Chapter 5
FIVE
Shay
The wood didn’t give as I stepped on it, but my weight elicited a small squeak, as if it were older than it appeared. I was only a few steps out over the still-pond portion of the bridge when I felt all the little bits of magic in the air begin to tug at me.
At first, it was annoying but ignorable. Like gnats brushing up against my bare skin, teasing my hair, bouncing off my clothing. But with each step I took into the swamp? Everything intensified.
Darkness started to settle in, despite the fact that it was morning. In the swamp, time lost all meaning.
I could only see a foot in front of me, another board of wood, and my own body. But I could hear plenty. Ominous croaks and bloodcurdling screeches, as if an animal was in pain out there in the deep dark.
Something scaly brushed the top of my arm, and I snatched my hand away from the railing with a shudder. I spun in place, swatting at empty air, but found nothing.
It’s just magic, I reminded myself, forcing myself through a series of calming breaths before I took another step forward. All I had to do was survive, be truthful, and make it off the opposite end of the bridge. So… whatever was in front of me, I couldn’t stop walking.
I counted my breaths and strode deeper into the dark, humming a low melody to try to drown out some of the awful sounds. It didn’t really work, but it still made me feel like I was in control of the situation.
Still, my heart raced, and my footsteps began to pick up speed. I started off at a determined, brisk walk, but in a few minutes—hours? Years? Time had truly escaped me now—I was sprinting, chest heaving as I plunged headlong down the bridge, crossing seemingly no ground in the thick, inky night.
Eventually, even my wolf’s stamina was taxed, and I stopped, dropping my hands to my knees and sucking in great lungfuls of the humid, fishy air.
I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine. I chanted in my head, focusing all my energy on slowing my heart rate.
That was when I heard the voice.
Tell us. Tell us your secrets and lies.
I wrinkled my brow and straightened, searching the darkness for the source of the wispy, insidious voice.
“Who’s there?” I asked, even though I knew it was stupid.
Why, the Bridge of Truths. Don’t you know?
“I…” I snapped my jaw shut, considering.
The voice had asked me to tell my secrets and lies. But this was the bridge of truths. If I didn’t tell it the truth, the precise truth, what would happen?
I needed to be extremely cautious.
“I know this bridge is called the Bridge of Truths. I did not know the bridge itself could speak. Are you the bridge, or are you something else?”
Clever little wolf girl. Well done. But you didn’t answer me. Tell me your secrets and lies.
Frustration welled up, but I gritted my teeth against it. Telling the bridge my secrets and lies didn’t make any sense.
Although, secrets were a form of truth, weren’t they? Sometimes a secret was the deepest truth of all, the kind of truth we were too scared to admit in the light of day.
Now you’re getting it, the voice crooned in my head, making me jerk. If whatever power controlled this swamp could read my thoughts, I’d have to be even more careful.
“I don’t have many secrets,” I admitted aloud, not willing to have an internal conversation with anyone but Dirge. It was unnerving.
I don’t require many. Just one. One delicious, tasty secret.
The voice made my skin crawl, and I realized I’d stopped walking as I listened to it. Time to chew bubblegum and walk, or I’d never get out of this mind fuck of a swamp.
“One delicious secret,” I mused aloud, walking slowly now, my hands trailing over the railings on either side of me. The feel of the smooth, almost polished wood grounded me.
The problem was, I didn’t have one. I had plenty of questions, plenty of frustrations, but secrets?
Then it hit me. The one thing I’d only ever shared with my mate, the thing that no one else but him knew.
Dread filled me, even as the voice returned.
Yes, yes! Give us the secret. We are so hungry. Give us every tantalizing word.
“When I was a child…” My voice shook, and I hated myself for it.
But fuck it, there was no one else here to judge me for the weakness.
I forged ahead. “I was an orphan. I lived in foster care, unaware I was a wolf. Until I was kidnapped by human traffickers. One of them was going to assault me, and… my wolf burst out of me for the first time, too young. She protected me, but she killed all of them. It was a massacre. I’m a murderer. A mass murderer, technically.”
There it was, the ugly, ugly truth. A stain on my character I’d only come to grips with because of Dirge’s acceptance.
A tear slid down my cheek, but I didn’t let go of the railings to swipe it away.
Lies! You have not given us the truth.
Lies. Lies!
LIAR!
Voices ricocheted in the darkness, anger rising with each repetition, more and more voices joining the melee until it was so loud, my eardrums felt like they’d burst and bleed. I covered my ears and hunched over, as if getting smaller could stop them from buffeting me.
“Stop it!” I screamed, beating back the onslaught the only way I knew how. “I told you the truth! Every word was true!”
Silence, blessed, ringing silence. I hesitated to straighten, to pull my hands from over my ears. What if it was just a trick, and the voices were going to attack again?
You would lie twice? You must suffer.
“I’m not lying! It’s my childhood, my memories.”
The voice tsked in my head, and then I was gripped in a vise of pain, my head pounding with each beat of my heart, and the darkness vanished as I was plunged into a memory.
Gooseflesh covered my skin as I was plunged off the bridge and into my memory. The morning was cold and damp, and I stared down at the blacktop.
Something whooshed by, and my head snapped up.
It was me, only much younger, standing on the side of the road, crying.
No, not this day. Please, not this day. I was begging now, but I didn’t care. So much of my childhood before Brand had found my wolf in the woods was awful. I didn’t want to relive any of it, but certainly not this day.
I tried to squinch my eyes closed, but couldn’t. The voice came back.
You lied, so you must watch.
I had no choice, so I did. I watched six-year-old me cry, my teardrops falling onto the pavement, cars whizzing by until finally, one stopped. A kindly-looking woman stepped out, walked over, and squatted at my side.
“Hi, sweetie.”
Little me looked up, tears welling on reddened eyelids.
No, no, no! You’re still lying! Again!
The scene rewound right back to where it started. I watched it unfold again, and again, and again. After the fifth time, I was ready to scream.
“Stop it! Memories can’t be a lie, okay? This is my life, I don’t know what else you want from me! I was alone and orphaned and terrified.”
But you aren’t.
“Terrified? No, I’m not terrified or alone anymore. I have a mate, a pack, and a family of my own making. It’s—it’s a beautiful life. But then? In this moment, that’s exactly what I was.”
Lies. Lies. Lies. The word was an echo, a heartbeat, a sledgehammer pounding against my very consciousness.
I screamed as the pounding intensified, tearing at my mind, my skull, my flesh and blood. Every part of me seemed to pulse, and then…
A guttural sound tore itself from my throat as the vision around me shattered into innumerable pieces. In its place was still me, but I was no longer alone.
I watched as child Shay clung to a woman’s skirt, a man’s pant leg. “Please, no! Please don’t send me away. I need to stay with you!” The rest of the memory was out of reach, hazy above the child’s head. No matter how hard I squinted, I couldn’t see my parents’ faces, couldn’t remember them.
The whole scene was heartbreaking. Devastated, I gave up trying to see my parents, instead staring at the little girl, this time not so placidly standing by, watching her tears soak into the pavement.
No, she was a fighter. She kicked and begged and fought with every scrap of might she had in her tiny body not to be torn away from her parents.
“Shailene.” The man said only one word: my name. One little word, and my entire world shifted, my stomach rolling with nausea as the truth finally broke through the false memories.
I turned, no longer in the memory, and retched over the rail of the bridge. I heaved until my stomach was dry, and then heaved some more. When I was done, I lifted my head, staring defiantly into the darkness.
The darkness that demanded so much from me, that tormented me.
“I’m not an orphan. My parents are still alive, and I know who they are.”