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AUDREY
A dark,menacing laugh reverberated around me and someone screamed in agony. Merrick. Merrick was screaming. The monster was eating him alive and I was next.
Panic stole my breath and I ran. Tree branches clawed at my face and arms and tore into my dress more viciously in my dreams than they’d been in reality. Blood poured down my chest, stark against the shredded white fabric, while agony blazed through my body and my mind spun.
I had to get away. Had to—
The menacing laugh grew louder, a deep roiling sound with Merrick’s screams a terrifying descant that made my soul tremble with fear.
“You can’t escape,” Sterling said, making me wrench my gaze around the dark forest, desperate to find him.
I was back in my old pack’s sacred grove. Alone. My heart threatening to pound out of my chest.
With a lurch, I realized I was dreaming. Again. But that did little to ease the panic threatening to consume me.
“You’re pathetic,” Royce added. “So weak your only use is to be a sacrifice.”
“No.” I jerked around, trying to find them even though I knew I wouldn’t until the dream wanted me to.
Were they behind me? I couldn’t tell, couldn’t see them, could barely see anything in the gloom.
The laugh roared through the glade, deafening me, making the trees and ground tremble, and stirring up a frozen wind that stung my skin.
“No one wants you,” Sterling taunted.
“That’s not true,” I gasped. Bishop wanted me.
Except I didn’t know that. Cyrus hadn’t been who I’d thought he was. Bishop could be the same. My previous dreams could be right and everyone was just using me.
“You’re a convenient cunt,” Sterling laughed. “You begged for it and soon you’ll go crawling back to them and beg some more.”
“I won’t,” I insisted. I could be strong. But the second I thought that, I knew it wasn’t true. I wasn’t strong. I’d never be strong.
“Of course you will, because that’s all that you’re good for. Fuck toy or sacrifice.” Sterling’s laugh crescendoed, pressing in and oozing against my body as if it had physical mass even as the wind picked up and the trembling ground threaten to knock me over.
I tried to wipe the laugh away, but it clung to me, crawling over my skin and digging into the gashes Royce’s claws had carved into my chest when he’d torn open my white transformation dress.
“I can’t believe you were stupid enough to think I was your fated mate,” Royce added, his voice suddenly right behind me.
I jerked around, my pulse roaring in my ears, bile burning my throat, but he wasn’t there.
“Fate would never match me to someone like you,” he hissed. “Fate wouldn’t match you to anyone.”
Not even to Bishop.
I knew that now. I’d seen the truth. I wasn’t worthy.
But he’d promised—
And Royce had made me believe he’d wanted me, too.
I was so stupid. My throat tightened with tears. I’d fallen for the same trick in less than a month because Iwasdesperate. Desperate for hope and love and all the things someone like me didn’t deserve.
Except that doesn’t make sense,a small voice whispered inside me, barely audible over Sterling’s roaring laugh and stinging wind.
Of course, it didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense. Because this was a dream.
Except even when I was awake my life didn’t make sense. It never had.
