Then the world cracked like glass.
Everything slowed. The snow frozen midair, the wolves’ howls suspended in their throats. The sound of the battle twisted into something low and guttural, vibrating through her bones.
When she looked up, the sky had turned the color of ash.
And through it came light.
Not sunlight. Not moonlight. Something else.
A blinding flare of green and gold, the shimmer of theAurora.It stretched across the clouds in ribbons, silent and terrible, and as it pulsed, the storm itself seemed to shudder.
Layla’s heart lurched. She knew this place. The jagged outline of the mountains. Looming above her was Aurora Peak, at the summit of Nanuq Mountain.
But this wasn’t her vision from before. This wasn’t the right side of the mountain.
This was something worse.
The snow above her shifted, the slope trembling. She heard the first crack of ice—distant, echoing, and then another.
She turned, eyes wide, as a sheet of white detached from the mountainside.
The avalanche came like a roar.
It was so loud it wasn’t sound anymore, just pressure, force, the raw will of the mountain descending. Wolves scattered, their cries lost in the thunder. The hybrids screamed, too, a sound that didn’t belong in nature. The snow swallowed everything, all light, all sound, all life.
And in the final second before it hit, she saw a pair of eyes, icy blue, familiar and furious, lock on hers through the storm.
Dominic’s.
Then darkness.
***
Layla’s body jerked violently.
She gasped, air tearing into her lungs like knives. The world was spinning, the dim walls of the basement blurring into view, the shelves half-toppled, the candle burned down to a puddle of wax. The chalk circle beneath her feet had been smeared away, the marking gone.
Her chest heaved. Her pulse was a drumbeat in her throat. Sweat clung to her skin, freezing in the basement air.
For a moment, she just sat there, her head in her hands, the vision still flickering behind her eyelids like an afterimage burned into her mind.
Wolves. Blood. Snow. Dominic.
And the avalanche.
Her hands shook so badly she could barely breathe. “No,” she whispered, voice cracking. “No, no, no—”
She staggered to her feet, catching herself against the desk as a wave of dizziness hit her. The room tilted. Her legs felt like water.
“Oh God.”
Layla scrambled for her phone, her fingers slipping on the screen. Her reflection stared back at her in the black glass, wild-eyed, pale, streaked with tears. She unlocked it, and the time stared back at her. Four in the morning.
Her vision had taken place just after dawn.
She had to tell them.
Her brother. Dominic. Someone. Anyone.
