Veyra POVWaking up, I’m dragged back to reality with a gasp, and I watch as the obsidian shatters and falls down. My eyes flick around, and I’m in a small room. I thought I heard the screams of the other women.“How are you?”I turn and see Dagen leaning against the wall. He’s here? Has he been here the entire time?“You barely made a sound, but then again, you’ve not had much hardship in your life.”He steps toward me.“It...” My head shakes. “Why do you hate me so much?”“Our families have never got along,” he explains. “We’ve been enemies, it’s one of those things. You were brought up to hate us, I was brought up to hate you.” He shrugs like it’s nothing.“How was this meant to work?” I ask, gesturing to the shattered obsidian.“You know how. It shows you the memories which are your darkest, most painful, and hardest. It shows you the moments of your life when you battled to survive, or nearly died. It shows you what you went through that made you who you are.”Mine, not my mates,
Veyra POVI'm falling again, and this time it's different to before. This time it's not like I'm tumbling into my own fractured recollections, or even been dragged into one of my mates. It's like a combination of both. It's somehow colder and darker than before like the earth itself has stopped breathing.The obsidian hums even when it disappears from my view, but the sound sinks into my marrow and makes me forget how to move. There's nothing to guide me into this memory, no familiarity, or persons I recognise. All that's here is dry and cracked ground beneath my feet, and the air that tastes like old bold and even older sorrow. I hear the wind begin to whisper again, not through the leaves like I would expect, but through the bones of trees long dead, their twisted branches reaching toward the sky like fingers clawing for something they once had and can never grasp again.My eyes scan everything and the light is a dusky orange, the sun sinking into the horizon like it’s trying to
Veyra POVMy breath catches in my throat, the last vision yanked away like a curtain torn from its rail, and I collapse inward as if the weight of what I’ve seen is too much for one soul to carry.It should be over. I want it to be over, but even I know that it isn't.The obsidian hums around me. The air begins to shift again. It presses against my skin with a foreign kind of cold, an unfamiliar bite that doesn’t belong to my memories. It sinks into my bones like a warning. My limbs go still. My breath holds without permission.I’m not falling this time like before. I’m not tumbling through my own past or slipping into memories I’ve tried to bury. I’m standing upright. But the air smells wrong. Not like fire or blood or ash, though I have no doubt all of those will come soon after, but like something older. Wounded. Abandoned.The ground beneath me is cracked and dry, the trees brittle skeletons that claw at the sky like they’ve long since given up hope of spring. The sun is low and a
Veyra POVMaddox moves too quickly and the blade sinks into his chest with a sickening crunch. The sound is wet and final. His body jerks as Maddox climbs onto the bed and pins him down, blade driving deeper between the ribs. His brother gasps, hands scrambling for something, anything that he can use to fight back. Maddox doesn’t give him the chance.He leans close, mouth brushing his brother’s ear.“You should’ve stayed out of my bed,” he whispers.His brother chokes. Blood fills his mouth. He’s trying to speak, trying to beg, but Maddox keeps going.“She was mine. You knew she was mine.”Another twist. A sharp jerk of the blade that severs something vital. His brother’s body twitches once, then sags. Eyes wide. Staring at nothing. There's no remorse from Maddox, if anything, just fury and hurt, like his brother's betrayal warranted death, and maybe it did? After all, she is Maddox's mate, and his brother did overstep that line.Maddox doesn’t even look at him or consider watching h
Veyra POVMy body isn't exhausted, but my mind is right now. I'm waiting, wondering what is going to come next, or will that be the end of it all? A coldness seeps into my chest, and I feel myself getting pulled back under again. I don't think I can do this much more. I'm ready to push the button if I get a chance to just end this nightmare. I can deal with my own past, my own darkness, why do I have to carry theirs as well?I can already tell this isn't my memory. The space around me is different, and it's not what I've seen before. Because of this, I already know whatever I'm about to see isn't what's buried inside me. It belongs to someone else.I try to brace myself but there's no warning, and not a second to prepare, the obsidian vanishes and the memory builds so fast I can barely catch my breath.A coldness spreads through my chest. I try to brace myself, but there’s no warning. No second to prepare. The chamber vanishes, swallowed whole, and I fall into someone else’s life.Th
Veyra POVMy eyes snap open suddenly as the vision ends.I'm still surrounded by the obsidian, I'm still in the trial, it wasn't real. I'm not dying, I'm not in heat. It feels like I’ve been dropped from a great height. My body is drenched in sweat. My chest heaves with each ragged breath, and I can’t stop shaking. Every part of me aches. My hands are clenched into fists so tightly that my nails have broken the skin. There’s blood on my palms, on my wrists, on the arms of the chair I didn’t remember gripping.I try to sit up straighter, to steady my thoughts, but my body won’t stop trembling.It’s over. That was all of it. It had to be. Those were the worst things I’d lived through, my mate’s rejection, my father's betrayal, and the heat that nearly killed me. There’s nothing worse than those. Unless the fights with the Omegas are going to be part of it? Although they weren't powerful enough to do much.I let my head fall back against the obsidian and try to exhale. My chest is tight