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The Mate Time Stole
The Mate Time Stole
Author: Esib

The Dream

Author: Esib
last update publish date: 2026-09-07 18:00:47

SAYA

I was running again. The forest stretched endlessly around me, dark and unfamiliar, yet somehow I knew every turn. I knew which roots would catch my feet, which branches would scrape my arms, and which narrow paths would lead nowhere. I’d never been here before, at least, not awake. But I’d been running through this forest for eleven years, always chasing him.

The man ahead of me moved effortlessly between the trees, never looking back. I could never see his face, only the broad line of his shoulders, the dark hair at the nape of his neck, and the impossible certainty that if I could just catch him, everything would finally make sense.

Tonight, I was closer. Much, much closer than I’d ever been. My lungs burned as I pushed harder, ignoring the branches tearing at my skin. “Wait!” I shouted after him, but he didn’t stop. I ran faster, and the distance between us shrank.

Ten steps. Eight. Six. My fingers stretched toward him. “Please!” The word tore out of me, raw with desperation.

He finally slowed down, and my heart pounded against my ribs because he had never slowed down. Not for a second. He stopped, and for the first time in eleven years, he turned and I froze. I was finally going to see his face. My heart pounded so loudly in my ears that I could barely hear anything else.

Then, finally, his eyes met mine. Piercing, icy grey, they locked onto me with such intensity that I forgot how to breathe.

The world around us fell silent. The trees stopped moving, the birds stopped chirping, and even the wind seemed to disappear, as though the entire forest knew how important this moment was to me. But I still couldn’t see him clearly.

His dark hair fell across his forehead, shadowing most of his face, while the darkness of the forest seemed to swallow everything beyond his eyes. I strained to see him and took a step towards him, the need to see his face fueling me. I needed to know who I’d been chasing all these years.

But the shadows refused to give him to me. All I could see were those eyes, icy grey and fixed on mine.

And then—

“Saya!”

I jolted awake. My eyes flew open as I sucked in a sharp breath. For several seconds, I couldn’t remember where I was. My bedroom slowly came into focus: the familiar ceiling above me, the curtains shifting gently with the morning breeze, and the pale light slipping through the window.

But my heart was still in the forest. I sat up, pressing a hand against my chest. I could still see them, those eyes. Icy grey. After eleven years of chasing a man whose face had always remained just beyond my reach, I had finally seen something. Not enough. Never enough. But something.

“Saya.”

I turned and found Elara standing beside my bed, her eyes fixed on me with a worried look. “You were shouting,” she said quietly.

I stared at her for a moment, still trying to understand what she meant. “I was?”

She nodded, her gaze lingering on my face as though searching for an answer I hadn’t given her yet. “The dream again?”

I nodded, and she didn’t ask anything else. She already knew. She’d known about the dreams for years, eleven years of waking up with the same emptiness in my chest and trying to understand why a man who didn’t exist outside my dreams could feel more familiar than people I’d known my entire life.

“What did you see?” Elara asked, her voice softer now.I hesitated, searching my memory for something more than the lingering image of those eyes. “I don’t know.”

It was the truth. Whatever those eyes meant, I had no idea. Yet the moment I closed my eyes, they were still there, watching me, waiting, and for the first time since the dreams began, I had the unsettling feeling that I had been close. What exactly I had been close to, I had no idea.

Elara reached for the curtains and pulled them open, letting sunlight spill into the room. She turned back towards me, the morning light falling across her face as she gestured towards the door. “Come downstairs.”

I remained where I was, squinting slightly against the sudden brightness as I looked at her. “Why?”

“Because your mother has been waiting for you.” There was a hint of amusement in her voice, as though she already knew I would rather stay in bed.

I reached for my phone on the nightstand and glanced at the screen before looking back at Elara. “It’s my birthday, isn’t it?”

“Twenty-one.”she said,a small smile touched her lips as she nodded. I groaned softly and fell back against my pillows, staring up at the ceiling. Of all the mornings to wake me from that dream.

Elara laughed as she watched me, shaking her head before walking over to the bed. “Come on, birthday girl.” She grabbed my hand and pulled, and I let her drag me to my feet. But as I left the room, I glanced back once, my eyes lingering on the bed where I had just been lying. For no reason I could explain, somewhere deep inside me, I knew this dream was different. I just didn’t know yet how different.

