*Isla*
I’m underwater again.
This time isn’t like the last time, though. I know immediately that things are different.
This time, I’m more angry than I am afraid, but I don’t feel the same pressure that I did last time either. I feel like I am storming off, running away, riding my white horse off into the sunset….
But I also feel like it probably shouldn’t be a white horse. I know I’ve done awful things, and I know that I’ve screwed everything up. I’m not the hero in this story….
I’m the villain.
Normally, I’m okay with that. I don’t mind being the one who stirs up all of the trouble. But in the back of my mind, I can’t help thinking about what might’ve happened if my plans hadn’t gone awry. Perhaps I should’ve listened to my father and not messed with the situation so entirely.
None of that matters now. Dad drowned. Mom fled the moment she found out what I was up to. I am pretty sure that Wylie is pulverized, and I have no fucking idea where the driver is.
It’s just me now.
Me… and my father’s allies.
I know I can keep wading through this deep water until I reach pack lands where I will be welcomed, where I’ll be safe, where I won’t be handed over to fucking King Maddox. I just have to persevere, keep going, and hope that this goddamn oxygen tank doesn’t run out before I get to my final destination.
I keep on going, staying below the surface of the water where none of the bastards who are searching for me will see me. I’m sure they’ve found Wylie’s body by now. I’m sure he’s dead because I tried to use the mind-link to reach him and couldn’t. Same with Dad. So they might know I’m in a wetsuit, but they’ll never be able to trace me in a fucking river.
Eventually, after hours of swimming, I see what I’m looking for; the base of the Wolf Stone Bridge.
I’m in Duster pack. I need to find the Alpha.
My father’s friend, Alpha Hayes, will take care of me.
I haul myself up on the shore and look around. It’s dark, but my eyes cut through the darkness with no problem, and I don’t see anyone waiting for me, so I quickly shed the wet suit and toss it out into the current, far away from where I’m now standing in a skimpy leotard. It’ll do. I hope the river’s current carries the wetsuit far downstream, so no one can find me here.
I turn around and come face to face with several men in suits. My breath restricts in my throat.
“Look what we have here,” one of them says.
I recoil slightly. “I’m Alpha Jordan’s daughter,” I tell them. ‘And my father is friends with Alpha Hayes.”
The largest man in the middle snickers and says, “Too bad Alpha Hayes ain’t in charge no more, doll.”
His laugh is menacing, and I realize now, I’m in a different kind of trouble than I have ever been in before.
I sit up in bed, gasping for air, looking around my dark room trying to remind myself that that was all just a dream.
I’m not on the shore; I wasn’t in a wetsuit; and I have never been to Duster Pack.
“Isla, what’s the matter?”
The sound of Maddox’s concerned, but groggy, voice coming from next to me on the bed has my head whipping around to look at him.
When did he come into my room? I hadn’t woken up when he slipped in.
He reaches for me, and I fall into his arms, snuggling my head against his chest. “Nothing, I tell him. I just had a bad dream, that’s all.”
Was it a dream? Or like the situation with Private Wylie, was it real?
It didn’t seem like a dream….
“I’m sorry, baby,” Maddox says and holds me closer. Part of me is still upset at the way that he treated me earlier, but he’s the king, and I’m just his breeder. Even if he does have feelings for me, who am I to hold a grudge against him?
I remember what he said when I told him that I love him–that I should be careful because that could be dangerous.
Not exactly an “I love you, too.”
Not to mention, how many times has he vowed to never marry again or take another Luna? No, I’m not sure what my place is here, but he’s my king. I can’t continue to feel entitled to anything other than an apology and an “I’ll do better” which is what I have.
He smooths my hair from my cheek where perspiration has adhered it, and the cut on the back of my head smarts a little. It’s not as bad as before. I’m sure it’s started to heal. My shoulder feels better, too, though it’s still tender. Maddox is too sleepy to be thinking about that; he’s not rough with me or anything, but he’s not exactly gentle.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks me. I can hear the sleep in his voice. He’s not fully awake at this point, and I suppose he’s only been in my room for a few hours, so he must’ve been in a deep sleep when I woke him.
I can tell by his voice that he’s tired. “No, that’s okay,” I say. “Not right now.” I will tell him tomorrow. Maybe something I said will be useful to him. “Where did you go after you left my room?”
