로그인Seren
A boy screaming for his mother while his own hands strangled her. A warrior begging his body to stop as it drove a blade through his brother’s ribs. A woman watching her feet carry her forward, step after step, toward people she once called family.
Gavin POVI'd woken significantly later than usual. After realizing that Elaine's experiment had worked, I rushed through a shower and tossed some clothes on, then ran to the meeting hall. I was just coming up outside the doors when I heard my uncle arguing with my parents. "I can't just stand back! This is my kingdom! My responsibility! My failure!" There was a thump punctuating each statement, like he was hitting his fist against the table. "This wasn't your failure, Gideon," my mother's voice carried through the door, soft and soothing. "There's nothing you could have done to prevent this."Uncle Gideon scoffed. "I could have noticed my people going missing sooner. Could have kept better tabs on the ones who scattered after the war. Then we'd have an idea of where to look, at least!""This is not on you, brother. No more than Mikhail's actions were on our father twenty years ago." A chair scraped and someone was moving around. "You don't blame Dad for the war that produced the Lu
Elara POVThe first thing I noticed as I came out of the dream was the smell. It was…wrong. The second thing was the necklace in my fist. I lifted my hand, the chain dangling against my forearm as I brought the tooth closer to examine it. It looked real. It certainly felt solid in my hand. The chain was cold against my skin, swinging freely as I turned the tooth over and examined the wire wrapping that formed the top, creating a bail for the chain to slide through. And when I gripped the tooth tightly against my palm, the edges bit in with just a hint of pain.I’d brought something of Gavin’s from my dream into reality. My heart thumped hard at the thought. How was that possible? While I’d known I was traveling outside of myself, that the dreams were more than dreams, I had never imagined I could carry something through the planes. A tiny hiss brought my focus back to the room, and I looked around to see where it came from. There, up in the vents, a puff of mist was already dissip
Gavin POVThe day dragged. It felt as though each hour took three before it was over. Despite multiple meetings with my uncle, spending time with my grandparents, and catching up with Elaine, I couldn't get the time to pass fast enough. I wanted to go to sleep.Now that I knew there was a very real chance that the girl in my dreams existed, that she was actually a person, I wanted to find her. I wanted to give her the token, like Elaine suggested, to see if we could track it, to find out why she's been coming to me in dreams instead of reality. I wanted to find out why I was so obsessed with her. Because I was. Now that I'd finally admitted it, I realized I'd been obsessed with her since the first dream. Since the first time she'd walked across that meadow, her eyes sparkling and bright. When darkness fell after dinner, I slipped away from the family and went back to my suite. I couldn't handle more small-talk. My body was vibrating with anticipation as I pushed through the door,
Gavin POVMom and Dad took their usual suite to get a few hours’ rest before we contacted Elaine. Everyone else went back to their rooms, but I was still restless after everything and couldn’t settle. So Atka and I decided to go for a run.We headed out into the forest that was at the back of the castle. I stripped down, putting my clothes in one of the many baskets set out so we didn’t have to leave them stuffed in trees or on the ground, and then I gave control to Atka. We shifted into his wolf form seamlessly, and he stretched once before taking off.The familiar rhythm of his paws digging into the ground as he ran helped soothe something in both of us, and I let him take the lead while I turned everything that had happened over in my mind. When he’d run for about an hour, he finally slowed, and we came up to the stream that cut through the forest. The water gurgled as it ran over stone, and Atka took a moment to slake his thirst before he lay down on the bank. Once he’d settled,
Elara POVThe cattle prod touched my back again, and I arched off the cot. I was fully awake now, the peace of the dream already gone, ripped away by the cruelty of the guard who was yanking me from my cell. “The doc wants to see you. Get moving,” he growled from behind me, adjusting his grip on the prod. I scrambled forward, doing my best to avoid another hit of electricity. The gleam in the guard’s eyes told me he was enjoying the pain it caused, and I refused to give him an opportunity to use it again. I’d take my defiance where I could. Ghost was waiting for me in the lab, the table that Allie had been on earlier empty. He pointed to the chair set up at his normal station, then told the guard, “Strap her in.”The guard, who had a spiderweb tattooed on his left hand, shoved me forward. I fell into the chair, mentally adding Mr. Spider here to my list of people I wanted to kill before I escaped this place. It was getting to be a long one.He placed leather straps over my forearm
Gavin POVI held my arms out in front of me, just now noticing the sting of the bloody grooves. Atka immediately started healing them, but it was taking more effort than healing usually did. I could feel him beginning to tire. Then I heard a noise from outside my bedroom, and my mother’s voice. “Let me through!” she demanded. She barreled through the door, looking like a furious little pixie. We regularly teased her about how short she was, given that I was just as tall as my dad and my sisters were already taller than her at fifteen. She never let it stop her, though, and certainly wasn’t backing down now. “Let me get to my son, damn it!” The group in my bedroom parted, making way for her, and she all but leaped onto my bed. Her hands came over my forearms, and I felt the heat moving through the cuts. Dad was standing in the doorway, looking on while the rest of the room was silent. He was perfectly still, unless you looked at the way his jaw ticked. The tension was impossible to
Alpha Brian
GideonThe castle loomed exactly as I remembered it—ancient stone soaked in centuries of blood, politics, and secrets better left buried. Even in daylight, the air around it felt heavy, as if the shadows were only pretending to sleep. King Dorian’s presence pressed against my senses before he ever
Alpha James
Seren







