EZRA Something shifts. But the noise is insignificant, compared to the burning heat that covers every inch of my skin. It’s too easy to brush off as nothing. I fall back into my feverish daze, waiting out the pain until it fades away. Eventually it will. I feel it again. Fingertips against my back. And the moment that I recognize the touch, my eyes flash open. A dark snarl rips from my throat as I twist, hand clamping around the flickering silhouette’s throat and pinning the small shadow down on the bedsheets. The air is thick with a scent of blood. It’s mine. It’s too dark to see. Heat crowds my vision. I rasp. “Who the fuck are you?” The small shadow gasps, as I press both hands into its throat. Its fingers urgently latch around my wrists and claw down the sides. I press harder, about to end its life when a strangled voice murmurs my name. “...E-Ezra—” There’s a choked rush of air as I instantly release my grip. My vision clears. And I stare down into Noel’s face, c
BLAISE The walls are covered in something dark. That’s the first thing I notice. I can tell that they used to be stone, and used to be the color of stone. But they have transformed into a surface that’s been caked with something over and over again, until all those layers mixed into one and nobody could no longer tell what had been underneath. The room is small. It’s cramped, so cramped that it feels as if it simply can’t contain Christian’s presence. His Dominance pours off of him in such heavy waves that it even makes me nauseous, even though I must be standing a good fifteen feet away and he hasn’t even noticed me. His Dominance fills up the air and pours through the crack of the door. There’s another wolf. A man, who looks slightly older than Christian. But his skin, which look like it used to be the shade of bronze, is so torn up that I can’t even tell. His dark locks are matted with thick, dried blood. Both his eyes are bruised and swollen to the point where I can’t even
He feels as if he’s going to swallow me alive. Everything about him. From his pouring Dominance, to his sheer size overwhelming my far smaller silhouette. His golden gaze, lit with a burning fire that I can almost feel against my skin. I can’t breathe, with how close he is to me. The air burns with heat. I press both hands against his chest and push as hard as I can. He takes a single step backwards, his eyes still transfixed on mine. Even though I’d pushed as hard as I’d possibly could, he had only taken that step back because he had let himself. I can see it in the way he looks at me. I suck in a deep breath. The Dominance feels a little more bearable now, and I jerk my head up to fix him with the sharpest, meanest glare that I can muster. One of his brows raise. “Are you kidding me right now?” “You think I’m scared of you? After what? That?” I say, flicking a fingertip towards the inside of the room. I see a silhouette of the corpse lying limp on the floor. “You think I
BLAISE Um. Here’s the well. Will you let me leave now? “How do you use it?” He asks, in a voice that makes me wonder if he’s actually confused or if he’s really just playing with me. But it sounds real enough, and I press down all my bubbling annoyance into a dense block inside of my chest as I slowly pick up one of the ladles. “So this is a ladle,” I say, as nicely as I possibly can without sounding sarcastic. “You’re going to drink with it. And then you have to put it back into this pool, since you’ve put your mouth on it. The water’s always kept boiling so it cleanses it.” “Hm.” “This wasn’t in place when I was here,” He comments, as he casually takes a long sip. “I wonder who changed the system.” I hold my breath, that the person who had changed this up was actually me. “Uh, if that’s all you need, I better—” “Did you come up with it?” His sudden words take me by surprise. I stare at him, and he laughs deep in his throat as if my wide eyes had just confirmed his suspi
BLAISE Here comes the moment. The door clicks open under my grip. It swings open so easily that my lips tilt upwards into a wince. What had I been wanting? For it to be locked? And I see the Alpha sitting upright, on the edge of the bed. There’s not a single trace of his Dominance. My eyes narrow a little in surprise— was that shadow even him? I could not feel anything of the Alpha’s aura. But he turns. And the golden eyes that fix on me are all too real. “Blaise.” He calls my name. And I already know, from the second that I hear the end of his voice waver the tiniest bit. He’s apologizing. To me. Goodness sakes. I wish he rather hadn’t. I wish that he had never looked back at me the way that he is doing now as I walk in. I wish that he had chosen not to say a single word. Because my heart— and the vow that I had made myself so rigidly earlier— is crumbling too quickly. Like the walls I’d raised had been things made out of fragile ash in the beginning. I stand b
NOEL Two days had passed since I had last seen Damian Rouge. He had been talking to her. To Blaise. And I’d seen the look in his scarlet eyes. Even though I had been so far away when I had seen him, I had seen it. It had been the same look that he had held for Rell before he had mercilessly killed her and plunged her soul off the line of the Edge. He would come for her again. I could tell he wanted her. But why? “I can practically smell the anxiety off of you, Noel.” I turn, flinching in surprise. Ezra shifts off the bed, his violet eyes fixed on me as he moves the thick blanket to the side. The bottles of medicine clink uselessly between my hands. I’d thought he was asleep. I— “Stop messing with those, when you don’t even know what you’re doing with them.” The curves of my ears flush with heat. The retort that leaves my mouth is sharp and annoyed. “I do know what they are. The Healer told me, okay? He told me that this,” I point to a narrow, clear tube, filled to the
BLAISE The scent is still strong as ever. I don’t understand. A wince on my lips, I close the door to my room yet again. I’d thrown open all the windows yesterday, to try and air out the entire room of the strange, unsettling smell of pine. But the scent hadn’t faded in the slightest. The room is now freezing, with all the winter wind that had seeped in through the open windows. But still, this smell. I touch the cold sheets of the bed. Still the exact way that I had left it a couple days ago, the blankets chilled of human warmth. I just didn’t want to stay in here anymore. I had come in the hopes of taking a nice nap, but this room doesn’t feel like mine. It feels as if I had walked into a room that belonged to a complete stranger. I don’t make move to shut the windows. WInd continues to blow, ruffling the hems of the silken curtains. The door closes with a click as I go to crash in Noel’s room for the second time in a row. ———————————————————————————————— On the fif
I bite. I bite down as hard as I can on the hand that’s wrapped around my mouth, harder than I’d ever bit down on anything in my entire life. I feel my teeth break flesh. I bite down until I taste the metallic tang of blood. It’s enough to make any wolf recoil in pain. But this man isn’t any wolf. He’s a fucking psychopath, and could probably compete for first place within all the members in that group. He laughs softly. “Fuck.” “I wonder how the Alpha treated you, for you to act so feisty?” He grips the underside of my throat and pushes upward. Panic fills my expression almost immediately, and my fingers scramble wildly against the soft, soaked sheets as my chin is jerked up into an angle close to where I actually feel like my neck will simply break. “Did he not discipline you?” “Go to sleep, Singer.” Darkness rapidly crowds around the corners of my vision the moment he says that. It’s as if he knows a thousand ways to make a person faint. And this is just one of the