Chapter Fifteen
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Tessa
Silence drags me out of sleep.
Not the peaceful kind that settles over the wilderness at dawn, but a heavy, unnatural stillness that prickles along my skin and sends my heart slamming against my ribs before I’m even fully awake.
Vex is already awake beside me, his body rigid with tension. I can feel it through the bond, a coiled spring of predatory awareness mixed with something I’ve never felt from him before.
Fear.
“Vex?” My voice comes out as barely a whisper.
“Don’t move.” His hand finds mine under the covers, squeezing once. “Something’s coming.”
I want to ask what, but the words die in my throat as the temperature plummets.
One second the cabin is warm from the residual heat of our bodies and last night’s fire, the next my breath is fogging in front of my face.
Frost creeps across the window in fractals too perfect, too deliberate to be natural.
The mark on my shoulder ignites.
Not with the cold pulse I’ve grown used to, but with searing, burning cold that feels like my flesh is being branded from the inside out. I bite back a scream, my free hand clawing at the sheets as pain radiates through my entire left side.
“Tessa!” Vex is on me in an instant, his hands on my face, forcing me to look at him. His eyes are white, fully vampire, but I don’t care. I need him as an anchor, need something real to hold onto as the world tilts sideways.
Through the bond, I feel him trying to pull the pain away from me, trying to absorb it somehow. It helps. A little. Enough that I can breathe.
“It’s here,” I gasp. “It’s—”
The wind hits.
It doesn’t build gradually like a normal storm. One moment the air is still, the next it’s a shrieking wall of sound that slams into the cabin with enough force to rattle the walls. But it’s not just wind. There are voices in it.
Hundreds of them.
Thousands.
All whispering the same thing.
Tessssssssa.
My name, drawn out and distorted, coming from every direction at once. Some voices are young, some old, some barely human. They overlap and tangle together until it’s just a cacophony of sound that drills into my skull like ice picks.
“Block it out,” Vex says, his voice cutting through the chaos. “Focus on me. Just me.”
I try. God, I try. But the voices are getting louder, more insistent, and now I can make out words beyond my name.
Come to us.
We’ve been waiting.
You belong with us.
We can make the pain stop.
“No,” I breathe, but I’m not sure if I’m answering the voices or denying this is happening.
Vex pulls me against his chest, one hand tangled in my hair, the other pressed against the mark on my shoulder.
His touch is ice-cold but it feels like fire compared to the burning freeze coming from within me.
Through the bond, I feel him pouring something into me, strength, maybe, or just his presence.
Whatever it is, it helps me push back against the tide threatening to drown me.
“That’s it,” he murmurs against my temple. “Stay with me. Don’t listen to them.”
But it’s so hard. The voices are seductive in their persistence, offering things I didn’t even know I wanted.
Power to protect yourself.
Freedom from fear.
An end to the guilt that eats at you.
Your mother’s voice, just one more time.
That one almost breaks me.
I can suddenly hear her, my mom’s laugh, bright and clear like she never burned to death in a fire my father set. As though she’s right here in the room with us, calling my name the way she used to when I’d come home from school.
“It’s not real.” Vex’s voice is rough, desperate. “Tessa, whatever it’s showing you, it’s not real.”
I know that. Intellectually, I know that. But knowing and feeling are two very different things, and right now my heart is being torn apart by the sound of my mother’s voice asking why I left, why I didn’t save her, why I ran so far away that she can’t find me anymore.
“I’m sorry,” I sob into Vex’s chest. “Mom, I’m so sorry—”
“She’s not here.” He grips my face again, forcing me to meet his eyes. “Your mother isn’t here. It’s the devourer, using your memories against you. Don’t let it in.”
The wind outside reaches a fever pitch, and suddenly the cabin is shaking. Not swaying like it would in a normal storm, but shaking, as though something massive is testing the walls, looking for a way in.
And then the screaming starts.
Not from the wind. From inside my head.
People, real people, living people, are screaming in terror as something attacks them.
I can see it through their eyes, feel their fear as though it’s my own.
A gas station on the outskirts of town, the clerk frozen behind the counter as shadows with too many teeth pour through the door.
A couple in their home, huddled together as ice creeps across their living room floor in patterns that spell out their deaths.
Children in a school, watching as their teacher’s breath turns to frost and her eyes glaze over with white.
