4. The Edge Of Nothingness

Chapter 4: The Edge Of Nothingness

ANYA’S POV

I woke with the taste of iron in my mouth and the memory of his voice like a bruise across my ribs. The wound in my chest that the mate bond had left still throbbed raw, less like a cut and more like a hollow where something vital had been torn away. My lungs felt too small for the room.

“Run, Anya. Run.” The whisper curled in my head, impossible and urgent. 

I told myself it wasn’t there—no wolf, no guide—but the word carried itself like a bell. I swung my legs over the cot and moved before I could think about what the voice meant. I was light-headed from crying these past hours; my throat was sore; my hands still shook.

Rain drummed steadily on the eaves. The manor slept. I padded barefoot to the window and pushed the latch, not thinking that the cold metal would bite at my knuckles. A shadow passed across the glass. 

The pane shattered inward before I could scream. Something heavy slammed into the sill and a rough hand clamped over my mouth. Fear detonated in me—white-hot, animal. Three shapes spilled through the hole, bodies slick with wet night, faces half-hidden under grimy hoods. Rogues. Not pack hunters, not the men who respected pack lines—rogues who smelled of smoke and old blood. 

They laughed when they saw me. The sound was like knives. 

“Well, look at this,” the tallest one said, his voice a rasp that scraped bone. He crouched, and his grin revealed teeth black with rot. “The pack’s little jewel. The murderer.”

Another circled farther back, boots squealing on the floor. “She’s thin. Perfect.” He spat and the spray glinted in the lamplight.

Instinct made me grab the iron candleholder from the dresser. I swung it with both hands and hit the closest one square on the jaw. He staggered, blood spat from his mouth, and for a breath I tasted victory—short and bitter.

They recovered too fast. A fist rocked my ribcage, hard enough to blur the room. The air left me in a scream. Fingers like iron closed around my wrists and hair, and I was hauled across splintered wood, across my own floor, out into the knife-scented rain. 

They dragged me through brambles and mud, and the manor’s lights shrank into nothing until the only ceiling over my head was the ragged sky. They hauled me into a ruin of stone where the wind found teeth. Their hands were cruel and practiced, climbing beneath my dress, pressing teeth to my shoulder, hands hot and greedy. One of them hissed a promise—soft and filthy—about what they planned to do to me. 

“Please,” I begged, because begging was the only language their faces recognized, and there was a part of me—stupid and proud—that thought begging might loosen the rope of fate. “Please, don’t—”

“Shut up,” the sullen one said, and the words landed like a slap. His claws dragged along my jaw, a trail of heat and sting. “You’re lucky we found you, little liar. Not everyone will get this chance.” 

I spat at him and kicked him, everything was a flaring, desperate motion. I clawed at faces and teeth and arms. The largest one  hand closed around my throat and lifted, and stars exploded behind my eyes. My lungs begged for air I could not reach. 

“I’ll scream,” I choked, and the rhythm of my heartbeat was a drum under my ribs. “Rowan will hear. He’ll—”

At the name their laughter wrapped around me, sudden and ugly. The leader leaned close, breath hot and sweet with whiskey. “Rowan?” he sneered. “Oh sweet thing, you think your pretty alpha will come? News flash, he paid us to get rid of you.” 

The world hissed away. My knees gave. Rowan—my Rowan—sent them. The idea was a living thing that crawled into my bones and froze them. I fought, not because I thought I could win, but because movement kept me from turning into a statue of despair. 

“No!” The sound that came out of me was a raw animal. “No—Rowan would never—” I spat the name like it burned. 

I had believed in him. I had thought his hands would come for me the moment I needed him. I had hollered his name when they took me, when a boot crushed my side, when pain wrote itself into my shoulder. 

It was like someone breaking a bottle against my bones. Everything I had left to hold onto—faith, memory, the tiny shard of love—shuddered and split. That Rowan? The Rowan who’d once laughed with me under the birches? The Rowan I’d loved? The Rowan whose face haunted me in stillness? Had he truly—could he—?

I thrashed until my muscles tore. Adrenaline made me savage and stupid. I bit the hand that gripped me and tore skin. Blood tasted like metal and survival. For a second I was loose, slipping through wet ferns, sprinting. The cold poured into my lungs, sharp and fresh, and a foolish hope lit me: maybe I could make it. Maybe he would hear. Maybe he would save me. 

They were faster. One leapt like a shadow from the trees and slammed into my back. I tumbled, breath knocked out of me, hit the earth hard. My elbow screamed against a rock. A boot connected with the back of my head. The world tilted. I felt the hot sting of something sharp raking my neck—claws, not clean cuts but cruel, flesh-splitting slashes. Blood burst warm and wet, and I tasted it on my teeth.

“Good girl,” the leader crooned, eyes glittering. “Now be quiet and pretty while we decide.” 

He grabbed my hair and dragged me to my knees. Another moved with the lurching grace of a wolf shifting mid-stride. He planted his forepaws on my back and bore down until the cool world turned to stars. 

From his flanks, cold breath steamed in my hair. His body was a blur of fur and teeth when he leaned close and clamped down on my side. Pain detonated across my ribs—a bite with no mercy. The world narrowed to a single hot burn that licked and burned and made me roar, and the sound stuck in my throat like a stone. 

They laughed as I bled. They took turns, a theater of cruelty. They spat taunts, naming me slurs that slid off as if I had nothing to lose, then they whispered nastier things about my body, about what they’d do until there was nothing left. The rain speared me, cold and insignificant. 

I didn’t know how long I lasted—minutes or hours—only that time resembled a smear. My screams alternated with ragged prayers I didn’t believe in. My limbs shook with the effort of staying conscious. When a hand finally shoved me to my feet, the world swam. They forced me toward the cliff and my toes dug in the wet earth, clinging to the last thread of hold. 

Behind me, the leader hissed, “Jump, little thief. Make this easy on yourself.” 

I stumbled, slipped, clawed at the ground. The river far below shouted like a beast. My vision tunneled. Pain drew maps across my body—neck hot and sticky, a chunk missing from my side where teeth had bitten deep, bones that sang when I moved. 

“No,” I whispered into the wind. I should have been screaming. I should have been begging. Instead my voice was a small, thin thing that matched the hole the bond had left. My legs trembled and the rogue shoved me hard from behind. 

The air swallowed me. The world flipped into a screaming vertical. Rocks, rain, the cliffside blurred as my body became weightless. I was hit with a concussion that folded me like paper. Pain unstitched me. My breath came in shards, and everything bright and terrible spilled across the stones. I lay there, ribs rasping, blood pooling, and for the first time since the crash that had taken everything, actual quiet settled over me. 

Peace hummed at the edges of sleep. I let myself imagine the blankness of it. No more faces. No more cruelty. No more Rowan’s imagined betrayal. My eyes felt heavy. My head sloshed in the dark. 

Then a twig snapped.

My eyes flew open, fear piercing through the fog. Shadows shifted at the treeline. For a heartbeat, I thought the rogues had returned to finish me, or that some beast would tear into my remains.

But then I saw them.

Eyes.

Red, blazing, burning through the dark like twin flames. 

My bloodied lips parted, a whimper escaping. Recognition struck me like lightning—I knew those eyes. I didn’t know from where, didn’t know how, but they had haunted my dreams, my nightmares, my very soul. 

The world tilted, vision swimming, and as the darkness claimed me, the last thing I saw was those eyes, unblinking, watching. 

Then—nothing.