002 - Ashina

I couldn’t breathe as the thick air was suffocating and pressing against my lungs. I was thrust right back into my nightmare and the entire world before me capsized.

Right there in front of me was a burning man whose scent of scorched flesh clung to the back of my throat like hot acid.

No. No, this isn’t real.

His charred lips parted and my name slipped from between them like smoke, blowing over my face and snuffing out every bit of oxygen left. 

I gagged and shoved myself backward as my hands instinctively clawed at the floor as if I could scrape my way out of this nightmare. 

“Get away from me!” I screamed at the top of my voice even as it cracked under the weight of sheer terror. Sweat dripped down my forehead. “Please, please get away from me.”

But rather than listen to my plea, Kael’s burning figure moved towards me, slowly in a deliberate taunting manner. I let out a piercing shriek as I curled in on myself, shaking violently. 

Around me, shrieking shouts, clattering of plates, chairs scraping violently against the polished slammed against my senses with an alarming force and my heart pounded relentlessly hard against my rib.

I choked on a sob and tears stung in my eyes, my chest heaving and tightening so hard I was gasping and pleading for breath as my lungs burned.

A glass shattered near me and the sharp sound splintering through my already fractured mind. The air was too thick, the lights too bright, the noise pressing against my skull like a thousand screaming voices. 

It was too much. Too much. 

My breaths came in short, desperate gasps as my vision swam in and out of focus.

I tried to get up—to run, to escape this living hell—but the moment I put weight on my legs, they buckled and I hit the floor hard, her palms skidding against the smooth tile as sharp pain shot through my entire core.

“Ashina!” A deep, guttural howl that was most definitely not human split the air and rumbled through my bones, reverberating in my chest. 

I froze up as the world around me snapped at the sound. The flames around me were instantly snuffed and I was thrust back into the mundane chaos of the restaurant—and him.

He was still there, right in front of me.

Kael.

He wasn’t burning. He wasn’t some apparition conjured by my worst nightmares.

Not a pile of ashes. Not a ghost. Not a fading memory.

Whole. Looking very much alive. But that was impossible. I watched him burn to death. Lived through that death every other day for the past 5 years. I knew better than anyone in which pattern his skin burned and charred. 

So how was he there at that moment? How was he standing in front of me?

My breath came in ragged pants as I stared at him, my mind refusing to bridge the gap between reality and the impossible.

He took a careful step toward me and I flinched, stumbling backward as I shook my head violently. “No,” I whispered, the word like a desperate plea. “You’re not real. You’re not real. You cannot be real.”

“Ashina,” he murmured, his voice softer and gentler. He moved closer. Slowly, cautiously, like one might approach a wounded animal.

I recoiled instantly like my skin was burning. “No!” I exclaimed. “I watched you die. I saw you burn. I—”

“Little wolf, I’m here.” He tried to let his voice soothe out to serve as some sort of anchor for me, to cut through the storm of panic ravaging her senses. “I’m right here.”

I shook her head, my hands trembling violently as I covered my ears, squeezing my eyes shut. I’ve seen this play out before. Before my nightmares, he used to convince me he was real to. Convince me he had come for me.

This wasn’t real. This wasn’t—

But the warmth of him reached me before his touch did. Warmth that was never present before. He crouched in front of me with an unshakable grounding presence.

“I’m real, Ash,” he said, firmer now. “You can feel for yourself.”

No. I couldn’t. There was no possible way. Because if I did—if I confirmed this—then that meant every nightmare that tore me apart, every agonizing moment I’d spent grieving him had been a lie.

But then his hand brushed mine as light as a whisper, and I gasped at the contact. It was so warm. Solid. Unmistakably real.

Slowly, I reached up with my trembling hands and cupped his face in both hands. My body stilled as I traced over his cheek, the rough scrape of his stubble, the heat of his skin. My thumb brushed over the sharp angle of his jaw, then up to the curve of his cheekbone, trying to capture every inch, every detail as his stormy-dark eyes gazed at me with a twisted emotion.

He was real, every inch of him was warm and alive under my fingers. 

“You’re real,” I breathed, more to myself than to him.

“Ash,” he exhaled softly, his eyes briefly closing as he leaned into my touch. That simple act—so human, so heartbreakingly familiar—shattered something inside me.

Because if he was real, that meant he had been alive all these years.

All these years while I had been drowning in grief, suffocating under the weight of his death, he was alive?!

The realization hit me like a war drum, a rising crescendo of fury that ignited deep within my chest, burning away the last traces of fear.

How dare he be alive all this time and let me—

My hands dropped from his face as rage took its place, pulsing hot and untamed. 

“You’ve been alive?” I whispered with a dangerous edge curling into my voice. My hands clenched into fists at my sides as I pushed myself upright, the tremors in my limbs now fueled by the anger that threatened to burn me alive. “All this time?!”

Kael opened his mouth, but whatever excuse he had died in his throat as my palm cracked across his face, the sharp sound cutting through the hushed restaurant like a whip that sent a shockwave vibrating through the air.

His head barely moved from the impact, but his eyes darkened, the storm behind them churning into something dangerous.

“How dare you?” he hissed with a low snarl.