C6

“I can’t… I can’t breathe…”

Darkness slams into my chest. A heavy heartbeat thumps inside my skull. Then screaming, a high-pitched, desperate sound tearing right out of my own throat. My voice sounds different. Younger. Raw.

I wake up choking, clawing at my neck, expecting the cold wetness of my own warm blood streaming down my collarbones.

My hands hit smooth skin. No gaping wound. No severed bone. No hot silver blade slicing through my flesh.

I scramble backward on the mattress, gasping for air as my lungs expand with clean, fresh air. I stare down at my hands. They are small, unblemished, and pale. The thick scars from the silver chains are gone. The dirt under my fingernails is gone. I am lying in my old twin bed inside the Bloodmoon Academy dorm room. The faded cotton blanket covers my legs, and the afternoon sunlight pours softly through the clean glass window.

My heart races against my ribs like a trapped bird.

I tumble out of bed, my bare feet hitting the wooden floorboards, and stumble straight toward the full-length mirror hanging on the wall. I grip the wooden frame, staring at the girl in the glass. Eighteen years old. Round, soft cheeks. Unbroken skin. No dark circles under my eyes from days spent starving in the silver dungeon. This is the girl who still trusted people. The girl who loved Micheal with every naive piece of her heart.

For three full minutes, my entire body shakes uncontrollably. I press my palms against the cold mirror, staring into my own wide, terrified eyes, trying to convince myself I am not dead.

Suddenly, a voice like ice and thunder vibrates straight through my skull, cutting off my breath. It does not come from the room. It echoes directly from the deep center of my mind, cold, final, and ancient.

"Five years. That is all you get. Use them or die the same way again. But the child remembers. Do not waste its sacrifice."

The voice vanishes, leaving behind a sharp ringing sound in my ears.

My breath hitches. I slowly lower my hands from the mirror, sliding them down over my ribs, resting both palms flat against my lower stomach.

I press down softly against my flat stomach.

A sudden, sharp electric shock pulses back against my hands from deep inside my womb. It is not an embryo yet. I am eighteen, unmated, and untouched. But the essence of the pup is here. A heavy, dark, and powerful presence curls inside my blood, pulsing with an ancient, terrifying awareness that did not belong to a normal unborn wolf. It remembers the silver water. It remembers the boot to my stomach. It remembers the betrayal.

A quiet, dangerous smile breaks across my face, pulling at my split-free lips.

I look up at the mirror again, tilting my chin back. I check the back of my neck where Jessica’s hot silver branding iron used to burn my flesh to ash. The nasty silver curse mark is gone. But in its place, right over my spine, a small, pale crescent moon scar sits etched into my skin, pulsing with a faint, quiet silver light.

My wolf wakes up.

She does not whimper. She does not cower behind an iron seal. She rises from the dark depths of my soul, huge and furious, roaring inside my mind like a unleashed storm. The dark seal is gone. The silence is broken. Her anger merges with mine, hot, thick, and wild.

I throw my head back and let out a vicious, primal howl right into the quiet dorm room.

The sound rattles the glass windows in their wooden frames. The floorboards vibrate under my bare feet. It is a howl of pure vengeance, a warning to every enemy who thinks I am still their helpless placeholder.

Miles away, far beyond the borders of the Bloodmoon territory, across mountains and deep forest valleys, a sound echoes back through the air.

A deeper, colder, massive howl answers mine.

The sound cuts through time and space, rolling over the distant mountains like thunder, crashing into my chest with the force of a tidal wave. My wolf perks up, her ears flattening back as the bond shivers.

Jackson Poseidon. The legendary Alpha of the Poseidon Pack. Micheal's most dangerous, lethal rival. He heard my roar across the distance, recognizing the ancient power in my voice before we have ever even met face-to-face.

A soft, hesitant knock sounds at my dorm door.

"Ada?" Micheal’s young, smooth voice speaks through the thin wood. "I brought you breakfast. Open up."

I freeze, my hands clenching into tight fists at my sides, my eyes fixing on the brass door handle as it slowly begins to turn.