The Woman Who Woke
title: "Ruins and Remembering" wordCount: 2554
I knew we'd crossed into Carrigan territory when my wolf started screaming inside my chest, a sound like recognition and rage twisted together.
My nails bit into my palms. The men's watch on my wrist—still stopped at 11:47 PM—felt heavier than it had in three years.
"We can turn around." Declan's voice was measured. Calm. Like he wasn't driving me toward the place where I'd found my family's bodies cooling in their own blood.
"No."
"Sloane—"
"I said no." The words came out clipped. Sharp. "You said standing on Carrigan land might help. So let's—" My throat closed. I forced air through it. "Let's do this."
The trees lining the road were the same ones I'd climbed as a kid. Sugar maples that turned fire-red in October. My mother used to collect the leaves and press them between wax paper, making translucent windows that caught the light. I wondered if any of those were still in the house.
Then I remembered there wasn't a house anymore.
Declan slowed as we approached the gate. Or what was left of it. The iron had twisted in the heat, melted into shapes that looked almost organic. Like bones.
"The fire burned for two days," I said. Didn't recognize my own voice. "Neighbors called it in but nobody came. Carrigan land is—was—private. Protected. By the time the human fire department got clearance to enter, there was nothing left to save."
He parked but didn't kill the engine. "You do not have to do this today."
"Yeah, no. I do." I shoved the door open before I could change my mind.
The driveway crunched under my boots. Gravel and ash and three years of weather breaking down what the fire hadn't finished. My wolf was clawing at my ribs now, desperate to get out. To run this land the way we used to.
To find them.
"They are not here," Declan said quietly. He'd come up beside me without making a sound. "Whatever you are hoping to find—"
"I'm not hoping for anything." The lie tasted like copper. "I just need to see it."
The main structure was gone. Completely. Where our house had stood—three stories of stone and timber that my great-grandfather built in 1847—there was only the stone fireplace rising from the rubble like a tombstone. The mantel had collapsed but the hearth remained, blackened and cracked but standing.
I walked toward it. Each step felt like moving through water.
Scorch marks streaked the stone where family photos had hung. My parents' wedding portrait. My school pictures from kindergarten through sophomore year, the year I'd refused to smile because I thought it made me look tough. My father's military commendation from his time in the Marines, before he knew what he was.
All of it. Gone.
"There." Declan pointed to something glinting in the ash near the hearth's base.
I knelt. My hands were shaking as I brushed away the debris. The metal was tarnished, warped slightly from the heat, but I'd know it anywhere.
My mother's wedding ring.
She never took it off. Not once in twenty years of marriage. I used to spin it around her finger while she read to me, watching the small diamond catch the light.
The moment my skin touched the gold, the memory hit like a fist to the sternum.
"The omega designation is slavery by another name." My father's voice, rough with anger. "I will not let it stand."
"The Conclave will never allow it." Another voice. Male. Familiar in a way that made my stomach turn. "You're talking about dismantling a system that's existed for centuries."
"Then it is past time for change."
"Marcus, be reasonable—"
"I am done being reasonable. I have the proof. I know what they have been doing to omegas in the facilities. The conditioning. The—" His voice dropped too low to hear.
"If you bring this to the Council, they will destroy you."
"Let them try."
The memory fractured. Dissolved. Left me kneeling in the ash with my mother's ring clutched so tight the band cut into my palm.
"Sloane?" Declan crouched beside me. "What did you see?"
"My father." The words came out broken. "He was arguing with someone. About omega laws. About—" I looked up at him. "About proof. He said he had proof of what they were doing in the facilities."
Something flickered across Declan's face. Too fast to read.
"Do you know what he meant?" I asked. "What facilities?"
His left hand moved to his wrist. Pressed there. "I do not know the whole truth."
"But you know something."
"Your father made powerful enemies." He stood, putting distance between us. "He was pushing for reforms that would have fundamentally altered pack hierarchy. The omega designation, the breeding programs, the—" He stopped. "There were many who wanted him silenced."
"Breeding programs?" My voice came out flat. Dead. "What the fuck are breeding programs?"
"Sloane—"
"Tell me."
