Chapter 4 The Dreams of Celeste

That night, sleep dragged me under like drowning.

I was in a field of wildflowers, but I wasn't me. My hands were pale and delicate, with a silver ring on my left finger. Golden hair fell past my shoulders. When I spoke, it wasn't my voice.

"Marcus, we can't keep meeting like this."

Marcus stood before me, looking exactly the same as he did now, fifty years later. Werewolves don't age like humans, some part of me knew. Some part that wasn't mine.

"Celeste, please. Leave with me tonight."

"I can't abandon my coven." My mouth moved without my control. "The witch hunters grow bolder. They need me."

"Donovan needs you, you mean…"

Heat flushed my – her – cheeks. "That's not fair."

"Isn't it? You're marrying him next month, yet here you are with me."

"We're just friends."

Marcus stepped closer, his hand touching my face. "We were never just friends."

The dream shattered. I woke gasping, my heart racing. But I could still feel the ghost of Marcus's touch on skin that wasn't mine.

My reflection in the window made me scream.

Half my hair had turned golden overnight. The brown and gold twisted together like two people fighting for the same body. My eyes were more purple than brown now.

"No, no, no." I pulled at the golden strands, but they were rooted deep.

"Good morning, Sierra." ARTEMIS sounded different. It sounded warmer. "Mr. Wolfe requests your presence in the dining room."

"Tell him to go to hell."

"I'll inform him you'll be down shortly."

I threw on clothes and stormed downstairs. Donovan sat at the table with Dr. Chen. She gasped when she saw me.

"It's accelerating," she whispered.

"Magnificent, isn't it?" Donovan stood, circling me like a predator. "The transformation usually takes months. But with you, it's happening in days."

"Make it stop."

"I can't. Even if I wanted to." He lifted a golden strand of my hair. "Once it begins, it must complete. Fighting it will only cause pain."

"Then I'll endure the pain."

Dr. Chen cleared her throat. "Actually, fighting could kill you. Your body is rewriting itself at the cellular level. If you resist too hard, your organs could shut down."

"Like the others? The twelve in the basement?"

Donovan's eyes flashed. "They were weak. You're not."

"Show me."

"What?"

"Show me the basement. Show me what happened to them."

"Absolutely not."

"Then I'll stop eating, I’ll stop drinking, I’ll stop everything." I met his eyes. "You need me alive for this to work, right? So show me, or watch your precious experiment die."

He growled, actually growled, like the wolf inside was fighting to get out. But finally, he nodded.

The basement door opened with his handprint. Stairs descended into darkness that smelled like hospitals and earth. Emergency lights cast everything in red.

We entered a massive underground laboratory. Medical equipment lined the walls. And in the center, twelve glass chambers stood in a circle.

Twelve held bodies.

They were all women, all young, all suspended in some kind of blue liquid. But they were wrong and somehow twisted. Some had patches of golden hair and brown. Others had faces that were half one person, half another. One had purple eyes on one side, brown on the other.

"Failed transformations," Dr. Chen said quietly. "Their bodies couldn't fully integrate Celeste's DNA."

I approached Emma's chamber. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing. Half her face was her own. The other half was beautiful and terrible, frozen mid-transformation.

"Are they dead?"

"They're in stasis," Donovan said. "Neither living nor dead. They're waiting."

"For what?"

"For me to find a way to save them. Or for Celeste to return and release them herself."

"You mean for me to release them. When I'm her."

He didn't answer.

The thirteenth chamber was empty. It was waiting for me.

"You're insane," I said. "All of this for someone who died fifty years ago?"

"You don't understand what she was to me." His voice broke. "We were bondmates. True mates. Do you know how rare that is? Most werewolves live centuries without finding their other half. But I found her. And then your ancestor took her from me."

"My ancestor?"

"Sarah Martinez, Celeste's own sister. She fell in love with a witch hunter and revealed our location." His hands clenched into fists. "They burned Celeste alive. They made me watch while they did it. The silver chains I was bound with kept me from saving her."

Despite everything, I felt a stab of sympathy. Then I looked at the twelve women in chambers and the sympathy died.

"She wouldn't want this."

"How would you know?"

But I did know. Somehow, deep in my bones, I knew Celeste would be horrified.

We returned upstairs. My legs were shaking. Dr. Chen helped me to a chair.

"There is a way," she said suddenly.

Donovan turned on her. "Elara, don't..."

Her name was Elara Chen. She continued despite his warning.

"The transformation requires the full moon to complete. But if Sierra can hold onto herself until the new moon, when lunar energy is weakest, the process might reverse itself."

"That's fourteen days away," I said.

"Fourteen days of fighting, of resisting the dreams, the memories, the physical changes." Elara looked at her father. "It's been done before."

"Once. And she died screaming." Donovan's voice was ice.

"But she died as herself."

Donovan slammed his hand on the table, cracking it in half. "Enough! There will be no reversal. No resistance. Sierra will become Celeste, and that's final."

He stormed out. Elara quickly pressed something into my hand. A small vial of clear liquid.

"Wolfsbane extract," she whispered. "Three drops in water every night. It will weaken the transformation and give you more time."

"Why are you helping me?"

"Because I've watched him do this twelve times. Twelve women who had families, dreams, lives. And because..." She paused. "Because I met Celeste once, when I was very young. Before she died, she was kind to me. She wouldn't want this."

That night, I took the wolfsbane. It burned going down, like swallowing lightning. But when I looked in the mirror, the golden hair hadn't spread.

Small victories.

The dream came anyway.

This time, I was in Donovan's arms. We danced in a ballroom full of werewolves and witches. There was peace between our kinds. He looked younger and happier, without the weight of fifty years of grief.

"I love you," he whispered in my ear. "Forever."

"Forever is a long time for immortals," I – Celeste – replied.

"Not long enough with you."

He kissed me, and I felt it. I really felt it. The bond between them, like a golden thread connecting two souls. It was beautiful and terrible and absolutely real.

When I woke, I was crying. But I didn't know whose tears they were anymore.

Marcus stood by my window in human form but wild-eyed.

"You need to run tonight. I've weakened the locks."

"I can't. The wolfsbane…"

"It won't work for long. Your body is already adapting." He grabbed my shoulders. "Sierra, please. I couldn't save her. Let me save you."

"Tell me the truth. All of it. About Celeste, about what really happened."

Marcus sat on my bed, pain etched on his face. "Celeste was special. She was half-witch, half-werewolf. The first of her kind. She could have united our species. But she was also cursed."

"Cursed?"

"Every time she died, she would be reborn. But not as herself. She would take over another's body, consuming them completely." He met my eyes. "This isn't the first time Donovan has tried to bring her back. She's been reborn three times over the centuries. Each time, the host body died screaming as Celeste took over."

"Then why help her return?"

"I'm not. I'm trying to stop it." He touched my face gently. "But Donovan thinks this time is different. He thinks because you're her descendant, you can coexist. Two souls in one body."

"Can we?"

"No one has ever survived that. The human soul always loses."

I thought of Emma, frozen, half-transformed in the basement. Of the eleven others. Of the empty chamber waiting for me.

"Help me fight," I said.

"I will. But Sierra..." His voice broke. "If you start to lose yourself, if Celeste begins to win, I'll have to…"

"Kill me."

He nodded.

"Promise me," I said. "Promise you won't let me become another failed experiment in that basement."

"I promise."

He left through the window, disappearing into the forest. I took another dose of wolfsbane, even though my body screamed in protest.

Fourteen days. I just had to survive fourteen days.

But as I looked in the mirror, at eyes that were almost entirely purple now, I wondered if Sierra Martinez had already lost.