the slightest detail of her past, she had hoped that her family might at least be out there, searching for her, even now. But her memories betrayed her; dashing the hope that she might one day be reunited with her mother, at least. The wound had been freshly opened, and it cast doubt upon everything she'd convinced herself to be true.

Wrapped in her new-found grief, she barely registered that Blake pulled her into his arms to comfort her. She also didn't notice the sudden silence in the dining room until she heard Asher quietly ask the others:

"Is that the first time she's done that?"

"I have no idea," Aunt Sarah replied. "But then, we haven't spent much time together."

"What was it? French? Spanish?" Sky asked, her voice a squeak of supressed excitement.

"Hush, Sky," Blake warned his sister, tightening his grip around Hannah.

I don't understand. She pulled herself out of Blake's arms, swallowing the lump in her throat, and looked at the others in puzzlement.

Sky was bouncing up and down in her chair biting her lip to keep from talking, Aunt Sarah was showing the first genuine interest in her since she first arrived, and Asher was hovering by the door. One hand hovering over the handle, he looked as though he'd been on the verge of rushing out of the room when she'd come around.

She looked up at Blake's concerned face. "What is it? What did I do?" She hiccupped.

Four pairs of eyes turned to stare at her in surprise.

"You don't know?" he asked gently, sliding into the chair beside her once he had reassured himself that she was alright.

Yes of course, I'm just asking for the hell of it, the voice within wanted to snap. She swallowed the unkind words, preventing them from escaping her lips and looked between their concerned faces for am answer.

Asher answered on Blake's behalf. "You spoke another language, Hannah."

"I - I didn't, did I?" Perplexed she ran back through her own thoughts. She didn't remember changing languages.

Sky nodded in the background.

"What - what language did I speak?" She noticed her headache had dulled down to its usual, muted throb, much to her relief. It would dissipate over the next couple of hours, beaten back once again by Doc's meds, but she still felt exceptionally tired. A weight of newly discovered emotions pressing down on her like weighted chains.

"I don't know –" Asher began.

"It was Gaelic, dear," Aunt Sarah told her taking a bite of her toast.

Asher stared at her incredulously from across the room, his mouth hanging open. "How did you –"

"Languages were my area of expertise, Asher," she pointed out. "No one could match me for languages, back in the day." She gave him a smug smile and poured a fresh cup of tea, heaping several teaspoons of sugar into the cup.

"Go and get the doctor," Blake ordered his brother, the inflection in his voice implying this wasn't the first time he'd said it.

Hannah shook her head, enjoying the lack of pain. No more hospitals. "I'm okay, I don't need to go to the surgery. The pain - the pain's gone now." She tried to smile in what she hoped was a convincing way, ignoring the look of pleading in Blake's eyes.

She turned back towards Sarah and was startled to find her hovering over the chair, pushing the cup of tea into her trembling hands. For an old lady she could move fast, when she wanted to.

"Drink," Sarah ordered firmly, making her way slowly back to her own chair. Hannah opened her mouth to decline, but Sarah raised one perfect eyebrow and said: "Drink. Or you'll be going straight to the hospital."

Eager to avoid another trip to that sterile place, she obediently lifted the cup to her mouth and took a small sip. Her face twisted into a grimace as the sugar overload hit the back of her teeth.

Sarah nodded approvingly. "Hot, sweet tea. Drink it all and you'll feel much better soon."

Hannah wrinkled her nose but forced herself to take another sip, then another. As the hot liquid spread through her she was surprised to find that she did, indeed feel a little better. The headache further retreated into the back of her mind, her head felt clearer, and some of the weariness drained from her aching muscles.

"What did I say? In Gaelic?" she asked Sarah, fighting the wobble in her voice.

Sarah observed her features for a moment, watching as a flush of colour return to her cheeks. "You called out to the Goddess, told us your mother had the face of an angel and that she had passed on,"

"She did," Hannah murmured, pushing down the grief welling up inside her. "A long time ago. I don't know how I know that; I just do."

"How are you feeling?" Blake asked warily. His eyes were strained with a mixture of concern and... something else she couldn't quite understand.

She thought about it a moment. "I feel... better," she finally replied.

Sarah nodded in approval. "See?" She nudged her nephew with a bony elbow. "Tea. Not coffee. Tea."

Asher rolled his eyes and exchanged a look with his brother. "I'll tell Doc you'll be down to see him later," he told his brother. His eyes glazed as a silent communication passed between them.

Blake nodded, his eyes on Hannah, who efforts to control her emotions had resulted in a series of silent hiccups sending tiny tremors running across her small frame.

"Try holding your breath," Sky suggested through a mouthful of scrambled eggs, oblivious to the subtle tension in the room.

Asher's eyes cleared, and he glared at his sister before turning to observe the redhead. "I'm sorry you've been forced to relive your loss all over again," he said to Hannah, his voice laced with the sympathy of one who has been through such a loss themselves. "The death of a parent is something you never truly recover from. But to live through it twice is a cruelty I would wish on no-one."

Hannah could manage little more than a nod of acknowledgement and a small, but grateful smile.

Blake's growl was unsubtle, and impatient.

“Time for school, Sky.” Asher reached over, and dragged his oblivious sister out of the room as she wailed in protest.

"But I haven't finished my breakfast –"

Aunt Sarah, who would not be rushed, finished her toast calmly, then stood up to follow them. Pausing in the doorway she looked speculatively at her nephew hovering over Hannah and her eyes narrowed as she came to an internal decision.

"Duty is an uncomfortable companion," she murmured, looking intently into Blake's haunted eyes. "The shadows of the past have a way of interfering with the strongest desires. But sometimes... they must be allowed to have their way." She shook her head sadly as she slipped out of the door.

Hannah rubbed her tired eyes and tried desperately to pull herself together. Despite the grief being hers, Blake looked so lost sitting beside her. His eyes dark with feelings she felt must be to do with more than just her, and she fought the urge to comfort him instead.

She glanced at their reflections on the window and he followed her gaze. Two pairs of haunted eyes looked back at her and, with a sudden clarity, she realised his pain matched her own. She wasn't alone in her grief, he walked it with her. Blake had suffered a loss too.

She hiccupped again, and his brow furrowed. Glancing between her and the door Sarah had disappeared through he hesitated a moment, an agony of indecision across his face, then seemed to come to a decision.

"Come with me," he murmured, taking her hand softly in his.

Too preoccupied with holding herself together to protest, she allowed herself to be led. His hand was warm and comforting in hers and she held her tears at bay by concentrating on the sensation as they left through a side door she'd not noticed before today.

He led her out of the back of the house and down towards the tree line, where the tall pines swayed majestically, dancing to the whispers of a gentle breeze. Though content to admire their beauty from the relative safety of the village, Hannah had yet to return to the forest in which she had lost everything.

Emboldened by his touch, she didn't hesitate to follow the Alpha's broad frame into the shadow of the trees, her fear cancelled out by her unexplained but complete confidence in his ability to protect her.

No matter the cost.