Prudence removes one silk glove, revealing a hand covered in strange, swirling patterns that seem to shift and move of their own accord. She reaches toward me, stopping inches from my face.
“I’m sorry,” she says again. Then she touches my forehead.
The cell vanishes.
I’m nine years old again, hiding in a hollowed tree trunk with Dane. Above us, hunters move through the forest, silver weaponsgleaming in moonlight. Below us, on the forest floor, our parents lie motionless, silver arrows protruding from their backs.
I clamp my hand over Dane’s mouth to silence his sobs. “Be quiet,” I whisper. “Or they’ll find us too.”
But the hunters turn toward our hiding place anyway. They’ve caught our scent. They’re coming closer, silver blades drawn.
“Run!” I tell Dane, pushing him out the back of the hollow tree. “Run and don’t look back!”
He does, disappearing into the underbrush. I turn to face the hunters, a child ready to die to give her brother time to escape.
Except this time, my wolf doesn’t shift free, fierce and angry, killing them all despite her lack of training and experience.
Instead, they catch Dane. I hear his screams, his pleas for help.
“Lithia!” he cries. “Lithia, help me!”
I run toward his voice, but no matter how fast I move, I can’t reach him. His screams grow weaker, then abruptly stop.
NO!
I break through the trees, and I find him. Not the child Dane, but the adult, my twin, my other half. Dead. Eyes open and unseeing, throat torn out.
Around him, other bodies. Ryker. Kitara. Elias. Levi. All the wolves I’ve sworn to protect, all dead because I failed them.
“No,” I whisper, dropping to my knees beside them. “No, please.”
“This is your future,” Jim says, somehow part of this nightmare. “This is what happens when you resist us. Everyone you love dies.”
The scene shifts. I’m in Shadowmist’s main hall. Thaddeus sits in Ryker’s chair, blood staining the stones beneath it. Zella stands at his right hand, smiling coldly.
“You could have prevented this,” Zella tells me. “Could have saved them all by simply cooperating.”
“Fuck off,” I growl. “This isn’t real.”
The scene wavers, then resolidifies. Now I’m in my cell again, but there’s someone else there too—a man I’ve never seen before butsomehow know is Kier. He’s on his knees before Jim, silver blade at his throat.
“Tell us what we want to know,” Jim says, “or he dies too.”
“Listen to them,” Kier says, his golden eyes pleading. “Save me. Please.”
The blade slices across his throat, blood spraying across the stone floor.
I scream, lunging forward. Grasping for Kier’s falling body. A howl rips from my throat and I?—
I crash into the wall of my cell, gasping and panting as reality snaps back into place. Prudence’s hand hovers near my face, her eyes black and fathomless. Tears stream down her cheeks, mixing with the blood streaming from her nose.
Is this another vision?
I’m shaking, unable to control the tremors that rack my body. The visions felt so real—the blood, the screams, the death of everyone I’ve ever cared about.
“That’s enough for today,” Jim says, nodding to Bob. “We’ll continue tomorrow.”
Bob smiles cruelly, but Prudence just looks devastated. As they turn to leave, she whispers something only I can hear.
