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My world is nothing but red hues and the sensation of suffocating. I can’t breathe. I feel like I hardly even exist.

It’s not unpleasant, once I got used to it.

And after a few days submerged in the blood rivers of the Dream Realm, my beast is worn down. My body has returned to a human shape, even within this place, and I trail my fingers through the liquid.

I’m sorry, Scarlett, I think as I lazily drift in an endless river. The current has carried me downward to places no soul should ever go.

But it’s peaceful here, somehow. It feels like death, if death were an undertow of rushing sounds and a beat that echoes through my entire body.

It’s like a mother’s womb.

This is a place of rebirth, perhaps. If there is such a thing as a second chance with a new life, I doubt there’s one in store for me. That leaves me in purgatory. After all the death I have caused, all the suffering, it’s fitting to be trapped in a place with no future, no past, and no hope.

This is where I belong.

“Cain,” a distant voice calls, making me glance upward where I know the surface must be.

That’s where the voice had come from.

My first instinct is to move toward the sound, but even if Scarlett has finally chosen to reach out to me, it still isn’t safe for her.

I’m grateful now for the two monsters who found her in the Dream Realm on Monsters Night. Perhaps they’ll be enough to take care of her.

Scarlett is something special. She has unique needs, both in the real world and the one of dreams. Her soul draws everything around it in, and now that part of her has unlocked, she can’t be expected to take on that burden alone.

She’s like a well, one with no end, and it could drive her to the bottom just like the blood rivers in the Dream Realm. She could suffocate and be lost forever without mates to keep her afloat, to keep the tides low and help her manage her incredible gift.

She would have been the answer to my beast. A power like that could satisfy him for the first time in my very long life.

Thousands of years. That’s how long I’ve starved and existed in a state of constant pain. Scarlett doesn’t know what an answer to a prayer she really is for a so-called God such as myself.

I don’t deserve the hope she offers. But the creatures who came through that portal on Monsters Night, perhaps they don’t have the same dark history I do. Perhaps, I was nothing more than a medium to bring them together. Happiness is not in the cards for a beast like me.

“Cain, please. Don’t leave me here…”

My fingers clench into fists as I try to resist her call. Why aren’t her new mates going to her?

Maybe they can’t find her again, not without my help. They’re from another world, which means they might still be in Monster City.

Helia should guide them. There aren’t any other dream creatures like me, so it wouldn’t be such a stretch for her to know where they might belong. But if she’s been as unavailable for them as she has been for me, they might be stuck.

Helpless.

Like being trapped in Purgatory.

Growling, I start to swim. The current has pushed me down, but Scarlett keeps praying to me, calling for me, and giving me a lifeline that draws me skyward.

I’m coming, my star, I say in my mind. I know the inevitable choice I must make.

Leaving her is not an option.

I can only hope my beast has been subdued enough to keep me in control while I seek her out. Scarlett needs me, and I’m powerless to ignore her plea.

When I break the blood barrier of the rivers, I rise into the real world and take my first breath of air in days. My lungs seize as I cough up the Dream Realm’s lifeblood. I crash through broken glass, and I realize I’ve come through a glass window—one belonging to Helia’s personal room.

It’s not where I would intentionally choose a meeting, but she doesn’t seem to mind. Her oversized bed is made, spanning behind her while she sits in a wide chair with raised armrests, one that is facing the now broken window.

It’s almost as if she knew I was coming.