I landed on the floor. My body screamed in protest, but no sound left me. I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes. Hell, I couldn’t feel my body. Just the pain that resided in every point she had struck.
Dark shadows moved around the room, accompanied by growls and ear-splintering wails.
Another thundering howl rang through the building. I moved my focus to the doorway and found a copper-blond Werewolf standing in the frame. His golden gaze landed on me, widening.
My eyes fluttered and the next thing I knew, he was beside me.
“I know where he is,” I rasped as Brendan’s flushed, sweat-slicked face filled my vision.
“Shit. Heather?” Brendan’s hands fell to my stomach.
Searing pain exploded outward, stretching to my head and toes. An inhuman cry gurgled in my throat, the action causing more blood to ooze from my mouth.
“Christ.” Tears threatened to emerge in his emerald gaze. His hands moved to my face. “Why—What?” His jaw was tense. A growl vibrated in his throat. “God damn it, Heather. Why couldn’t you have fucking waited?”
A smile touched my lips. “Because, silly Wolf—” I closed my eyes. My brain felt as though it were churning in my skull, “—I now know where Marko is.”
Darkness took me. I felt light and free, weightless, floating on a timeless ocean, surrounded by hues of night and shadows.
“...you are not human, Heather. You have been lying to yourself. Thinking you can survive this way, lead a ‘normal life’ when you were born to be so much more....”His words echoed in my mind once more, taunting me from a faraway distance.
Heat rippled through the darkness, washing over me. Forbidden and sweet, wrapping around me like a delicate thread which seemed to tighten with each second that passed. The thread pierced deep inside me, tying itself to my very core, like a tether.
Pounding in the darkness—a steady beat all around me, a beat I knew should be inside of me, but it wasn’t and yet, the thrum was closing in, and with each hit came a wave of bliss that rolled over me, through me. The thread got stronger, tighter, changing from a delicate strand of silk to a link of iron chain, unbreakable and binding. The pounding got worse. Stronger, heavier, and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to hide or run towards the crazed tempo... Then the pain tore in as forbidden and pleasurable heat turned into fire, fierce and branding, blazing from my very core outward.
A scream lodged in my throat. Oxygen burned like the flesh on my bones. Blistering agony consumed my body, which I was becoming more and more aware of as the darkness got lighter. I felt as though I was being pulled in half, pulled into a million pieces, stretching and stretching, knowing that any moment now, I would snap. I would break.
A voice, soothing and familiar yet filled with urgency, spoke to me, the words too faint and lost behind the sound of wails and yowls.
“Don’t fight the pain. Embrace it. Make it yours.”
So much concern and understanding laced his words, but there hung a fear behind them, a guilt.
My eyes flew open as pain paralyzed me. My bones contorted. Snapping. Crunching. I could do nothing but listen to his voice; take short, sharp breaths and let my body bend and break over and over, until the fight had left me.
The pain subsided.
I looked down through watery eyes. My body was covered in blood. My skin was stretched across my frame so tightly, it was splitting like tissue paper. Fresh blood oozed from each crack, each wound.
“Fate is a cruel mistress, and if you decide to play with her, you better be prepared to sacrifice everything, lass. Balance must be maintained.” My grandmother’s voice broke through my mind, her tone vicious and full of warning. “Sacrifice leads to success. You must be successful. It has to be you.”
Pain seized me again. My heart banged in the confines of my ribcage, nausea a whirlpool in my gut. Drums thumped in my temples, the persistent beat made worse by the noises... So many noises and voices, my eardrums would surely explode.
“It always had to be you,” my grandmother growled.
The scream ripped from me as I broke in half.
* * * * *
~ Heather ~
6.55 p.m.
I jolted awake. My spine arched off the mattress. With my eyes as wide as my mouth, air scorched my throat as I tried to exhale or maybe scream, or maybe both, but my body was locked into place.
“Heather?” Brendan’s hands grasped my upper arms. “It was just a dream. You’re okay. Breathe.”
Stars winked in my line of sight. My head pounded. Heat swept from my head to my toes as numbness clawed at my skin.
“Shit, Heather.” His hand moved to my chest, the base of his palm massaging in a slow circle. “Calm down. Breathe. Just breathe.”
A spasm pulsed through my back. I lurched. My body went limp against the bed, and I dragged the air into my lungs.
“That’s it,” Brendan said softly, his hand still rubbing the top of my ribcage. “Breathe.”
Rolling onto my side, I coughed my guts up. My eyes stung. My body ached.
“Fuck.” The word shuddered through me.
Brendan’s hand moved to my back where he continued to draw soothing circles across my shoulder blades. “You were thrashing in your sleep. Can you remember anything you saw?”
“Blood.” Even as darkness swallowed up my premonition, the crimson streaks of blood on pale flesh somehow remained. I heaved, but nothing came out. “Christ, so much blood.”
“It’s okay.”
I shook my head. “No, it’s so far from fucking alright.”
I tucked my knees into my chest and hugged them. One word out of so many that had been spoken pulsed in my temples. “Sacrifice.”
His hand stopped on my back, and concern licked his tone. “I don’t understand.”
“Then that makes two of us.”