It feels like I’ve been stabbed. Like the blade went through me too. The pain is indescribable, tearing through my chest. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I reach out to touch her, but I can’t feel her. My hand passes through her like she’s smoke.
I feel nothing.
She chokes, staring into my eyes, and I watch the life drain from them. The light—the warmth, the fire that’s always burned in her amber gaze—it fades.
And then she’s gone.
The pain doubles me over, my forehead touching the ground. I retch, my body purging itself as if it could somehow expel this horror. Tears stream down my face, hot and uncontrolled. I’ve never felt pain like this, didn’t know it was possible to feel this much and not die from it.
The magical blade disappears, dissolving into nothing. The warlocks step over her body like it’s trash. One of them kicks her with his boot, sneering down at her, and hatred unlike anything I’ve ever known burns through me.
“Good riddance,” he mutters. “Filthy lioness. We did you a favor, Blackwood.”
I cough, realizing I’ve been holding my breath for too long. My chest burns. My hands shake. This has to be a nightmare. A bad dream.It can’t be real. It can’t.
Something else steps out of the Witching Glen.
I don’t look up. I can’t take my eyes off Mara’s body, as if keeping watch over her could somehow bring her back.
The figure crouches down beside me.
“I’m so sorry, son.”
Eric.
I finally look up, my vision blurred with tears. He’s looking at me with a sad expression, but I can’t tell if it’s forced or if he’s genuinely hurt. His face is drawn.
I stare up at Eric, my emotions warring violently within me. Hatred, confusion, desperation, they all battle for dominance as I look at the face of the man who claims to be my father. The man Mara warned me about. Was she right all along? Is he somehow behind this nightmare? Yet he’s offering help, and I’m drowning, grasping for anything that might save her.
“Why is this happening?” I rasp, my voice hollow, broken. “This has to be a nightmare.”
“It’s far from a dream, son,” he says softly. “You’re time traveling.”
The words hit me, stealing what little breath I had left.
“I don’t wish this kind of pain on you,” he continues, his voice low. “Not now. Not ever.”
“So this is my future?” I choke out, my voice breaking, despair crushing me. “You break out of the Glen and take her from me?”
“I can help you save her,” he tells me.
I look up at him, my vision blurred with tears, hope flickering faintly through my despair.
“The warlocks, Calyx and Brixton, they are higher-level warlocks. I cannot go against them. The Glen is going to open, son. But you can open it sooner and help me stop this.”
I look down at Mara’s lifeless body, the sight of her tearing at my soul. “This cannot be my future,” I whisper, determination hardening beneath my grief. “I cannot lose her.”
“You won’t,” Eric says, “if you let me help you.”
I reach out, gently brushing my fingers over her eyes, but nothing happens. I can barely breathe through it.
“I can feel the ground,” I murmur. “Feel the air. Even smell it. But I can’t feel her.”
“You are not in tune with your magic enough,” Eric says. “But soon, you will be.”
I start to cry. I bend down and press my forehead to hers.
Like I’m dying with her. The mate bond between us, once alive and powerful, is bleeding me dry.
