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She leans over, presses a kiss to the top of my head and stands, effectively ending the conversation before it begins.

The room darkens as she leaves, flicking the light switch and double checking that the door clicks shut behind her.

I stay awake long after I should be asleep, mind spinning with a million questions and not a single answer.

Three weeks later, she was dead.

I never did discover what truths she spoke of. Now that I’ve had years to realize her stories came from her and not from a book, I keep thinking I’ve missed something important.

Creatures of fang and shadow sound an awful lot like vampires and wolven.

Were any of her stories true? Or were they all fancy? Tales she created to encourage me to keep dreaming while faced with Father’s eternal cynicism and hate.

My thoughts cycle through early memories like flipping through pages in a book. I lose myself in the past until a flicker of shadows darting between the trees catches my attention.

My heart leaps into my throat with excitement. I push to my knees whispering, “Shade?”

I wait with bated breath, praying his large feline body will slink out of the shadows. After a while, my hope dwindles until I’m forced to admit there’s nothing there.

I’m imagining things. Again.

I slink back down, but the buzzing anticipation from earlier is back, and it’s impossible to shake. It makes the hairs on my arms and the nape of my neck stand on end, a chill I can’t alleviate, no matter how tight I wrap my cardigan around myself.

Maybe it’s all the memories causing the feeling of foreboding to deepen. My instincts are screaming at me to leave; to run as fast and as far as I can. My internal alarms are screaming ‘danger!’ even though there’s no danger anywhere I can see.

With the most pathetic Omega growl ever, I tuck my “blanket” tighter around my legs.

I need to relax. I have a plan. It might not be a great plan, but it’s something. If Caelan comes back, I’ll be here to warn him before he gets hurt.

If only I could shake the darkness clinging to me.

I continue my vigil for the rest of the evening and into the night, never once taking my eyes off the forest beyond. Even when it gets too dark to see. Even when Father leaves for his nightly meeting with Alexander, and the crunch of tires on gravel startles a whine out of me. Even when I feel my eyelids growing heavier and heavier. Even then, I force myself back awake, pinching my skin and pulling my hair in hopes that the pain will shock away my exhaustion.

But days without food, hours spent healing, and nights spent listening to my Omega’s keening whines and please for safety and love ultimately win out. I don’t know when it happens, but my heavy lids eventually slide shut.

And when I fall into a restless, anxious sleep, it’s not Caelan I dream of.

It’s my mother. Locked behind a massive silver gate, hands extended through the bars, grasping, stretching, reaching frantically for something I cannot see.

Her hair isn’t the pale golden blonde I remember. It’s living fire, red and orange flame flaring like a halo around her pale, beautiful face.

The world behind her burns as well. Towering buildings, thousands of homes, farms and markets. Cities I don’t recognize that feel ancient and alive. Every corner of every structure is under attack, shrouded in shadows and lies.

I glance down. Mother’s feet are bare. She stands in a pool of crimson blood that shimmers with a horrifying sort of beauty. A few feet in front of her, a still-beating heart lays discarded in the dirt. It’s pulsing and bloody, beating in a chaotic rhythm that matches the beating heart in my chest.

Beautiful iridescent wings, thin as tissue paper and tipped with curved talons as large as my hand, rise from her back, born of smoke and fire. I try to yell. To scream. Beg her to use her new wings to escape.

It would be so easy! She could fly and fly, leaving the pain and darkness behind. I scream and shout and sob as the fire rages behind her, devouring stone castles, forests, homes and fields of golden wheat, reducing it all to ash in seconds.

I hold Mother’s gaze, screaming louder, but my words are stolen away, snatched from the air by an unseen hand as each sound falls from my lips.

I don’t give up. Over and over I shout, praying she’ll somehow understand.

Leave, Mother! Escape!

Fly away! Fly far, far away, and never come back!

No matter how hard I fight, I produce nothing but silence. The world dies as my mother cries, and Fates—she could escape if she’d only look behind her! All she has to do is use her wings and fight!