Chapter 82

The dream came on slow, like fog curling through my mind. The silence turned to a quiet forest night. I smelled the earth and wet leaves, the humidity from a recent rain in the air muting the scents that lingered in the air, but I could smell it. This musky sweet scent, earthy and beguiling, that I was following.

Chasing.

I was running. My paws cut through moss and leaves, lungs pulling in the cool night air as the forest whispered around me. The moon hung high above, casting silver light through the trees, guiding my path.

The scent was getting closer, or rather, I was getting closer to it. Not hunting like meat, but chasing all the same. I wasn’t alone.

Another presence, another hunter, maybe more than one, shifted in the shadows around me. I didn't hear paws, but I felt their presence. I ran faster, trying to outrun them, to reach the source of that scent before they could close in.

Ahead of me, just out of reach, another wolf moved like liquid shadow. Graceful, fast. Feminine. I couldn’t see her face, but I knew. I knew she was a woman. Her scent was unfamiliar but intoxicating, wild like the wind after a storm. I realized she was who I was chasing.

The other presences started to thin out and grow distant, but there was still someone else there. I felt him, felt him keeping pace and distance. He wasn't a threat, though I could sense his power. It might have been better to say that he didn't feel like he planned to threaten me. Alpha or not, it was hard to say if we got into a fight if I'd win. There was something about his presence. I slowed near an outcropping of rock. Turning my head. He stopped, far enough away to be completely non-threatening, close enough to see his burning violet-blue eyes through the tree.

Strange. He looked ahead, looked back at me then turned away. I wasn't sure how to interpret it other than he was letting me go ahead.

Why? I continued on, a little wary, but the scent was calling me, urging me back into a run. The other's presence faded as if he was getting farther away as I grew closer to the woman I was chasing.

Who was she?

It made me think of the first time I met Hazel but more powerful, more present. I tried to close the distance, but she was always just beyond my reach, leading me deeper into the woods. Further away from concious thoughts or worries.

Soon, it felt almost playful. I felt at ease, following her, assured that I wasn't heading to danger but simply… following her because she wished to be followed.

It was such an oddly wholesome and calming feeling. The moonlight danced on every leaf and pool of water I passed. I caught glimpses of her through the trees, smelled her excitement and joy and felt it like my own. Finally, I paused, breath heavy, and came upon a still, moonlit pool. The water shimmered like polished glass, reflecting the sky above.

I lowered my head to drink.

And there across the pool she stepped out of hiding in plain view. Still a wolf on all fours, but somehow more than that. The light danced across her fur, roaring like silver fire, as if each individual strand picked up some of its light. And on her chest, in the same place mine was, the mark of the Goddess’ justice glowed with the light of a million stars.

My heart lurched.

The mark on my chest warmed seeing it, pulsing and reaching out. Seeing it on her… it shook something loose in me.

A memory of standing under the shower the night of Renee and Tyler's Ceremony. I remembered stepping out of the shower and seeing my own reflection, the light of the mark had caught my eye. I had thought it odd, a trick of the light as it vanished, but when it had reappeared after I'd survived my tumble down into the ravine, I had wondered and feared it.

I had wished it was just the Goddess telling me that I was made to make things right, made to enforce justice in whatever way I could, but now I realized that wasn’t true, or at least, it wasn't the whole truth. I had been chosen, but so had this woman.

Old words from books long collecting dust in the Brightclaw library stirred in my mind.

To be chosen by the Goddess as all werewolves were was something special, but to be marked by her for a purpose, to share that mark was not something that could be thwarted or ignored. It was fate and destiny all twined together.

No matter my choices they would lead me down the same road that the Goddess had set out for me. Right now… they were leading me to this woman, and there was really only one reason for that.

I hesitated. My stomach churning. The last time I had felt like I had been led to a woman, it had been Hazel. Every memory of happiness I had was tarnished by the knowledge that Vivian wasn't my daughter by blood, yet I had to bow my head to the Mistress of the Night, the Goddess who had gifted claws of moonlight. I looked down at them, steeling my resolve and focusing on the light coming from my paws.

Brightclaws never tried to turn from the orders of the Goddess. Faithful. Steadfast. Strong. She would not have chosen me for whatever task, whatever destiny, because she planned for me to fail.

She chose me because she planned for me to succeed.

I lifted my head and let myself shift. I opened my mouth to speak and call out to her, to ask and who she was and what this bond between us might be, but before I could utter a word, she jumped back and away from the bank of the pool. With barely a glance, she darted into the trees, vanishing into the night like mist before dawn.

I lunged after her, but my legs wouldn’t obey. My voice caught in my throat. The dream dissolved into shadows, and slowly I was surfacing back into wakefulness. The world was dark outside the car. We were still moving and in between cities if I had to guess, so I couldn't have been asleep long, but I looked up at the moon and wondered how long it would be before I knew who she was.

Renee

I was frozen in place for just a moment. Watching him shift was something out of a fairytale, the way the moonlight stirred around him and rippled over his skin.

But I hadn't expected it to be Dominic. My heart lurched and fluttered. He looked at me and I heard a voice, vicious and familiar from not too far away. Behind him the trees rustled. I felt the presence getting close, and it wasn't the other wolf that had felt safe to me.

It was someone or something else. The lake's surface stirred and in it I could see the back of a house, a pool, and the shadow of a man who I knew and didn't want to know. His eyes dark as coal and as cold as ice. The scream bottled up in me and I turned to run.

Vivian's laughter followed. Tyler's cold voice. Phillip. Then, it was another man's voice.

Answer me! Answer me, or I'll throw you in with her!

I woke with a sharp inhale, my chest tight, my heart racing. My eyes fluttered open to the soft hum of the car, the world outside bathed in soft twilight as trees blurred past. My head was cradled in Arielle’s lap, her fingers gently running through my hair.

“Easy,” she murmured, her voice low and soothing. “It was just a dream.”

I swallowed hard, the vivid images still clinging to me like damp fog. The dream had felt so real. Too real. The glowing eyes. The moonlight white wolf with claws that shone like sharpened silver. It had been chasing me, weaving through the dark woods as if he knew exactly where I was meant to go. And the other wolf that had simply stopped following. Neither presence felt threatening, but they were distinctly male. Distinctly familiar.

The chase hadn't frightened me, exactly. Not all of it. The middle of it, when it had felt like there were more presences in the woods, more wolves coming after me had been scary, but when it had just been me and the white wolf, it had been… freeing. It had almost been fun until that last moment.

The white wolf had turned into Dominic, and I didn't know exactly what that was meant to mean. The thought had my heart hammering like a trapped bird’s wings. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it meant something. That it had all meant something.

“You seemed peaceful if a bit startled,” Arielle said, her thumb brushing against my temple. “Care to share?”