Chase’s POV

    Chase was immediately taken aback. “How did you know about that?”

    “I’m afraid I have to ask you,” Amber continued, her voice softening in a way he hadn’t heard before,

    especially while she was donning that doctor’s coat. “Is she still alive?”

    His heart ached, as it always did when he thought of her. “There’s no guarantee that she was my mate. We were just children really, only thirteen when we felt a pull to each other. We were just friends for a long time, until I kissed her at sixteen. Sparks flew… I never felt anything like it since.”

    Even Chase’s wolf was hung up on Violet, a woman the wolf had never technically met.

    “What was her name?” Amber asked gently, and it was so kind for her to ask that, that Chase’s heart, for a moment, hurt in a different way.

    “Her name was Violet,” Chase said.

    “What happened to her?” Amber asked.

    Chase lowered his head. He hated thinking of Violet, not because he didn’t love her still, but because any thoughts of her came with thoughts of this. “She went swimming in theke alone. I don’t know how

    exactly, but… I was told she drowned. We were 17.”

    He never got to isee /iher body. His parents told him it wasn’t a sight for any young man and he should remember her as she was.

    “I must ask another difficult question, please forgive me,” she said.

    “I’d never be mad at you, Amber,” Chase said, and found that he meant it. Maybe she only wanted to know about this part of his past for medical reasons, but she was still the only one who ever cared.

    His parents wanted to bury it and would scold him for even mentioning Violet. As Violet died before we were of age to start attending the high society parties, most people Chase interacted with now didn’t even know Violet. Her parents moved away, and that was that.

    Olívia, nor any of this other girlfriends, cared who he had associated with in the past. They only wanted him for his looks and his charmsb, /band for favors, like Olivia had asked of him in even being here.

    He was getting much more than he bargained for.

    “Was the funeral closed casket?” Amber asked. “Did you ever see Violet’s body at all?”

    “No, I didn’t see her. They only had a picture of her at the funeral, next to the closed casket.” That remained consistently the worst day of my life. Even discovering my own diagnosis, and learning that I might soon die myself, was not as terrible as knowing that Violet had been taken from me and I’d never

    see her again.

    When my parents had told me the news, I hadn’t quite believed it, expecting Violet to walk through the

    door at any moment.

    The funeral had made things real.

    What made things worse, her parents weren’t even there. Their grief was itoo /imuch, my parents had told

    me then, and said the whole family moved to a different pack because of the tragedy.

    “But as I said, we were only 17 when it happened. Our wolves were only barely manifesting then. We felt

    the pull to each other, but there was no confirmation that we had been fated mates.”

    Amber let the words hang in the air for a while, of which Chase was appreciative.

    Then she spoke again, “I’m sorry to bring up old memories, but it was essential. The separation of fated

    mates can cause a strain on a werewolf’s heart, as well as his mind. Perhaps because your bond was not

    fully formed, your mind seems intact. Your heart, however…”

    “Violet… caused thisb?/bb” /b

    “No,” Amber said quickly. “Your heart is weak. Your slow healing is tied to that. But the anomaly that those other healers see in you, and the tremor in your heartbeat, that is tied to lost mate sickness.”

    The other healers had been so quick to dismiss me. They hadn’t investigated further. They never asked the same questions as Amber, all just assuming I was a lost cause.