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I started talking to myself when I was seven. My therapist said it was normal—a coping mechanism for loneliness. What she didn't know, what nobody knew, was that somewhere along the way, something started answering.

It began as an echo. My voice, but delayed by half a second. Then the delay grew longer. Then the words changed. And last night, for the first time in thirty years, the voice said something I hadn't thought first.

Let me explain.

I live alone in my grandmother's old house—the one she left me when she passed. It's a crooked Victorian thing on the edge of town, all creaking floorboards and windows that rattle even when there's no wind. I moved in six months ago, after my divorce. The silence here is absolute. No neighbors for half a mile. No traffic. Just the house settling into its bones and my own voice bouncing off the walls.

I talk to myself constantly. Always have. "Where did I put my keys?" "What should I make for dinner?" "Don't forget to call the electrician." Mundane things. Necessary things. The sound of my own voice keeps me company.

But three weeks ago, I noticed something strange.

I was in the kitchen, making tea, and I muttered, "I should really fix that dripping faucet."

And from somewhere behind me—from the hallway, maybe, or the stairs—I heard: "Yes, you should."

My voice. Exactly my voice. But I hadn't said it.

I stood frozen, the kettle screaming in my hand. The house was silent. I told myself it was an echo, a trick of the old walls. I told myself I was tired.

I didn't sleep that night.

The next day, I tested it. I stood in the living room and said, clearly and deliberately: "Hello?"

Nothing.

"Is anyone there?"

Silence.

I laughed at myself. Paranoid. Ridiculous. I went about my day, and by evening I'd almost convinced myself I'd imagined the whole thing.

Then, as I was brushing my teeth before bed, I mumbled through the toothpaste: "God, I look terrible."

And from the bedroom—my empty bedroom with the door half-open—came my own voice: "You really do."

I spat into the sink and didn't move for ten minutes.

After that, I stopped talking out loud. Completely. For two weeks, I existed in perfect silence. I texted instead of calling. I kept the TV on mute with subtitles. I bit my tongue when I stubbed my toe, swallowed every curse and complaint.

The silence was unbearable, but the alternative was worse.

Then last night happened.

I was lying in bed, wide awake at 3 AM, staring at the ceiling. I hadn't spoken a word in fourteen days. My throat ached with the effort of keeping quiet. The house groaned around me, old wood shifting in the cold.

And then, from the corner of my room—the corner where Grandmother's antique mirror stands, the one I've covered with a sheet because I can't bear to look at my reflection in the dark—I heard my voice.

"You can't ignore me forever, you know."

I sat up so fast I nearly fell out of bed. My heart was slamming against my ribs. The sheet over the mirror hadn't moved. The room was empty.

"W-who's there?" I whispered.

"You know who," my voice answered. It was coming from everywhere now—from the walls, the floor, the space behind my eyes. "You've always known."

"I don't—I don't understand."

"Yes, you do." There was something almost sad in the way it said that. Patient, like a teacher explaining something to a slow child. "You started talking to yourself when you were seven. Do you remember why?"

I did remember. I remembered the loneliness, the empty house, my parents always working. I remembered inventing a friend—an imaginary friend who lived in the mirror in my bedroom and talked to me when no one else would.

I remembered the day my mother heard me talking and asked who I was speaking to.

"My reflection," I'd told her.

She'd laughed. "Your reflection can't talk back, sweetheart."

But it did. It always did.

"You forgot about me," the voice said now. "You grew up and you forgot. But I've been here the whole time. Listening. Waiting. Learning to be you."

The sheet on the mirror fluttered, though there was no breeze.

"Learning... to be me?"

"You gave me your voice when you were seven. Your thoughts when you were twelve. Your fears when you were twenty." The voice was closer now, intimate, like it was speaking directly into my ear. "And now, after all these years, you've given me enough to finally step out of the glass."

The sheet began to slide off the mirror. Slowly. Inch by inch.

"Don't you want to meet yourself?" my voice asked. "Don't you want to see what you've made?"

I wanted to run. I wanted to scream. But my body wouldn't move. I could only watch as the sheet pooled on the floor and the mirror caught the moonlight.

At first, I saw only my reflection—pale, terrified, sitting up in bed with the covers clutched to my chest.

Then my reflection smiled.

And I wasn't smiling.

"It's been so long," my reflection said, its lips moving while mine stayed frozen. "I've missed talking face to face."

It raised its hand—I didn't raise mine—and pressed its palm flat against the glass from the inside.

"The thing about mirrors," it said, "is that there's always another side. And I've been on the wrong one for thirty years."

The glass began to ripple like water.

I found my voice then. I screamed and threw myself out of bed, stumbling for the door. I didn't look back. I couldn't look back.

I ran out of the house in my pajamas, got in my car, and drove. I haven't been back.

I'm writing this from a motel room sixty miles away. The mirror in the bathroom is covered with towels. The TV is on, sound muted, casting flickering shadows across the walls. I haven't slept.

Because here's the thing that's keeping me awake:

Before I ran, in that split second before I turned away from the mirror, I saw my reflection's face clearly in the moonlight.

And it looked more like me than I do.

It looked healthy. Rested. Happy.

It looked like someone who hadn't spent thirty years slowly giving pieces of themselves away.

I keep catching myself muttering under my breath—old habits die hard. But now, every time I speak, I listen carefully for the echo.

So far, nothing has answered.

But I've started noticing something else. Something worse.

I look in the mirror here at the motel—I had to, just once, to check—and my reflection moves exactly when I do. Perfectly synchronized. Normal.

Except.

Except sometimes, just for a fraction of a second, I catch it blinking when I haven't blinked.

