Chapter 2: The Wrong Body

Seraphine’s POV

My eyes snapped open and everything around me was strange. The air smelled of herbs and smoke. 

My lungs pulled tightly as I tried to sit up. My arms shook under a weight with smaller arms and thinner wrists. 

My heart slammed against a ribcage that felt too narrow. I looked down and unknown hands stared back at me. 

Pale, long fingers, faint blue veins under skin that had never seen sunshine. 

These weren't my hands, my hands had carried baskets of herbs for the pack healer and held Rhydian's face the night he marked me. 

These hands were too small to be mine. 

I jerked upright and pain shot through my side. A higher pitched hiss tore out of my throat, my fingers went to the ache and brushed hot. 

Under the thin night gown, I found myself wearing a mark that burned deep into my skin. 

I shoved the fabric aside and stared surprisingly. 

The mate mark was there, but the direction of the mark was reversed backwards.

The beautiful crescent moon and claw lines that Rhydian had pressed into my flesh with his teeth now looked twisted, and ugly. 

My stomach flipped.

“No,” I whispered. The voice that came out was soft, and melodic, nothing like my voice I was used to. “No, no, no.”

I scrambled off the narrow bed and my legs gave out. I hit the wooden floor, and my knees cracked against it. The room spun. 

There were shelves of dried plants, candles burned dimly, and a small round mirror on the wall. 

I crawled to it, and dragged myself by my nails. The face I saw in the mirror made my heart slip.

Silver black hair fell in waves around sharp cheekbones and violet flickered behind icy blue eyes that were not mine. 

It looked like a lady named Elowen Solenne. I… everyone knew that name. 

She was a lone witch who lived on the edge of the territory, never came to gatherings, and never bowed to the pack. She was supposed to be dead, as rumoured. 

And here I was wearing her skin.

I touched my cheek and the lady in the mirror did the same. My breath fogged the mirror.

I died… yes… I remembered dying.

I remembered seeing Rhydian’s silver eyes widened with horror….the dagger in my ribs… his hands shaking. 

Yes… my…my blood on the stone altar. 

Lysandra’s excitement behind him. 

I remembered the pain, the cold and the nothingness. And now this? How? How…how? 

I screamed out and a sob clawed its way up my throat. I pressed both hands over my mouth to keep it in, but it poured out, broken. 

Tears burned hot down my new cheeks. I rolled on the floor, arms wrapped around myself, trying to hold the pieces together.

Why am I here? Why this body? Why not my own?

Something crawled under my skin. It didn’t seem like muscle, or blood. It was power. 

It crawled like ants, prickling, pushing, wanting to get out. Next, my palms sparked with violet light and I gasped, jerking them apart. 

The light dimmed, but the feeling stayed.

I forced myself to my feet. The room was small, it had one door, one window with thick curtains. 

A single table held a leather book, a bowl of black liquid, and a silver dagger. My fingers shook when I touched the dagger. 

The dagger was still warm and the liquid on it was fresh with dark energy around it. It had blood stains and they weren’t mine. 

I stumbled back until my spine hit the wall. 

My chest raced quickly. The power inside me surged again, stronger this time, it answered to my panic. 

The candles flared high, and flames stretched toward the ceiling. The bowl on the table cracked down the middle.

“Stop,” I begged out loud. “Please stop.”

Immediately, everything went still.

I slid down the wall until I sat on the floor letting my head fall into my hands. 

The reversed mark burned hotter, as if it was angry and the more I remembered Rhydian, it burned hotter. 

His name stabbed through me and I curled forward as my arms tightened around my stomach. I could still feel him like he was close by. 

The thread that pulled tight between us was still there. Something trapped and howled inside a cage. 

My Wolf. 

She was gone from me. I reached inside for her warm presence, her strength, the way she used to curl around my heart when I was scared, and found only emptiness. 

But the thread told me she was alive and inside him, the man who killed me.

Rhydian has her, he has my wolf.

Rage rushed through me and my eyes reddened. 

That moment I wanted revenge so badly, to go to Shadowfang with claws put to rip the truth from his throat. 

It was obvious this body had never run through snow for hours, it had never shifted. 

This body was dying already, I could feel it in the ache behind my eyes, in the way the power kept trying to eat me from the inside.

I didn’t know how I knew, but I did. The time was short.

The air in the room changed and grew colder. The candles bent sideways like an unseen wind blew through. My head snapped up.

A woman stood in the middle of the chamber. She was tall, had silver hair that flowed with no breeze and her eyes were like moonlit on a frozen lake. 

She wore white that glowed so brightly. I knew her face from dreams and prayers my whole life.

The Moon Goddess.

I was shocked, my mouth opened as I stood still without moving. She looked at me with so much sadness.

“My child,” she said, her voice filled the whole room. “I am sorry.

Sorry? I replied but my voice cracked. “You let me die.”

“I let you choose.”

“I didn’t choose this!” I shouted. My hands clenched into fists. 

The power answered, crackling around my fingers. “I didn’t choose to wake up in a stranger! I didn’t choose to lose my wolf! I didn’t choose to lose him!”

Hot tears fell down my cheeks. This body was so weak and I didn’t like that.

The Goddess stepped closer, quietly. She knelt so we were eye to eye, her hand reached out and touched my teary cheeks. 

She was real and her touch was warm.

“You were murdered on sacred ground,” she said quietly. “The bond was severed by betrayal. I caught your soul before it slipped beyond and  placed it where it could return and finish what was started.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to finish anything. I want my life back. I want my body, I want my mate to look at me like I’m not dead.”

She looked so pained. “That life is gone. This one is borrowed.” 

She took my hand and turned it palm up and a faint silver line appeared across my skin. It flowed then faded immediately.

“One year, Seraphine. This flesh will not hold you one year before it fails.”

My heart stopped. “One year?”

“Yes, one year to choose.”

“Choose what?” My voice broke again.

She stood and the light around her grew brighter. 

“Between vengeance or love, truth or lies. Between the wolf who killed you or the witch who waits for you. Your fate is no longer written child, you will write it.”

I stared at her. I almost spoke out but the words stuck.

She turned to leave, already starting to fade.

“Wait!” I lunged forward and grabbed nothing but air. “Please. Don’t leave me like this.”

She looked back one last time. “You have one year.”

Then she was gone and the candles went off all at once.

I sat alone in the dark, in a body that was not mine, and with a heart that hurt.

One year.

I pressed my hand over the reversed mark and it burned under my palm.

One year to make him feel what I felt, one year to take back what was stolen. One year before I died again.

I wiped my face with my trembling hands and stood up.

Fine, I would use every second of this one year.

Rhydian Mavren was going to look into my eyes again.

And this time, I would know exactly who killed me.