Page 119 of Chaos At Second Sight

“You people, always the same. Always the same script. Boring as fuck.”

Disoriented, I wrenched out of his hold and crawled away. Every movement made the room tilt.

“Amaia?” I called. My fingers searched desperately for the pulse I’d felt moments ago.

No…

“No, no, no.”

Please—

“Say cheese!”

I met his eyes, only to see a fist connecting with my nose. My attempt to cover my face was futile.

At least the sound of the crack filled the void left by Amaia’s missing heartbeat.

Blackness took me away from a new painful reality.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

YVAINE

Dreaming had always felt real to me—the vivid images, the awareness, the ability to make decisions—until I woke up, and the pieces crumbled and scattered into nothing.

Most dreams die that way.

The brain is practical. It throws away what it doesn’t need, and I was very good at forgetting nonessentials. We only remember what we most often think about or something that has emotional value.

Only the impossible survives. The beautiful. The horrific. The things that carve themselves so deeply into your mind that no amount of waking can erase them.

Tonight, I had one of those dreams, a permanent tattoo in my cerebral cortex.

I dreamed of my mate, in his most primal form, unfolding from the blackness of a cell. He seemed like another shadow, made of the same darkness that surrounded us, until he got close enough for everyone to realize he wasn’t a figment of their imagination, but as substantial as their own flesh.

I dreamed of my mate acting like the monsters he was so often compared to.

I dreamed of my mate tearing apart the man who smelled of garlic and now only of the rottenest luck.

I dreamed of Logan’s father and his inability to stop his son.

And then the dream shifted.

I dreamed of more fury, more blood, wet cracks. My mate looked furious, for some reason that escaped me, but I should have known.

However bizarre this dream was, those weren’t the reasons why I remembered it.

What left a mark was when my lycan was enveloped by human skin, when black hair sprouted and brushed those sculpted cheekbones, when that mouth that had stolen so many kisses from me revealed two pairs of fangs. Logan emerged before me, except his eyes remained red, redder than red itself, and fixed on me.

He simply picked me up from wherever I was, and, without hesitation, plunged those fangs that frightened the world into my neck, piercing far deeper than flesh.

A white, blinding pain exploded through my soul—a soul that had been preparing for this, waiting for it.

The dream disappeared beneath the force of one growled word.

“Mine!”

There was a sound, steady and relentless, knocking on my consciousness.