He sighs and adjusts beneath me. “I tried to talk to Alpha Jordan, but he didn’t want to speak. I’ll have to make him a little more uncomfortable tomorrow.”
“Wait? Alpha Jordan is here?” I ask him. Hadn’t he told me that before?
“Yes,” he says. “Remember? I went to get him and ended up with what’s her ass, too?”
“Sydney,” I murmur. Neither of us has forgotten the girl’s name.
It’s coming back to me now as the sleep wears away and the last fragments of the dream fade from reality.
It had to have been a dream because, when I thought I was Zabrina, I was thinking that my dad was dead, that he’d drowned. So… I must’ve just been having a regular dream and not a premonition.
But then… Zabrina had said she assumed Alpha Jordan was dead because she couldn’t use the mind-link. Maybe she was too far away now or her dad had been unconscious when she’d tried.
My head is beginning to hurt, so I close my eyes again. Something else occurs to me. My eyes fly open. “Duster pack lands don’t touch the river do they?” I ask Maddox.
“Duster pack?” He is a little more awake now as he drags a hand down his face and yawns. “Uh… yeah. A sliver, I think…. By that old bridge. Why?”
I don’t answer his question. Instead, I ask another one. “Is Alpha Jordan friends with the Alpha of Duster pack?” I can’t remember his name right now, and I don’t know what Zabrina called him in my dream.
“I think he might be. Isla, babe, what’s going on? Are you okay?” He is looking at me with a great deal of concern now.
“I’m okay,” I assure him. Most of my brain is telling me to just go back to sleep, but I’m afraid I’ll have another unsettling dream, and I can’t even determine if the last one could be real. “I just dreamed that I was in a wetsuit underwater again, but this time… it was like I was in Zabrina’s body.”
I have his attention now. His eyes focus on me, unblinking; the Alpha King is fully awake. “Zabrina?” he echoes.
“Yes, and she ended up near that bridge… Wolf Stone Bridge. When she got out of the water, a bunch of guys in suits were there. They looked like trouble. She said she was looking for the Alpha, Alpha… H-Hay–”
“Hayes,” Maddox supplies, and I nod.
“That’s right. Him, but they said he’s not in charge there anymore. Then, she felt really scared, and I woke up.” That’s it. That’s all I remember. I sink into the mattress like it has taken all of the energy I have left to tell him this story.
He brushes my hair back from my face, but he’s more careful this time because he’s awake and remembers my injuries.
“It’s probably just a dream, baby,” he says, but I hear in his voice that he doesn’t quite believe that.
“Probably,” I say. I wonder if those men will actually help her, once they find out what she’s doing.
Or will they kill her?
I don’t want that. Even though she’s done nothing but torture me since the moment she laid eyes on me, I don’t want those men to kill her. I want her to be brought back to the castle to stand trial. I want to stand in the throne room with Maddox in his proper place on the throne and look her in the eye. I want her to have to spend the next fifty or sixty years in a cell somewhere, rotting away, thinking about what she did, not just to me but to poor Private Parker as well.
“Go back to sleep, beautiful.” Maddox’s warm lips press against my forehead. “You’ll have nothing but sweet dreams now.”
“All right,” I say, longing for his mouth on mine, but I don’t have the energy to lean over and kiss him now, and he’s right. I do need to go to sleep.
I have never had dreams like this before, not this vivid and real. I’ve had dreams where I was confused, didn’t know who I was, didn’t know what was going on…. I wonder if some of them were similar situations where I was seeing someone else’s life.
But these two dreams I’ve had now, they seem so real, and I knew exactly what happened to Private Wylie before I heard of his death.
What was making these dreams come through? Was it the medicine Mystica kept giving me? Was it Mystica herself? Or was it thinking I might be from the mystical land of Maatua?
I didn’t have the answer to that. With another wave of exhaustion knocking me backward into unconsciousness, I closed my eyes and reached for sleep, praying that Maddox could use the information I gave him to sort through the situation with Duster pack tomorrow.
He would look awfully silly calling that Alpha to tell him that he had a hunch Zabrina was there if she wasn’t.
But if she was… maybe I needed to start asking more questions of the healer.
Could she be the source behind this newfound power of mine to see other people’s realities in my dreams?