Because I shadowed in my fucking sweatpants.
I’m not even wearing shoes.
I was so quick to do what Ashlyn requested, her urgency making me act without thinking it through.
And now…
Where the fuck am I?
“Hello, brother,” a ghost from my past says, the deep voice unmistakable as it echoes around the cave. “Welcome home.”
Home?I think, looking around again, my eyes widening.Kodiak Sector…
I shadowed to Lunar Sector and somehow ended up inKodiak Sectorinstead.
Only it’s nothing like the images my father showed me as a child.
All the ice. The snow. The igloos.
This is a fucking tunnel system.A cave with a lot of candles,I think, recalling what Ashlyn said about my sister.
“How many candles?”I asked her.
“Thousands upon thousands,”she whispered.
I see them all now, the candles flickering throughout every inch of this cavern, illuminating it from within.
We must be in a carved out mountain, I think.Fuck.
“You’re wondering how you ended up here, I assume,” Spruce says as he steps into view. “Or perhaps wondering how I rose from the dead?”
I clench my jaw, not sure I like where this is heading at all. Particularly as I’m still magically collared somehow. “What am I doing here,brother?” I ask him.
“Well, you shadowed here,” he explains, his voice taking on a taunting edge. “Though, I don’t think this is where you meant to go, is it? Maybe back to Lunar Sector, perhaps?”
Ice drizzles down my spine. “What did you do?” I demand, trying to find him in the cave.
But he appears to be masked in shadows—a bit of irony considering how I ended up here.
“I didn’t do anything. Our sister, however…” He finally steps into the light, his blond hair illuminated by the candles around him.
But it’s the glass of liquid that catches my eye more.
It’s full of blood.
I can smell it from here.
Blood bolsters a V-Clan wolf’s magic, making it a necessary drink for our kind. Though, I find I can go months without it and not feel any different, maybe because of my Z-Clan genetics.
Though, my brother never imbibed while growing up. Mostly because our father forbade it, said it too vampiric and he wasn’t going to raise vampires as children.
Interesting that my twin is drinking it now.
Also interesting that I can’t sense or feel him at all.
That’s why I thought he was dead—our twin bond severed and I felt his life disappear.
It seems that was a bad assumption on my part.
