Chapter 25
Andrew
Ablood-curdling scream fills the room, and I sit up, grip my chest just as something explodes beside me.
Nyx’s alarm clock lies shattered atop her nightstand, small sparks zap the air a few times before dying.
My heart pounds so fast, panic fills me to the brim.
“Andrew?”
Nyxeris’ voice is calm, soothing, and she slides her hand across my bare torso to rest it on top of my fist, still at my sternum.
“What’s wrong?”
She doesn’t sound at all addled with sleep, like my waking has put her on high alert. But Erich and Zephyr are still fast asleep on the other side of her, cascaded in the pale yellow light from a small lamp on the other side of the bed.
I peer into Nyxeris’ dark eyes, a sudden sense of helplessness overtaking me. Sorrow I don’t understand.
Until her brow furrows, and then I see it. My dream. Nyxeris, wounded and being taken away from us.
I reach out to her now, pull her into my chest and back down with me to the bed. Fingers tangling in her blood red hair, I give a half-truth.
“Just a nightmare.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not one bit.”
She stills in my arms before her body relaxes into me, her soft lips pressing against my skin as she returns my embrace.
This dream wasn’t ordinary. I feel it in my bones.
It’s about the mission I’d just ensured we’d be going on by leading us to complete our bonds.
The mission I must do everything in my power to stop us being sent on.
Oatmeal is something I have grown to enjoy over the years as a breakfast food. I like to add a little maple syrup and thinly sliced banana.
This morning, I sit alone at one of the small corner tables in the third-floor cafeteria, moving the goop about my bowl absently, mind playing and rewinding, then replaying the events of my nightmare.
Blood blooms from Nyxeris’ chest as she screams, her body encased in her blue electric power. We can’t get to her before she’s dragged away by… something. Someone.
I don’t know.
What I do know is dread overtakes my entire body whenever I see or think of this vision of mine.
What’s more, when I touched Erich while he was losing control last night, I could sense more than his emotions. Words flowed into my brain that were not my thoughts, but his.
Need. Claim. Want. Mine.
Garbled, heated, just barely coherent.
I’ve never been able to pull words from someone’s mind before, only push my thoughts into theirs, albeit not very well.
“It’s wild,” someone whispers from the table behind me. “I don’t know what happened.”
Someone else mumbles, “It’s like an eruption or something.”
My brow draws tight before I rise from my seat, dispose of my uneaten food, and make my way down the stairs to the main floor, where there’s a commotion at the back doors.
“Sometime last night.”
“Just out of nowhere?”
“Yep. Sho was outside when it happened. Told me about it when he came back.”
“I didn’t realize the academy was on top of a volcano.”
“Faculty says it’s not.”
“Guess they’re wrong.”
I find my forehead aching from tension as I weave my way through the sea of students and into the back courtyard, stopping short when I pass through the door.
The stone pathway and all the grass from the bottom of the stairs to the first large tree about fifty feet away are gone, replaced by ribbons and globules of black. Although it looks like tar, it’s swirls of solid rock. The scent of sulfur lingers on the air, rising from the still steaming ground.
As my eyes begin to sting from the smell, my vision goes hazy, and an image of Erich in the throws of his rut last night wash over me.
As he loses control, his body flaring with immense heat, eyes shooting fire out the sides, I see fresh lava flows pumping out of the ground in time with his every movement.
I don’t breathe, don’t move.
This… this has to be…
I turn then back to the academy entrance, peer up at the third floor where I’m certain Nyxeris, Zephyr, and Erich are still fast asleep.
Nyxeris’ electric power shorting things nearby and enveloping her body.
Zephyr’s greater control of gravity and of his power itself.
Erich pulling lava from the ground when he’d only ever created fire before.
My telekinesis going out of control, being able to read more than emotions when I touch someone, and now having strange visions.
These abilities were all born from our new mated bonds.
We’re going to have to take great care going forward, in case our abilities further evolve.
In fact, this could be a good thing. If our pack is unstable, there’s no way they’ll want to send us on a mission.
And no way that my nightmare—my vision, if that’s what it was—will come to pass.