Chapter 7 - Donna
The forest is endless, cold air cutting through the trees, thick with fog, and the taste of iron in my mouth. Moonlight filters through the canopy of trees in silver ribbons, just enough to show me the path ahead, just enough to remind me how far I still have to run.
The sound of footsteps follows me, heavy, uneven, but ominously human.
My lungs burn as my heart thunders, every breath I inhale scraping raw in my chest. I don’t know where I’m going, only that I can’t stop because I’m being chased.
The forest seems to move with me, branches twisting overhead, trunks morphing in my vision as if the woods themselves are trying to keep me lost.
“Donna….”
The voice drips through the fog like sludgy oil. I recognize Tobias’s voice, but there’s something wrong about it.
It echoes too low, too distorted, like it’s coming from inside my head rather than behind me.
My heart stutters as the air thickens, almost choking me.
I stumble over a loose root, nearly falling, then catch myself against a tree trunk slick with something warm.
When I look down at my hands, I gasp when I see my palms covered in crimson.
Blood.
A branch breaks behind me and snaps me out of the momentary daze, and I spin around, only to find nothing but mist. My heart hammers in my chest as my brows furrow, fear and anticipation trickling down my spine.
Then I see it—movement—quick and sinuous as a serpent between the mist, a shadow darting between the trees.
“T-Toby?” My voice cracks, my bottom lip trembling. “This isn’t funny.”
A soft chuckle responds—Tobias’s chuckle, the one I used to hear at every inside joke, now hollow, edged with something cruel, something eerie.
“I thought you trusted me….”
His whisper comes from everywhere and nowhere. I spin in a circle, scanning the forest, but it’s too dark, too dense to see his face. Every sound—the rustle of leaves, the groan of the wind, the croaking of frogs, and the hooting of owls—sounds like my name.
Then, a figure steps out of the mist.
Tobias.
Or something wearing his face, because that’s not the Tobias I remember.
His skin is ashen, his eyes black pits that swallow the light, his smile carved too wide, stretching at the corners like it’s splitting his mouth open. His shirt is torn, stained with something dark, and his hands…his hands are wrong. Too long, too sharp, the fingers curling like claws.
“You said I was your friend,” he says softly, the tone mockingly tender. “You said you’d never run from me.”
He takes a step closer, and the forest quakes with his movement like a lightning strike. Shadows ripple outward from his feet, swallowing everything behind him.
I back away, heart thundering, every instinct screaming at me to run, but my legs won’t comply. My breath fogs in the air in front of my face, the mist curling around me like it’s alive.
Tobias tilts his head, eyes flickering with an inhuman gleam. “Why did you believe him?”
His voice fractures on the last word, breaking into static. “Nicholas lies, Donna. He always lies.”
Then his shape distorts, his face splitting, features warping until there’s no trace of the man I knew as my friend. Just a blur of smoke and teeth lunging for me.
I scream—and bolt upright in bed.
The sound tears from my throat, raw and panicked but dry, my sheets tangled around my legs like vines.
My chest heaves as if I’ve been running for miles, sweat beading across my brow when I lift the back of my hand to my forehead.
For a moment, I don’t recognize the room or the soft glow of the moon filtering through the curtains, but the faint scent of cedar that lingers in the air reminds me of last summer.
Then it clicks. Nicholas’s house. Wells. Reality.
My hands tremble as I clutch at the blanket, my heart still galloping out of rhythm. The echoes of the dream cling to me like smoke from a fire, the voice, the chase, those black eyes haunting me now that I’m awake.
It felt real. Too real.
Pressing my palms to my face, trying to calm my breathing, I whisper to myself, “It was just a dream,” but even to my own ears, it sounds like a lie.
Because deep down, beneath the fear, there’s a gnawing truth I can’t shake.
Maybe it wasn’t just my subconscious tormenting me. Maybe Tobias really is the monster Nicholas said he was.
Of course, Nicholas would recognize a monster. He’s one himself, after all. It takes one to know one, right?
Scoffing under my breath, I wipe the back of my hand against my forehead, but my throat still feels too dry. Because this is my first night in Wells, I didn’t have time to set water out on my nightstand.
Who am I kidding?
Myself, maybe.
The real reason I didn’t settle in properly is that I’d given a performance earlier tonight that shocked even me.
My little feisty act of defiance came out of nowhere when I asked Nicholas to unzip my dress before slamming the door in his face.
But I felt satisfied when I did it, like I added a point to my revenge plot.
Still, I couldn’t ignore what it did to me when I felt his fingers on my skin.
Little flickers of electric currents crept through my indifference, sizzling into my fingertips even though I hadn’t touched him.
When I threw the door in his face, it was mostly to escape that feeling and to rush into the bathroom to wash my hands off.
I stood at the basin, frowning because the tingling sensations in my fingertips shouldn’t have been there. I’m careful not to touch him because I’m afraid of the mate bond and the reminder that comes with making physical contact.
But I couldn’t rinse off that feeling, so I thought I’d escape into sleep.
So much for that! Remnants of the tingly sensations remain in my fingertips, and Nicholas isn’t even in the same room. Why can’t I escape this?
Another bitter scoff leaves my dry throat, but this time, I decide to take action and do something about it instead of wallowing in my negative emotions. I glance at the alarm clock on the nightstand, and a wave of relief washes over me when I see that it’s past midnight.
Nicholas will most likely be asleep already, which means I can sneak into the kitchen and get some water and maybe grab something to eat.
