"The ceremony," Sawyer says. "When?"
"Dawn," I say. No hesitation. No room for doubt. "We move it to dawn."
Maren appears at my side, fingers finding mine. She's got dirt on her face and determination in her eyes. "Dawn," she agrees.
The others nod and disperse to tend wounds and prepare. Maren stays close as we walk back to my cabin at the edge of the compound. She doesn't say anything about the way I'm moving carefully, favoring my injured shoulder. Doesn't comment on the tremor in my hands or the sweat on my brow despite the cold.
She just stays.
Inside the cabin, I collapse onto the bed. Every muscle aches. The corruption pulses through my veins like a second heartbeat, foreign and wrong. Maren brings water, brings bandages for the shoulder wound that's already starting to heal wrong—too slow, too painful.
"Sleep," she says. "I'll wake you before dawn."
"Stay."
She curls against me, careful of my injuries. Her warmth is better than any medicine. The mate bond hums between us, keeping me grounded. Keeping me human.
I close my eyes.
The nightmares come within minutes.
I'm back in the shadow realm. Darkness presses from all sides, thick and suffocating. Not the darkness of night—this is absence. The complete lack of light, of warmth, of anything living. The corruption burns through my veins like acid, worse here where it originated, where it belongs.
I run through the void, paws striking ground that feels wrong—too soft in places, too sharp in others. The bear is exhausted. I've been running for days. Weeks. Months. Time doesn't work right here. Every direction looks the same. Endless shadow stretching in all directions.
I can't find the way out. Can't find the tear that leads home.
Panic claws at my chest. The human part of me knows I found it once. Fought my way back. Made it home to Maren. But the nightmare twists reality, makes me forget. Makes me believe I'm still here, still trapped, still searching.
"Maren!" I try to call her name but the bear can't speak. The sound that comes out is just a roar that echoes in the emptiness and comes back wrong, distorted, mocking.
Shadow creatures move in the dark. I can't see them but I feel them watching. Waiting. They're in no hurry. They know I'm dying here. Know the corruption is eating me from the inside. Eventually I'll just be another shadow, another lost thing wandering this realm forever.
Maren's face flashes in my mind. Her smile. The way she looked at me without fear even when I shifted in front of her. The way she chose to stay.
She's waiting for me in a world I'll never reach again.
The realization crushes me. I fought so hard to get home. Six months of hell, clawing my way through darkness and shadow creatures and the corruption that spreads through my bear like infection. I made it back. Held her. Kissed her. Told her what she was to me.
And now I'm here again. Trapped. Lost.
The shadow realm stretches on forever. There is no home. There is no Maren. There is only this?—
I wake up roaring.
The bear surges out wrong. There's no silvery mist, no instant transformation. Instead pain explodes through my body—bones cracking and reforming when they should simply change. Fur erupts across my skin in painful waves instead of flowing naturally. The shoulder wound tears open as I grow, fresh blood matting my fur. This isn't how a shift works. This is corruption.
The cabin walls close in as my massive form fills the small space. Maren scrambles away from the bed—smart—putting distance between us. My shoulder slams into the table, shattering it. Claws tear through the mattress.
Rage.
Pure, incandescent rage at being trapped. At the corruption poisoning me from within. At shadow creatures and dimensional tears and everything that's tried to keep me from home, from her, from claiming what's mine.
A snarl rips from my throat.
Maren backs toward the door but doesn't leave. Stands there in the doorway instead.
My bear swings toward the sound. Sees her. I know I should stop, should control this, but the rage is too strong. The corruption makes everything unstable. The bear tries to move toward her but the cabin's too small—I'm wedged between destroyed furniture and walls.
