Chapter 3

TAYLOR'S POV

I dragged my box through the front gate with both hands, my chest heaving but my eyes dry. The night air hit me the moment I stepped outside. No Flynn on the sofa. No footsteps on the stairs. No voice waiting to cut me down.

Just me and the quiet street.

I started walking with no plan, no family, no friend waiting on the other side of a phone call. Just a box of clothes and a signed divorce paper.

The street was quiet. Distant cars. The occasional flicker of a street light. I kept walking until I noticed a car crawling slowly behind me.

I quickened my steps. The car quickened too.

I turned into a side street. The car turned with me.

I ran and the car door burst open and footsteps hit the ground behind me fast and heavy and before I could scream something struck the back of my head and the ground rushed up to meet me.

"Help!" I screamed. "Somebody help me!"

Nobody came.

I tried to get up but my arms buckled. A face I did not recognise stared down at me with completely empty eyes.

"Please," I whispered. "I don't have anything. Whatever you want I don't have it."

He crouched down. "I don't want your money."

"Then what do you want?" I asked.

He said nothing and reached into his jacket.

"Who sent you?" I asked. "Was it Flynn? Did Flynn send you?"

Nothing.

"Answer me!" I cried. "Who sent you? At least tell me that much!"

He tilted his head like my question bored him.

"You are going to do this and you cannot even tell me why?" My voice broke. "I have done nothing to anybody. I just left a bad marriage. That is all I did tonight. I just left!"

Something cold pressed into my side and pain tore through my body so complete and so savage that every word I had left turned to ash in my throat. My fingers scraped concrete and the street light above me blurred and started getting very far away.

A car door slammed. An engine disappeared down the street. The night went completely silent.

I was alone on the cold pavement with blood pooling warm beneath me and my box sitting three feet away.

"Please," I managed, not to anyone, just to the sky and whatever had been watching my life and staying quiet all this time. "Please just take me away from here. Anywhere. Somewhere these humans cannot find me. I don't care what it looks like. I don't care what it costs. I am so tired."

The street light went out.

Someone appeared beside me without a sound. She had my exact face, the same nose, the same jaw, the same eyes except hers burned gold instead of brown. Her ears tapered to soft points at the tips and when she lifted her hand I saw the faint curve of claws where her nails should have been.

"Who are you?" I whispered.

"Someone who heard you," she said.

"Am I dying?" I asked.

She looked at me gently but said nothing.

"Am I dying?" I asked again.

"You are leaving," she said.

"That is the same thing," I said.

"Not always," she said.

"What are you?" I asked.

"Something you have never seen before," she said. "Something these humans do not deserve to know about."

"Did you know this would happen to me?" I asked. "Did you know I would end up here on this pavement tonight?"

"I knew you would call out," she said. "I did not know when."

"And you were just waiting?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

"For how long?" I asked.

"Long enough," she said.

"Where are you taking me?" I asked.

"Somewhere far," she said. "Like you asked."

"Will it be better than this?" I asked.

She looked at me for a moment. "It will be different," she said.

"Different how?" I asked.

"You will have a place," she said. "A real one. Not one someone gave you out of convenience."

"Will I be alone?" I asked.

"No," she said simply.

"Will it hurt?" I asked.

"Not anymore," she said.

"Will I come back?" I asked.

"No," she said.

"Will I remember any of this?" I asked.

"Does it matter?" she asked.

I looked at her gold eyes and her claws and her face that was my face and thought about Flynn standing in the hallway holding divorce papers and thought about the guest room wardrobe and thought about two years of bowing my head and said "No. It does not matter at all."

She leaned close and pressed her lips to my ear and whispered something that bypassed my mind entirely and landed somewhere much deeper. Then she pulled back and looked at me one final time.

"Live the life I could not," she whispered.

"Wait," I said. "Wait. If you are sending me somewhere in your place does that mean you are the one dying now?"

She smiled at me and it was the saddest smile I had ever seen on a face that was also my own. "I was already gone," she said. "I just needed someone to take what I could not keep."

But the ground had already dissolved beneath me. The pain vanished. The darkness swallowed everything whole.

Then warmth. Then sound, voices, music, burning candles, crushed flowers and something wilder underneath it all that had no name in any language I had ever spoken.

I opened my eyes.

I was standing at an altar with candles everywhere and flowers climbing stone pillars and a ceiling that disappeared into shadow. Three men stood in front of me, all in black, all watching me.

The one in the middle stepped forward. "You are awake," he said.

"I am awake," I said. "Now will somebody please tell me what is going on because the last thing I remember is bleeding on a pavement and now I am apparently in the middle of a wedding I did not agree to!"

He looked at me for a long moment. "You are in the Wolfric Kingdom," he said. "And you are our bride."

I looked at all three of them. "I am sorry," I said slowly. "Your what?"