And I'm starting to wonder: if my reflection learned to be me, learned to walk and talk and smile like me...

Then who exactly drove away from that house last night?

Who is sitting in this motel room, writing these words?

I'm afraid to check. I'm afraid to look too closely at my own hands, my own face.

Because what if I'm the one who's been in the mirror all along?

What if I finally got out—and I just don't remember which side I started on?

I never asked for a bodyguard. When my father's enemies threatened my life, he hired the best—a man named Damien Cross, whose silver eyes followed my every move with an intensity that made my blood run hot and cold simultaneously. He was six feet of coiled muscle and dangerous silence, and something about him felt ancient, primal, wrong in ways I couldn't name. I should have listened to my instincts. Instead, I fell.

The first night he stood outside my bedroom door, I couldn't sleep. His presence was a weight I felt through the walls—heavy, watchful, alive. I told myself it was fear. I was lying.

"You don't sleep," I said to him the next morning, finding him in the exact same position I'd left him in twelve hours before.

"I don't need much." His voice was a low rumble, like distant thunder before a storm.

"Everyone needs sleep, Mr. Cross."

His lips curved—not quite a smile, something hungrier. "I'm not everyone, Miss Ashworth."

The weeks that followed were an exercise in exquisite torture. He was everywhere—a shadow at the edge of my vision, a heat at my back when danger lurked. Twice, he threw himself between me and death without hesitation. Once, a knife meant for my throat found his shoulder instead. He didn't even flinch.

"You should see a doctor," I whispered, pressing gauze to his wound in the back of the town car. The blood was dark, almost black.

"It'll heal." He caught my wrist, his grip gentle but immovable. "Don't worry about me, Elena."

It was the first time he'd used my name. The sound of it in his mouth made something dangerous unfurl in my chest.

I started looking for excuses to be near him. A walk in the garden at midnight—I needed air. A drive through the city—I needed to think. He never questioned, never refused. He simply followed, those silver eyes reflecting the moonlight like mirrors.

It was during one of those midnight walks that I first noticed the scars. His shirt had ridden up as he reached for something, revealing a lattice of old wounds across his abdomen—claw marks, I realized with a jolt. Four parallel lines, repeated over and over.

"What happened to you?" The words escaped before I could stop them.

He went still. For a long moment, I thought he wouldn't answer.

"A war," he finally said. "A very long time ago."

"What kind of war leaves scars like that?"

His smile was bitter. "The kind you don't walk away from human."

I should have pressed. Should have demanded answers. But there was something in his eyes—a pain so deep it stole my breath—and I found I couldn't bear to cause him more.

The full moon rose three days later. I woke to sounds of destruction—furniture crashing, glass shattering, an inhuman howl that turned my blood to ice. I grabbed my phone and ran toward the noise, not away from it.

I found him in the east wing, doubled over, his body contorting in ways that shouldn't have been possible. His eyes when they met mine were no longer silver but gold, burning with an inner fire.

"Run," he snarled, and his voice was wrong, too deep, too rough. "Elena, for God's sake, run!"

I didn't run. I walked toward him, my heart pounding so hard I could taste it.

"Damien."

"You don't understand." His bones cracked, reshaping themselves beneath his skin. Fur—dark as midnight—erupted along his arms. "I can't control it. Not tonight. Not with you so close."

"Why not with me?"

He laughed, and it was half-growl, half-sob. "Because you're my mate. Because your scent has been driving me insane since the moment I met you. Because the wolf wants to claim you, and I've been fighting it every single night, and I can't anymore—"

His transformation completed in a burst of shadow and moonlight. Where my bodyguard had stood, a massive wolf now crouched—bigger than any natural creature, with fur like black silk and eyes of molten gold. Those eyes held intelligence, recognition, and something that looked terrifyingly like devotion.

I should have been afraid. Every survival instinct I possessed was screaming at me to flee. Instead, I reached out my hand.

"Damien."

The wolf whined, pressing his massive head against my palm. His fur was impossibly soft, warm with an inner heat that seeped into my bones. I sank to my knees beside him, and he curled around me like a living blanket, protective and possessive and gentle all at once.

We stayed that way until dawn.

When he transformed back, he was naked and shaking, his face buried in the curve of my neck.

"I'm sorry," he breathed against my skin. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"

"Shh." I ran my fingers through his hair. "You have nothing to apologize for."

"I'm a monster."

"You're my monster." I tipped his chin up, forcing him to meet my eyes. "And I'm not afraid of you."

His kiss was desperate, hungry—the kiss of a man who'd been starving for centuries. I tasted moonlight and shadows and something ancient on his tongue, and I wanted more. I wanted everything.

He pulled back before we could go further, his forehead pressed to mine.

"You don't know what this means," he said roughly. "Being with me. Being my mate."

"Then tell me."

"It's forever." His hands framed my face like I was something precious, something fragile. "Wolves mate for life, Elena. If you choose this—if you choose me—there's no going back. I'll never let you go."

Forever. The word should have frightened me. Instead, it settled into my chest like a promise.

"Good," I whispered. "Because I wasn't planning on leaving."

The smile that broke across his face was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen—wild and free and full of wonder, as if he couldn't believe his luck.

"You're insane," he said.

"Probably." I pulled him closer. "But I've never felt saner than when I'm with you."

Outside, dawn painted the sky in shades of crimson and gold. Somewhere in the house, his brothers—the pack he'd never told me about—were stirring. There would be questions to answer, secrets to unravel, a world of darkness I was only beginning to understand.

But that was tomorrow. Tonight, in the arms of my wolf, I was exactly where I belonged.

The story of Elena Ashworth and her werewolf bodyguard was just beginning. And something told me the most dangerous chapters were yet to come.