Flashes

Flashes.

That was all I had.

Flashes of light.

Flashes of voices.

Flashes of movement just beyond my reach.

Every time I tried to grasp one of the memories, it slipped away like water through my fingers.

My head pounded.

It felt as though someone had taken a hammer to my skull and then left the pieces rattling around inside. Every heartbeat sent another wave of pain through me.

I tried to open my eyes.

Nothing happened.

Panic flickered briefly before fading beneath the heavy fog clouding my thoughts.

Where was I?

What happened?

The last thing I remembered clearly was sitting with my friends on the patio at the club.

Then the nausea.

The dizziness.

Lyall catching me before I fell.

After that...

Nothing.

The darkness around me shifted.

Or maybe I was moving.

I couldn't tell.

I became aware of voices nearby.

At first they sounded distant, muffled as though I were listening from underwater.

Gradually they grew clearer.

"You weren't supposed to give her any. Only him."

The sharpness in the voice cut through some of the haze.

Her?

Who was her?

Me?

The realization came slowly.

A cold knot formed in my stomach.

Another voice answered.

A woman.

"I didn't know she was up there. I just slipped it into a few drinks after flirting with that pathetic wolf at the bar. If I had known she would get one, I never would have sent those drinks upstairs."

For a moment, everything froze.

The wolf at the bar.

Troy.

Images flashed through my mind.

Troy blushing.

The beautiful woman talking to him.

The rest of us laughing from the balcony.

My stomach twisted violently.

No.

No, no, no.

We had been careful.

We knew about the drug.

We had spent the entire evening making sure every drink was safe.

How could we have missed something so obvious?

Another male voice joined the conversation.

"Well, she got some too. What happens now?"

A long pause followed.

Then the woman laughed.

The sound sent a chill down my spine.

"If I remember correctly, the effects on females can be... interesting."

My pulse quickened.

Interesting?

What did that mean?

"What kind of effects?" one of the men asked.

The woman seemed amused.

"We may be able to use this to our advantage."

The words struck me harder than anything else.

Use it?

Use me?

Fear exploded through the fog in my mind.

I tried to move.

Tried to force my eyes open.

Tried to listen.

Anything.

But my body refused to obey.

It felt impossibly heavy.

Like I was trapped beneath layers of stone.

The darkness pressed closer.

The voices faded.

I fought to stay conscious.

I needed to hear more.

Needed to know what they were planning.

Needed to know where Lyall was.

The thought of him sent another wave of panic through me.

He had stumbled too.

He had been affected.

Was he here?

Was he safe?

Was he hurt?

I tried to call his name.

No sound came out.

Only silence.

The darkness swallowed me again.

Time lost all meaning.

Minutes.

Hours.

Maybe days.

I had no way of knowing.

The next thing I became aware of was the heat.

At first it was subtle.

A warmth spreading through my chest.

Then it began to grow.

The sensation crept through my body, winding through every muscle and nerve.

My breathing quickened.

Sweat dampened my skin.

The heat intensified.

It wasn't natural.

Every instinct I possessed screamed that something was wrong.

Terribly wrong.

A shiver ran through me despite the overwhelming warmth.

I knew this feeling.

Not from experience.

From stories.

Lessons.

Warnings passed down from older female wolves.

Heat.

The word echoed through my mind.

Impossible.

Heat wasn't supposed to happen like this.

Female wolves entered heat only under very specific circumstances.

It was rare.

Special.

Sacred, according to some.

Certainly not something caused by an unknown drug.

My pulse raced.

The harder I fought the sensation, the stronger it became.

The pounding in my head returned with renewed force.

My thoughts scattered.

Nothing made sense anymore.

I drifted in and out of awareness.

The world became fragments.

A voice.

A shadow.

Movement.

The feeling of being carried somewhere.

Then darkness again.

At one point I thought I heard Lyall's voice.

At another, I was certain I heard someone arguing nearby.

Neither memory stayed long enough for me to trust it.

Everything blurred together.

Reality.

Dreams.

Memories.

Hallucinations.

I could no longer tell the difference.

The only thing I knew for certain was that something had gone horribly wrong.

Eventually the heat began to fade.

The relentless fire burning through my veins weakened until all that remained was exhaustion.

A bone-deep weariness unlike anything I had ever experienced.

When awareness finally returned, I found myself lying on a hard floor.

The room was silent.

My head still throbbed.

Every muscle in my body ached.

For several long moments, I couldn't bring myself to move.

I simply stared into the darkness, trying to piece together the shattered fragments of memory.

The voices.

The drug.

The woman at the bar.

The strange heat.

None of it fit together.

None of it made sense.

But one thing was painfully clear.

Something had happened.

Something important.

Something that would change everything.

And I couldn't remember enough to understand what it was.

That realization terrified me more than the darkness ever could.