Chapter Seven: Night Terrors and Visions

Zara woke drenched in sweat, the thin blanket clinging to her back, her fingers curling into the sheets as if she could hold herself together.

The nightmare hadn’t ended when her eyes opened; it had only shifted. Wolves surrounded her in a clearing, their eyes reflecting silver and gold light, their jaws parted in silent snarls. 

She tried to back away, but her feet felt rooted to the scorched earth beneath her, the ground cracked and smoky. One of them stepped closer, its paw sinking into the fissures, and Zara could feel the weight of its gaze pressing against her chest.

Her body moved without thought, a shiver running through her spine as she reached out with trembling hands, almost expecting to touch something solid. 

The wolf’s eyes locked with hers, and in that instant, she saw a flash of Hunter, he was standing at the edge of the clearing, half-hidden, his face unreadable but undeniably familiar. The other wolves parted slightly, almost reverently, and she felt a strange pull toward him, a magnetic tug she didn’t understand. 

Her fingers itched, tiny scratches appeared along her arms and palms as if the dream itself had left its mark, raw, burning lines that stung when she flexed her hands.

A sharp wind swept across the clearing, and the wolves scattered into the shadows, leaving only Hunter. He stepped closer, the ground cracking with each stride, and Zara flinched instinctively. 

“Why am I here?” she whispered, though her voice was swallowed by the wind. Hunter didn’t answer, he only tilted his head, observing her with an intensity that made her heart hesitate in its rhythm. 

Then, he turned, gesturing toward a distant ridge, and as she followed, the ground beneath her feet began to pulse. Her legs ached as though running a mile, yet she wasn’t moving at all.

Images flashed around her; it started with that of her father, then the fortress, the pack’s laughter at her humiliation. But beneath it all was something more visceral, and personal. 

She saw herself in the training pit, sinking into the dirt under the warrior’s blows, then biting him, tasting blood she hadn’t touched in waking life. Her arms burned where she had marked herself, and she realized with a start that the scratches on her palms were real. 

Her body trembled, both with fear, and a raw energy she didn’t understand, it felt so wild, it was something that she had never felt before.

The dream shifted again. Now she was in the servants’ quarters, but everything was wrong; the walls seemed taller, the shadows moved like living things, and Hunter’s figure loomed over her bed, not as a man but as something larger, more commanding. 

“You can’t hide from it,” he said, his voice carrying across the room though his lips didn’t move. Zara wanted to turn, to flee, but her legs refused. 

A flare of heat rushed through her in a sharp and unrelenting way, and she realized the pull she had felt in the clearing was no dream, it was part of her, part of something buried in her blood she hadn’t yet learned to name.

She awoke again, her body slick with sweat, sheets twisted around her like chains. Her hands went instinctively to her palms, tracing the crescent marks left from the dream, and she could still feel the burn beneath the surface. 

The sensation was strange, almost electric, and it refused to fade. Zara pressed her hands against her knees, trying to ground herself, and the images of the dream lingered like smoke. Wolves circling, the clearing of ash and bone, Hunter’s eyes watching, judging, and waiting. 

And beneath it all, a pulse of something dangerous, a rhythm she could not yet control.

In the hours before dawn, Zara moved through the fortress in a daze towards the training yard, she wanted the breeze to cool her off, as her thoughts were piling up. 

Her limbs were heavy, her body protesting every step, yet she couldn’t ignore the subtle shifts she felt in the air around her. 

Every shadow seemed to stretch longer, and every whisper of wind carried a faint vibration she hadn’t noticed before. In their secret training yard, the scent of herbs from Ma Erene’s bundles still lingered, mixed with the faint copper tang of blood from the sparring pit. 

Zara knelt, fingertips brushing the dirt, and tried to push the images of the dream aside but the scratches on her palms itched again, insistent, demanding attention.

When she finally returned to the servants’ quarters, Zara sank onto the thin mat with a groan. She flexed her fingers, watching the skin glimmer slightly, almost as if something beneath the surface was moving. 

The thought made her uneasy, but it also sparked a curiosity she hadn’t allowed herself before. She could feel it now, subtle but undeniable, a thread connecting her to the wolves in her visions, to Hunter, to something ancient in the pack she didn’t yet understand. 

The dream had left her shaken, yes, but it had also opened a window she couldn’t ignore.

By the time the first light of morning seeped through the cracks in the fortress walls, Zara was upright, stretching muscles that screamed in protest. 

She touched the marks on her arms one last time, memorizing the sensation, and whispered to herself, 

“I need to understand this but I know I can’t hide from it.” Her gaze drifted to the distant hills where the pack moved, already starting their day, and she made a decision. 

Whatever the bond in her blood was, whatever stirred inside her, she would face it on her own terms, exactly as Ma Erene had warned. 

The scratches it had left on her were more than pain, they were a signal, a promise that she could no longer ignore.