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  • The Mate Time Stole   CHAPTER 36: THE CELL

    SAYAI woke in the chair beside Elara's bed with a blanket over my knees that I didn’t remember putting there. Her mother sat on the other side of the bed, holding Elara’s hand between both of hers. She looked up when she heard me stir, offering a tired smile before nodding towards the door and silently mouthing, Go home.At home, Mum was at the table before I'd finished closing the door. She had heard, of course. The whole compound had."I was at Elara's," I said. "She's sleeping now.""And your shoulder?""Fine."She held my eyes until I let her check it. Then she said, "Where are you going next?""To see Cassian."I watched her take that in. She nodded slowly. "Tell me when you're back."From his chair by the hearth, my father said, without opening his eyes, "Take him something decent to drink. The infirmary tea tastes like boiled boots."Mum's hands went still on the bandage. My father hadn't noticed. I took the flask he pointed to and left.Cassian sat on the stone bench in the g

  • The Mate Time Stole   CHAPTER 35: THE LOCKED DOOR

    SAYAThe slam shook the iron under my hand, and no one breathed. Six guards stood frozen in their half-circle. One had gone the colour of ash. Another had drawn his blade halfway and stopped, as though he'd forgotten what it was for. No one said her name. We all stood listening to the silence below, and it was the loudest thing I had ever heard. "That was her," someone whispered. "Wasn't it?" "Don't." Then footsteps pounded down the lane. Alpha Darius came first, still bandaged from the camp, his face grey and set. The Luna was locked to his arm, with a shawl clutched at her throat, and a healer trailed them with a bag no one had asked for. The lane was narrow and shadowed, the stone damp even at midday, and with so many people crowded into it, the air felt too thin to breathe. "Saya." The Luna caught my sleeve. "Thank the Moon." "What happened?" "She came an hour ago." Darius's voice was low and rough. "She took the keys from the guard on watch and said she wanted to see

  • The Mate Time Stole   CHAPTER 34: THE TELLING

    SAYA Mum was already in the kitchen when I came down, which meant she hadn't slept either. She put a cup of tea in front of me and watched me drink it. My father sat by the hearth with his bandaged wrists on the armrests, pretending to doze. "I won't tell you to stay away from him again," she said quietly. "But I want to be told things, Saya. Where you are, and that you're all right. Can you do that for me?" "Yes." A knock came at the door. A young warrior stood on the step, out of breath. "Alaric sent me. The Packkeeper is awake." My father opened his eyes. "Then go. That man risked his life for you." Mum's hand went still on the table then she squeezed mine once and let go. Cassian was sitting on the edge of the infirmary bed, fully dressed and grey around the mouth. Alaric stood against the wall, looking like a man who had already lost an argument. "Walk with me," Cassian said. "You can't stand." "I can't breathe in here, Saya. I’ve been stuck within these four walls and

  • The Mate Time Stole   CHAPTER 33: WHAT HE KEPT

    CASSIAN She was gone when I woke. I knew it before I opened my eyes. The bond had a different weight when she was near, a warmth against my ribs like a hand held just above the skin. Now it was a thread pulled taut across the compound, and the emptiness of it was worse than the wound. "You're awake. Good." Alaric sat beside the bed with his staff across his knees, exactly where he must have been all night. “Where’s she?” I voiced my thoughts before I even realized it. “She was here the entire time you were asleep,” he replied. “She barely left your bedside. I had to convince her to get some rest before she exhausted herself completely.” I closed my eyes. Under the pain, something stirred that I had not allowed myself in a very long time."There's something you should hear before Saya tells you herself," Alaric said.I frowned. "What is it?""Her mother knows something.""About what?""About the two of you. Your bond. Or something very close to it."I pushed myself up against t

  • The Mate Time Stole   CHAPTER 32: THE LONG DREAMING

    SAYA My mother did not sit. She filled the kettle, set out two cups, and put the kettle down again without lighting the fire. "Mum." "Give me a moment." She pressed both palms flat on the table. "I have said this speech in my head every night since you were eleven. It sounded better there." "Since I was eleven?" "Since the night you came down at dawn and told me you'd been running in your sleep." Her mouth trembled. "You said you were chasing someone and could never catch him. You were so cheerful about it. I smiled and made your breakfast, and I went upstairs and was sick." I sat slowly. The lamp hissed on the table like a foreboding of what was to come. "There was a woman in my mother's family," she said. "My great-great-aunt. Her name was Veyra. I grew up on her story the way other children grow up on fairy tales, except nobody ever told it as one. My grandmother whispered it every night and my mother stopped her." "What happened to her?" "She dreamed." My mother'

  • The Mate Time Stole   CHAPTER 31: WHAT HE OWED

    SAYAThe healers gave him until midnight.If the fever hadn't broken by then, one of them told me quietly, it wouldn't. So I sat beside his bed with a cold cloth in my hands, watching lamplight shiver on the wall, and counted his breaths the way I once counted tracks, as though the right number might tell me something.Somewhere across the compound, my mother would be sitting with her fingers knotted in my father's sleeve, as she had been since we arrived at the boundary stones, as though he might come loose if she let go.I wrung out the cloth and laid it across Cassian's forehead. His skin burned under it. At the back of my mind, my wolf paced and whined, and for the first time I couldn't tell which of us was more afraid.When the lamp had burned down a finger's width, I couldn't breathe in there.Outside, the night was cold and clean. The compound lay quiet beneath a thin moon, the training grounds a pale scar in the dark. Near the well, something shifted on the low wall. A figure

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