Kira’s question still hung in the cool air like smoke that refused to drift away. The wave crashed on the shore ahead, the sound filling the gap between them.

Derek stared at her for a long moment, the wind pulling at the edges of his shirt. Kira slowly lifted the teddy bear and sat it on her lap, hugging it as if it would take whatever heaviness that had settled over them away.

"It depends on what you ask," he said at last, his voice low and flat. "And just because you ask doesn’t mean I’ll give you an answer."

Kira eyed him sideways, her fingers tightening around the teddy bear in her lap. She had expected him to brush her off completely, the way he usually did. But he had not. He was waiting.

"Can you remember everything?" she asked, her voice barely louder than the wind. "I mean... everything that happened to you when you were much younger? Like, really little?"

Derek studied her again, amber eyes narrowing just a fraction. Why this question? Why now, when she had come back from the cottage looking as if the ground had cracked open beneath her feet? He did not like the way this conversation was turning out, or the way she was sounding so serious. But he answered anyway, because something in him refused to shut her out tonight.

"Yes," he replied shortly. "I have a photographic memory."

Kira’s eyes widened and she took a small breath. "That’s a gift I guess."

"It isn’t a gift; it’s more of a record that never stops playing. I have vivid memories of every face, every voice, the exact order of events and every word spoken to me since I was a child."

Kira shifted on the bench, the wood creaking softly under her. "Until what point of your life can you still recall the memories?"

"As little as five," Derek replied. "I can recall the smell of the air and the colour of the sky from the day I turned five years old as if it happened this morning." He paused, then turned his head back to her, his brow furrowed. "Why are you asking me this?"

She looked down at the teddy bear, her fingers picking at a loose thread on the teddy bear’s paw. "Because I can’t," she admitted softly. "There are so many gaps. Most of my childhood is just... gone. Whenever I try to think back to when I was small, I hit a wall. It’s like a thick fog that won’t let me through."

She felt a lump forming in her throat and swallowed hard. "That is why I keep a diary. I write everything down—what I see, what people say, how I feel because I’m afraid that one day I’ll forget everything I know now."

Derek said nothing for a few seconds. The wind howled like a living thing. He stared out at the dark water, but his mind had already slipped back to his own memories. They never stayed buried for long. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

"I never forget," he said quietly, but there was a bitterness in his tone that made Kira’s skin prickle. "I can still recall vividly the day my family were ambushed and killed by a traitor." His voice stayed even, but his fingers tightened around the beer can until the metal creaked.

"Each time I shut my eyes, I am back in that night. I see the bodies. I hear the screaming. I haven’t had a full night of peaceful sleep since that night." He looked at her then, and for a second, the coldness in his eyes was replaced by a burning, vengeful fire. "I swore I would destroy the traitor who led the ambush. I will tear down everything he has built, and I will destroy everyone who belongs to him. That is the only thing that keeps me moving."

Kira felt a cold shiver run down her spine. She had always known Derek carried something heavy, but hearing it spoken aloud like this, so cold and certain, made her chest ache. The conviction in his voice was terrifying.

She realised then why he was always buried in his work, why he stayed up until the early hours of the morning in his study, working as if his life depended on it, and why he seemed to have no room in his life for anything but power. It was not just duty. It was an escape.

Despite the coldness in his words, a quiet and uninvited pity rose deep inside her heart. She knew he would hate it if she showed it, so she kept her face calm. She could not help thinking how horrific those memories must be to shape a man’s entire life this way. To live every single night in the middle of a massacre sounded like a special kind of hell.

"That is quite vengeful, isn’t it?" she said softly. Her voice trembled just a little at the edges. "Is your vengeance going to take the bad memories away?"

Derek’s jaw worked for a moment. "It will not," he said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, icy level. "But it will give me great pleasure and satisfaction knowing I got justice for my family and my people. It will make me sleep better."

Something clicked in Kira’s mind. The pieces began to slide together too neatly. She thought about the way the Lycans looked at the werewolves, the tension that hummed between them and the way Derek spoke about "traitors."

She knew about the werewolves betraying the Lycans in the Great War with the Shadow King and his minions the Umbras, but King Marcus had forgiven that and had proposed peace between them before he died. Her eyes narrowed as she studied him.

"These traitors you’re talking about," she said, her voice cracking slightly. "By any chance... are you talking about the werewolves?"

The atmosphere on the deck changed instantly. It was as if the temperature had dropped twenty degrees. Derek’s eyes snapped to hers, and she saw a flicker of something she couldn’t name. Then, the walls went back up, higher and thicker than before.

"That," he said, his voice snapping like a whip, "is none of your business. I suppose you feel better now. I’m going inside."

But even as he rose to leave, the memory pulled him under anyway.