Not with the cold pulse I’ve grown used to, but with searing, burning cold that feels like my flesh is being branded from the inside out.I bite back a scream, my free hand clawing at the sheets as pain radiates through my entire left side.
“Tessa!”Vex is on me in an instant, his hands on my face, forcing me to look at him.His eyes are white, fully vampire, but I don’t care.I need him as an anchor, need something real to hold onto as the world tilts sideways.
Through the bond, I feel him trying to pull the pain away from me, trying to absorb it somehow.It helps.A little.Enough that I can breathe.
“It’s here,” I gasp.“It’s—”
The wind hits.
It doesn’t build gradually like a normal storm.One moment the air is still, the next it’s a shrieking wall of sound that slams into the cabin with enough force to rattle the walls.But it’s not just wind.There are voices in it.
Hundreds of them.
Thousands.
All whispering the same thing.
Tessssssssa.
My name, drawn out and distorted, coming from every direction at once.Some voices are young, some old, some barely human.They overlap and tangle together until it’s just a cacophony of sound that drills into my skull like ice picks.
“Block it out,” Vex says, his voice cutting through the chaos.“Focus on me.Just me.”
I try.God, I try.But the voices are getting louder, more insistent, and now I can make out words beyond my name.
Come to us.
We’ve been waiting.
You belong with us.
We can make the pain stop.
“No,” I breathe, but I’m not sure if I’m answering the voices or denying this is happening.
Vex pulls me against his chest, one hand tangled in my hair, the other pressed against the mark on my shoulder.His touch is ice-cold but it feels like fire compared to the burning freeze coming from within me.Through the bond, I feel him pouring something into me, strength, maybe, or just his presence.Whatever it is, it helps me push back against the tide threatening to drown me.
“That’s it,” he murmurs against my temple.“Stay with me.Don’t listen to them.”
But it’s so hard.The voices are seductive in their persistence, offering things I didn’t even know I wanted.
Power to protect yourself.
Freedom from fear.
An end to the guilt that eats at you.
Your mother’s voice, just one more time.
That one almost breaks me.
I can suddenly hear her, my mom’s laugh, bright and clear like she never burned to death in a fire my father set.As though she’s right here in the room with us, calling my name the way she used to when I’d come home from school.
“It’s not real.”Vex’s voice is rough, desperate.“Tessa, whatever it’s showing you, it’s not real.”
I know that.Intellectually, I know that.But knowing and feeling are two very different things, and right now my heart is being torn apart by the sound of my mother’s voice asking why I left, why I didn’t save her, why I ran so far away that she can’t find me anymore.
“I’m sorry,” I sob into Vex’s chest.“Mom, I’m so sorry—”