“Oh God,” I gasp, my hands clutching at Vex’s shoulders. “It’s everywhere. It’s attacking everyone. I can see them, I can feel them dying—”
“You’re connected to it through the mark.” Vex’s voice is strained now, like he’s fighting something too. “It’s showing you what it wants you to see. Making you feel responsible.”
“But they’re real!” I can barely get the words out through the images flooding my mind. “Those people are really dying, Vex. Right now. Because of me. Because I have this fucking mark and it’s using me as some kind of beacon—”
A new voice cuts through the chaos. Not one of the whispers. This one is singular, powerful, ancient beyond measure.
Surrender, warden.
The voice isn’t coming from outside. It’s coming from the mark itself, vibrating through my bones and into my soul.
You are the key. The door. The threshold between worlds. Give yourself to me, and I will spare them all. Resist, and I will tear through this land until nothing remains but ice and screaming.
The mark burns hotter, and with it comes a vision so vivid I can’t tell if it’s real or imagined.
I see the entire region covered in ice, not the normal Alaskan winter ice, but something else.
Something that moves and breathes and hungers.
I see the clubhouse frozen solid, brothers trapped mid-motion like statues.
The town square empty except for ice sculptures that used to be people.
I see Sarah and her parents, their faces locked in expressions of terror as frost consumes them from the inside out.
And I see Vex, his body shattered into a thousand crystalline pieces, scattered across frozen ground.
“No!” The word rips from my throat as a scream.
Then choose. Surrender, and I will stop. Resist, and everyone you love dies screaming.
“Tessa.” Vex’s hands are on my face again, but I can barely feel them through the ice spreading through my veins. “Whatever it’s showing you, it’s a lie. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
But the vision won’t fade. I can still see him broken, still see the club destroyed, still see everyone I care about dead because I was too selfish to give the creature what it wanted.
Maybe it’s right. Maybe the only way to save them is to—
No.
The thought comes through the bond, sharp and clear and unmistakably Vex.
You are not sacrificing yourself. I won’t allow it.
“You don’t get to decide that,” I say out loud, my voice shaking. “If it’s me or everyone else—”
“Then we all go down fighting.” His eyes are still white, but there’s something else there now. Something fierce and protective and absolutely uncompromising. “You don’t get to play martyr, Tessa. Not on my watch.”
Another scream echoes through my mind, this one closer, more immediate. Someone in town, someone I recognize from the diner. Mandy, the owner, calling out for help as ice shades pour through her kitchen.
The mark pulses, and with it comes a promise.
Surrender now, and I will spare her. Hesitate, and she dies. You have ten seconds to decide.
Ten.
Nine.
Eight.
“Vex—” I’m crying now, tears freezing on my cheeks. “I can’t let them die. I can’t—”
Seven.
Six.
Five.
He kisses me.
Hard and desperate and full of everything we said to each other last night and everything we haven’t said yet. His hands tangle in my hair, pulling me closer, and through the bond I feel him flooding me with every ounce of strength he has.
You are not alone in this. Whatever happens, we face it together.
Four.
Three.
Two.
The screaming in my head reaches a crescendo, and I can feel Mandy’s terror like it’s my own, can feel the exact moment the ice shades reach her—
And then it stops.
All of it. The voices, the visions, the screaming. Gone in an instant, leaving behind a ringing silence that’s almost worse.
I pull back from Vex, gasping. “What—?”
His radio crackles to life on the nightstand, Blade’s voice cutting through the static.
“Vex. You there?”
Vex reaches for it without taking his eyes off me. “Yeah. We’re here.”
“We’ve got a situation. Multiple attacks happening simultaneously across the territory. Gas station on Route 7, three homes in the residential district, Betty’s Diner—”
“Is Mandy alive?” I interrupt, my voice ragged.
A pause. Then: “Yeah. Prophet got there in time. But this thing is escalating fast. It’s not just targeting you anymore, Tessa. It’s going after everyone.”
The mark pulses once, a cold reminder of what it showed me.
This is just the beginning. Every moment you resist, more of them die. How long can you bear the weight of their suffering?
I look at Vex, and he must see something in my expression because his grip on me tightens.
“We’re coming back,” he says into the radio. “Twenty minutes.”
“Make it fifteen,” Blade replies. “And Vex? Keep her close. Whatever this thing wants with her, it’s ramping up.”
The radio goes silent.