Crown and Shackles: The Princes Mate (Story Updated)

Echoes of Loss

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Ally’s POV

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Everything hurt — every nerve screaming, every breath a battle — but I was alive… I think. My eyelids fluttered open, and the sterile whiteness of the room stabbed at my senses. I was lying on a cold steel bed, the chill seeping into my bones. Panic clawed at my chest as memory crashed back — the attack, the chaos, the pain.

I forced my gaze downward, heart hammering. My belly was still there, swollen and whole, barely grazed by whatever nightmare I had survived. A shaky breath escaped me — thank the goddess.

Then I noticed the dress. Plain, new, white, and utterly unfamiliar. When I tried to sit up, a firm but careful hand pressed me gently back down. My eyes snapped open wider, burning with defiance. I growled low in my throat and turned to see a middle-aged woman beside the bed.

She looked — uncannily — like me. There was something in the cheekbones, the mouth, the way her eyes seemed to study mine. And that scent… soft and warm, oddly familiar. It stirred something inside me, something ancient and aching. I didn’t understand why.

“Shhh, sweetheart,” she murmured, brushing a strand of hair from my forehead with a tenderness that didn’t make sense.

“But… my baby—” My voice cracked. I tried to fight the weight dragging at my limbs.

“You’re both safe now,” she said gently. “But you need to rest.”

She knelt beside me, lifting a small vial. “Just a little something to help you sleep. You’ve been through more than most could bear.”

“No,” I whispered. “I don’t want to sleep. What if something happens while I’m out?”

“I won’t let anything happen,” she said, voice breaking just slightly. “Not this time.”

My eyes searched hers, the heaviness creeping up fast now. “Who… are you?”

She hesitated for only a second, then leaned close, her voice trembling as she spoke.

“I’m your mother, Ally.”

The words didn’t make sense at first. They echoed strangely in my mind. My mother? My mother?

I blinked slowly, heart pounding, trying to process what she had just said — what it meant. A hundred half-formed memories tugged at me, but I couldn’t hold onto any of them.

“You’re…” I breathed, but the rest of the sentence never came. The warmth of the medicine was too much now.

She touched my cheek, and I heard her whisper, “I’ve missed you every day.”

The world faded — but her words stayed with me, echoing softly into the dark.

My mother.

And then everything went quiet.

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Sam’s POV

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It’s been a month since Ally’s death.

Or what we believe was her death. No body — just blood. Too much of it. At first, Logan refused to believe she was gone. He spent days — nights— tearing through the woods himself, searching, howling, tracking any scent he could find. His wolf howled for her relentlessly, desperate and wild.

He refused to give up.

But after a week of false trails and empty ground, even Logan began to falter. The blood loss was too great, the signs too final. The doctor said it would’ve taken a miracle for her to survive.