Forty Eight

When Adela knocks on the door to announce dinner is ready, I tell her I’m not hungry. Unlike Mack, she doesn’t go away until I agree to join her at the dining table. But the moment I’ve cleared my plate, I return to the bedroom.

During the night, I wake with my heart in my throat, the visions from my nightmare still clinging to me.

In my dreams, it isn’t Shane whimpering on the ground, the victim of my strange gift, but Mack.

No matter how hard the rest of the pack tries to stop me, I don’t. In the end, Bennett turns to me with violence in his gray eyes, and as he’s reaching for me, that’s when I wake up.

After that, I don’t sleep. I can’t.

I wrap the comforter around myself and spend the rest of the night and early morning in the lounge watching an old black and white movie with the subtitles on, so I don’t wake Adela.

She finds me there bright and early the next morning.

“You didn’t sleep a wink, did you, child?” she murmurs before settling in on the couch beside me.

“I slept.”

Not