He was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was careful. Controlled. "Omegas are considered pack resources. Particularly fertile omegas. They are—" Another pause. "They are matched with alphas to produce strong bloodlines. It is presented as an honor. A duty."
"It's rape." The word hung between us like smoke. "You're describing systematic rape."
"The Conclave would call it tradition."
"And what would you call it?"
His teeth pressed together. "I would call it one of many reasons your father needed to die."
The honesty of it hit harder than a lie would have. I pushed to my feet, my mother's ring still clutched in my fist. "I need—" The sentence died. I couldn't finish it. Couldn't articulate the howling emptiness opening up inside my chest.
I walked away from him. Away from the ruins. Toward the tree line where the forest began.
The woods remembered me.
That's what it felt like, anyway. Like the trees recognized my footsteps. Like the earth knew the shape of my wolf even though I hadn't let her run here in three years.
I found the oak tree I used to climb. The lowest branch was still at the same height—just high enough that I'd had to jump for it as a kid. I'd spent hours up there, hidden in the leaves, watching the world move below me.
My father used to stand at the base and call up, "Sloane Carrigan, if you break your neck, your mother will kill us both."
And I'd laugh and climb higher.
The bark was rough under my palm. Solid. Real. I pressed my forehead against it and felt something crack open inside my chest.
The tears came without permission. Without sound. Just hot tracks down my face that I couldn't stop and didn't try to.
"Sloane."
I didn't turn around. Didn't want him to see me like this. Broken. Weak.
"Go away."
"No." He moved closer. I could feel him behind me, a wall of heat and controlled power. "You do not have to do this alone."
"Yeah, no, I really do." My voice was wrecked. Shredded. "That's kind of my thing. Being alone."
"It does not have to be."
I turned then. Looked at him through the blur of tears I couldn't blink away. "Why are you doing this? Why do you care if I—" The words stuck. "If I fall apart?"
"Because you are not falling apart." He said it like a fact. Like something he knew for certain. "You are remembering. There is a difference."
"Feels the same from here."
"I know."
Something in his voice made me look closer. Made me see past the controlled exterior to whatever he was keeping locked down underneath.
"Who did you lose?" I asked.
His expression didn't change. But his left hand moved to his wrist again. Pressed there like he was checking for a pulse.
"That is not a conversation for today."
"But it's a conversation we're going to have."
"Yes." He held my gaze. "When you are ready to hear it."
I wiped my face with the back of my hand. Took a breath that hurt going down. "My father was trying to help omegas. Trying to stop whatever the Conclave was doing to them. And someone killed him for it."
"Yes."
"You know who."
"I have suspicions." He paused. "But suspicions are not proof."
"My father said he had proof." I pulled my mother's ring from my pocket. The gold caught the late afternoon light, throwing small reflections across the ground. "He was going to expose them. And they killed my whole family to stop him."
"Sloane—"
"I'm going to find out who." The words came out steady. Sure. "I'm going to find out who gave the order. And I'm going to make them pay."
"That is a dangerous path."
"Good." I slipped the ring onto the chain around my neck, next to the small silver cross my grandmother gave me before she died. "I'm done being safe."
things were different now his expression. Something that looked almost like pride.
"Then we should go back," he said. "Before it gets dark."
But my wolf had other ideas.
She surged forward without warning—not aggressive, not violent, just urgent. Pulling me back toward the ruins with a force I couldn't resist.
"Sloane?" Declan's voice sharpened. "What is happening?"
"I don't—" I was already moving. Running. Following the pull in my chest that felt like a rope tied to something essential. "She wants something. My wolf. She's—"
I skidded to a stop at the edge of what used to be my father's study. The room where he kept his books and his maps and his endless notes about pack law and territory disputes and bloodline politics.
The room where I'd found his body.
My wolf was clawing at my ribs. Desperate. Insistent.
"There." I pointed to a section of collapsed wall. "Under there. Something's under there."
Declan moved past me, started shifting debris with careful precision. Stone and charred timber and melted glass. After a few minutes, his hand closed around something metal.
A lockbox.
Fire-damaged. Dented. But intact.
