The House with No Photographs
The house breathed with quiet.
Not silence, something deeper. Hollow, almost sentient in its stillness.
Aria had lived inside many silences before: the sterile quiet of abandoned rooms, the cruel hush of school corridors where eyes slid past her like she didn’t exist, the muffled laughter behind her back when she passed too close. But this, this house, it wore silence like a second skin. It held it in the bones of its walls, in the seams of the floorboards, like a memory too old to speak aloud.
And today, it pressed in too tightly.
Xander had left early. Again. No goodbye. No note. Not even the creak of the front door. He’d barely said a word the night before, save for that single, near-imperceptible brush of his hand against hers beneath the blankets. Aria had fallen asleep, wondering if she’d dreamed it. If it meant something. If anything still did.
Now she stood barefoot in the dim corridor leading to his study. The floor was cold beneath her toes, polished to a sheen that reflected the morning light in strange angles. The door, always shut when he was home, hung slightly open.
A breath caught in her throat.
She didn’t decide to move. She just did.
The study greeted her with scents that were uniquely his: leather worn to softness, old cedar, the faintest trace of ash lingering in the hearth like a ghost. Shelves climbed the walls, crammed with weighty volumes, some ancient, cracked and curling at the edges, bound in wolfhide and stitched with iron thread. Others were newer, official: reports, treaties, patrol rosters, all lined in meticulous order.
The desk commanded the far end of the room. Towering, elegant, unmarred by clutter. Its papers lay in symmetrical stacks, everything arranged with such careful, surgical precision that it made her stomach twist.
Beside it stood a tall glass case housing ceremonial blades, dozens of them, arranged like a museum of violence. Their hilts gleamed with silver runes. Each one whispered history she didn’t know.
But the chill in her spine didn’t come from the steel.
What struck Aria was the absence.
No photographs. No trinkets. No offhand clutter that spoke of a life lived.
No past. Just function.
Even in her old healer’s dorm, bare as it was, she’d tucked tiny fragments of herself between the pages of her books: a ribbon, a dried leaf, a bit of quartz from the riverbed near her childhood home. Little reminders that she was still someone, somewhere.
Xander had nothing.
As if he’d erased every trace of who he’d been. Or had never dared to claim it.
She moved to the desk. Slowly. Her breath tight in her chest.
The drawers weren’t locked.
Her hand hovered. That small voice inside her stirred: Don’t.
But another, sharper, wounded, answered: Too late.
Fingers curled around brass. She pulled.
Inside: files. Neatly labelled. Patrol details, regional diplomacy, and war records. All expected. All sterile.
And then, beneath them, a photo.
Old. The colors had faded to a softened hue, and the edges curled inward like petals.
Aria’s breath hitched.
Xander stood in the picture beside a woman with honey-blonde hair and a gaze like a thunderstorm. Her smile was effortless, anchored. One arm looped through his like it belonged there.
And Xander, he was different.
His expression open. His shoulders relaxed. Eyes not yet shadowed.
The caption scrawled on the back in a hurried hand:
Sienna & Xander – Fall Hunt, Year Before Coronation
Her heart thudded painfully.
So this was her. The whispered name. The past no one spoke of.
Sienna.
Not just beautiful, she looked like she belonged. Like she’d been shaped from the same wind and moonlight as him.
Aria stared until her fingers began to tremble. She hadn’t even noticed how tightly she was holding the photo, as though it could draw blood.
She reached to slide it back,
The floor creaked.
She spun around.
Xander stood in the doorway. A folder in his hand. His eyes locked on the photo.
He didn’t speak. Didn’t move.
But his expression shifted, just slightly. Something cold and unreadable flickered across it, like the moment before a storm.
“I didn’t mean to pry,” she said quickly, sliding the photo back and snapping the drawer shut.
He didn’t stop her.
Didn’t look away either.
His silence stretched, razor-thin and humming.
“I wasn’t spying,” she said again, hating the way her voice broke around the edges.
“I know.”
Just that. Quiet. Heavy.
Worse than if he’d yelled.
“Then say something.”
Xander stepped into the room. Set the folder down. Planted his hands on the desk, gaze fixed downward.
“She was important.”
Aria nodded, though it felt like her throat was closing. “Was she… your mate?”
A pause.
A breath.
“No.”
It should have felt like weight lifting.
It didn’t.
“She was supposed to be.” His voice was softer now, almost distant. “Everyone thought so. The pack, our families. We trained together. Grew up side by side. She was… safe.”
Aria didn’t ask if he loved her. She already knew.
“I thought I did.”
The silence returned. Dense. Immoveable.
Aria stepped back. Something in her began to curl in on itself.
“You never talk about her,” she whispered. “Or anyone.”
He didn’t respond. Of course, he didn’t.
Xander never offered explanations. Just closed doors behind him and hoped no one reached for the handle.
Aria turned to leave.
“Aria.”
Her name, low and careful.
She stopped, but didn’t turn.
“I didn’t hide the photo,” he said. “I just never wanted to see it again.”
“Then why keep it?”
More silence.
She nodded, more to herself than to him. Walked out.
Her bandaged hand throbbed with each heartbeat. But it was nothing compared to the ache in her chest.
Later, she sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the same patch of floor she always did when she felt like vanishing.
They had a past. A world.
What did she have?
A bed they shared in silence. A touch that never lingered long enough. A truth he never named.
She lay back slowly, arms wrapped tight around her ribs.
Above her, the ceiling gave no answers.
Only the echo of his voice.
She was supposed to be.
And Aria, what was she? A placeholder? A shadow? A quiet compromise?
The door creaked hours later. She didn’t move.
He said nothing.
The bed dipped. His weight beside hers.
His arm hovered between them, but didn’t reach.
And she didn’t bridge the space.
Back in the academy, she’d once sat alone for a week straight. The other girls traded notes and secrets and bracelets. Aria had watched, mute and forgotten.
One day, a note had appeared in her satchel.
You don’t belong here.
She’d crumpled it. But never thrown it away.
Now, lying beside the Alpha in his bed, surrounded by silence, she still didn’t know if they were wrong.
Xander was gone by morning.
No note. No toast. No apology.
The study door was closed. Locked.
The photo, gone.
And something inside her shifted.
Not rage. Not grief.
Something far colder.
Doubt.
Later, alone on the trail that wound through the pines, wind catching strands of her hair, Aria felt the echo of it pulse again.
If she was supposed to be…
What am I?