I hardly had an appetite at dinner tonight after the mating ceremony, what with being flung into marriage with my archnemesis upon learning that my best human friend wasn’t human at all. The blows keep coming, and it’s like the universe is shaking me to crack me open again.
I thought it was enough of that when Nicholas broke my heart, and I thought I had healed from that, but I guess I was wrong. Otherwise, the universe wouldn’t have sent me back in his direction, down the same road, in the same house, unless there were still lessons that needed to be learned.
I guess time will tell, but for now, I just need something to eat. I can ignore the tingling on my back, but I can’t ignore the rumbling in my tummy.
I’m halfway to the kitchen, tiptoeing on bare feet, when I hear the hinges of the back door creak, then squeak back into place. Frowning, I carefully continue until I’m at the arched doorway, close enough to peek into the kitchen, only to see Nicholas at the fridge.
My body tenses, my spine straightening, and I’m about to turn on my heel and return to my room when Nicholas shuts the fridge door with a purposeful thud and calls out, “Is that you, Donna?”
Feeling like a deer caught in the headlights, my eyes widen, and I tuck my bottom lip between my teeth. Sighing when Nicholas’s silence signals that he’s waiting for me to come out, I walk through the doorway to find him chugging down the carton of milk.
“Ugh…” I groan, wincing and turning my face away. “Old habits die hard, huh?”
“You know it,” Nicholas says when he’s gulped down his milk, throwing me one of those charming winks. His boyish grin with a white line across his upper lip affects me in ways I thought he never could again.
But beyond the resentment I have for him is something softer. Something I wish didn’t exist at all.
I cross my arms and remind myself that I need to cling to my anger so I don’t risk falling victim to his charms. “What are you doing up so late?” I ask in a clipped tone, and Nicholas leans across the island with both arms, sliding toward me as I take a seat.
“Alpha duties,” he smirks, and I roll my eyes.
“Is that supposed to impress me? Because it doesn’t,” I sniff and turn my face away—mostly because his scent, mixed with the human saltiness of sweat, is rich in the air.
Nicholas chuckles as he straightens up, dumping the empty carton in the trash can. “You know…I could ask you the same thing. Why are you awake at this hour?”
I purse my lips, not wanting to reveal why I woke up with a start, and my hesitation allows Nicholas to continue.
“Lemme guess…you’re hungry.”
It’s not a question, and it’s not a statement that leaves any room for protest as Nicholas goes back to the fridge and gathers some items into the crook of his arm.
“What are you doing?” I ask, even if I already know the answer. I just refuse to accept that he remembers.
“Breakfast at midnight,” he smirks as he throws me another wink, then heads to the stove.
I wish he didn’t remember.
I hate that he does.
‘Breakfast at midnight’ was something we shared last summer, but it was mostly an excuse to rendezvous behind Dominic’s back. We’d make omelets as a midnight snack, wanting to spend every waking moment with each other during my brief visit to Wells.
Gulping hard, I watch as Nicholas arrives at the stove, still partly dressed in the black suit he wore for our mating ceremony, but without the blazer. The sleeves of his dress shirt are rolled up to his elbows, exposing the tribal tattoos on his muscular forearms.
Instinctively, and totally absentmindedly, my fingers tingle with the urge to trace the veins there, trace the ink the way I used to. I lick my lips as I give myself the liberty to run my eyes over other parts of him while he isn’t looking, while he wouldn’t catch me ogling.
That’s when my eyes land on his plump rear, unabashedly staring and imagining my nails biting crescent moons in the taut flesh as something harder slides between my lips…
“Fuck!” Nicholas grunts under his breath, an egg slipping out of fingers that twist uncontrollably. The shell cracks, and yolk and albumen spill out, while Nicholas is at the counter, gripping his left shoulder with his right hand and wincing in pain.
Seeing him in pain is supposed to bring me a sense of satisfaction, but it’s not even bittersweet. Instead, I’m jolted out of the chair, springing to my feet and rushing toward him like I care when I should be hating him.
It’s not even something I can control right now, like my inner wolf—that poor, innocent, naive soul that knows only unconditional love—is calling the shots, compelling me to reach out toward him where he’s bent over at the waist, sucking in a frustrated breath through gritted teeth.
“Nick…what’s wrong?” I ask, tentatively reaching out.
He turns his face to the side, eyes riddled with torture, but so soft and earthly green that my heart pangs.
“I-I don’t—”
Nicholas groans again, his face contorting with pain, and my eyes flit to the shoulder he’s clutching, shaking my head slowly. It can’t be that he hasn’t healed yet—he’s an alpha.
That’s when the curiosity wins, and I reach out more firmly, placing my hand on his shoulder.
The electric pulse that ignites doesn’t shoot through me the way it usually does when we make physical contact. This time, it pools in my palm, heating my flesh, and weighing my hand on Nicholas’s skin so I can’t even retract it.
Stunned, I can only stare wide-eyed at my own hand, at the invisible threads that wind around it, keeping me from pulling it back. I meet Nicholas’s eyes briefly enough to snap me out of whatever that was, the forest-green orbs a grounding force that helps me snatch my hand away.
But it’s his eyes I’m staring at accusingly as I wring my hands together, my right palm still tingling like it has a life of its own, a heartbeat of its own.
Nicholas frowns as he turns his head to his shoulder, then lifts his eyes back to my face, brow wrinkled with disbelief.
“What did you just do…?” he accuses, and my heart skips a beat, dread following as it slithers down my spine.
What did I just do?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I whisper, partly in shock, partly in denial of what I just experienced.