Knocking.
Loud, insistent, pulling me back.
I blinked. The living room returned.
My knees had given out at some point. The journal lay on the floor beside me, pages bent. My heart slammed against my ribs and my hands still felt the phantom warmth of blood.
The knocking continued. There was someone at the front door.
I forced myself upright on shaking legs and crossed the room. My mind was still half-trapped in that vision.Wolf, blood, bones cracking.
I pulled open the door.
Cateline stood on the porch, arms crossed with a grating smile on her face.
“So it’s true.” Her gaze swept past me into the cabin. “You really are living with them.”
My hand tightened on the door frame. Lucian said no one in town knew about this cabin. So how the hell was Cateline standing on the front porch?
“How did you find this place?”
“I have my sources.” She shrugged, all false casualness.
“Wait.” My eyes narrowed. “Did you follow Percy?”
I meant it as a jab. A sarcastic shot to see her squirm.
But guilt flashed across her face before she could hide it.
Oh my god.
“You actually followed him.” I stared at her. “You stalked a man to his home. That’s... you realize that’s unhinged, right? You have a problem.”
“The whole town’s been talking about the bookshop girl and her three firefighters.” She sidestepped the accusation without denying it. “I just had to see for myself.”
“Well, you’ve seen. Goodbye.”
I moved to close the door, annoyance in my veins, but her hand shot out to stop it.
“Percy danced with me at the lantern festival, you know,” she said, as if someone had asked. Her smile widened. “The whole night. He couldn’t keep his hands off me.”
My brain snagged on the words.
“Wait.” I held up a hand. “Lantern festival? That’s real? It happened recently?”
Cateline stared at me as if I’d sprouted a second head. “Uh, yes. It’s the town’s annual thing. Every fall. Duh.”
My pulse stuttered.
The lantern festival was real.
An actual event that happened. Which meant the flashes I’d been having, the string lights and the music and their faces in my head… those weren’t fever dreams. Definitely not trauma brain manufacturing comfort from nothing.
They really arememories.
Real memories of a real week that someone stole from me.
The realization hit me and rearranged everything I thought I knew. All this time I’d been half-convinced I was losing my mind. Seeing things that never happened. Feeling connections that didn’t exist.