He pulled it free and set it on a relatively clear section of floor. The lock had melted partially, fused with heat. He looked at me.
"Do you want me to—"
"No." I knelt beside it. "I need to do this."
The metal was still warm. Or maybe that was just my hands shaking as I pried at the warped lock. It took three tries and a rock to finally break it open.
Inside were journals. Five of them. Leather-bound, pages yellowed with age and smoke damage but mostly readable.
My father's handwriting covered every page.
"Sloane." Declan's voice was low. Warning. "Reading those might be dangerous. Knowledge can make you a target."
"I'm already a target." I pulled the journals out, held them against my chest like they might disappear if I let go. "Garrett made sure of that."
"If the Conclave discovers you have these—"
"Then they'll have to go through me to get them back." I stood, journals clutched tight. "And I'm a lot harder to kill than I used to be."
He studied me for a long moment. Then nodded once. "We should leave. Now. Before—"
A howl cut through the air. Distant but clear.
Not a wolf. A coyote.
But the message was the same: someone was watching.
"Move." Declan's hand closed around my arm. "Now."
We ran.
The safe house felt smaller when we got back. Darker. Like the walls were pressing in.
I dropped the journals on the kitchen table. Stared at them like they might bite.
"You do not have to read them tonight," Declan said. He was making coffee. The mundane domesticity of it felt surreal after everything. "You could wait. Process what you learned today before—"
"No." I pulled out a chair. Sat. "I need to know."
He set a mug in front of me. Black coffee, no sugar. He'd remembered.
"Then I will be here," he said. "If you need—" He stopped. Started again. "I will be here."
I nodded. Couldn't quite look at him. "Thank you. For today. For taking me there."
"You do not need to thank me."
"Yeah, no, I do." I wrapped my hands around the mug. Let the heat ground me. "You didn't have to do any of this. Train me. Help me. You could have just—" I shrugged. "Let the Council take me. Or killed me yourself."
"That was never an option."
"Why not?"
He was quiet for so long I thought he wouldn't answer. Then: "Because you remind me of someone I failed to save. And I will not fail again."
The words hung between us. Heavy. True.
I wanted to ask who. Wanted to push. But the exhaustion was catching up with me, dragging at my bones.
"I'm going to read," I said instead. "You should—" I gestured vaguely. "Do whatever you do when you're not babysitting traumatized wolves."
a slight curve of his lips crossed his face. "I will be upstairs if you need me."
He left. I heard his footsteps on the stairs. The quiet click of his door closing.
Then it was just me and my father's journals.
I opened the first one. The entries started four years before his death. Notes about pack politics. Territory disputes. Bloodline records.
Boring. Safe.
I skipped ahead. Found the entries from the year before he died.
That's when everything changed.
The omega conditioning facilities are worse than I imagined. I have testimony from three survivors now. What they describe—what the Conclave has sanctioned—it is systematic brutalization designed to break their will. To make them compliant. Submissive. They call it 'training.' I call it torture.
My hands were shaking. I kept reading.
I have reached out to other alphas. Quietly. Carefully. Some agree that reform is necessary. Others—too many others—benefit too much from the current system to want change. They see omegas as resources. As tools. Not as people.
I will not let this stand.
I flipped through more pages. Watched my father's handwriting get more urgent. More desperate.
Garrett Voss came to me today with an offer from the Conclave—abandon the omega reforms and they will guarantee our pack's safety. I told him to go to hell. If I am right about what I have found, the Conclave is not just complicit in omega oppression—they are—
The entry ended mid-sentence.
The rest of the page was blank except for a dark stain that could only be blood.
I stared at it. At the proof that my father had known. Had tried to stop them. Had died for it.
And Garrett Voss had delivered the threat.
My wolf was snarling now. Clawing. Ready to tear through my skin and hunt.
I turned the page, desperate for more. For the rest of what my father had discovered.
But the next entry was dated two days before his death, and it was just one line:
I know what they are doing with the failed omegas. I know where the bodies are buried. And I am going to—
The journal slipped from my hands.
Because I knew that handwriting. Knew the way my father's letters slanted when he was angry.
And I knew what came next in that sentence.
He was going to expose them.
And they had killed him for it.