11. Wren
WREN
The dream begins like it always does.
Darkness.
Then sound.
The shuffle of gravel beneath shoes. A laugh, slurred and wrong. Metal clattering. Music from a party fading behind me. Muffled. Distant. Then—
Pain.
The memory slams into me like a freight train. Cold air against my skin. The sting of tears in my eyes. My voice caught in my throat like a scream that never made it out.
I twist, kick, fight, but my limbs are heavy. Disconnected. Sluggish.
Hands grip me—too many. Or maybe just one. I can’t tell. Can’t seem to keep my thoughts straight. Faces blur and blend. Shadows. Movement. A flash of light. The clatter of a rolling bottle. Fingers in my hair. On my arms. My legs.
Fear swallows me whole. It pulls me under. Consumes me.
Some deep, primal part of my mind knows what is happening, even if my conscious self can’t comprehend it.
My eyes are squeezed tightly shut now. My body is jostled. There’s a tearing sensation.
I know what comes next.
I brace for it. The pain—like nothing I’ve ever felt before. The feeling that something vital is being taken from me. Something I can’t ever get back.
Except this time…the dream shifts.
The terror ebbs like a tide. The shadows pull back.
A voice cuts through the chaos.
Low, firm, yet familiar.
“I’ve got you.”
Ronan.
I hear it as clear as if he’s standing beside me now. His tone isn’t cold. Not threatening. It’s…calming. A tether in the storm.
Arms lift me—strong and steady. A shirt is pulled over my head. Warmth sinks into my frozen skin. I can still feel the sting of pain, the dull ache of bruises, but it’s diminished. Wrapped in cotton.
Fingers brush the side of my face. A whisper I can’t quite catch. The scent of leather and soap.
Blue eyes appear in my hazy vision, swimming in and out. They’ve always looked harsh and unrelenting, but now, they are wide with concern. Softened around the edges.
I’d never seen them before that night, but I recognize them instantly as Silas’s. They latch on to mine, a lifeline in the midst of a tsunami.
I don’t let go. I can’t.
Not until I’m jostled, my face pressed against a warm, shirtless chest. Heat engulfs me, warming my face, and the steady beat of a heart calms my racing one. Grounds me in a way nothing else has been able to.
Lines of black ink break up the planes of pale skin that are pressed against my cheek. A tattoo that I can’t make out. Somehow, I know it’s Lucian holding me.
They are all here.
Not hurting me…saving me?
No. That can’t be right.
It was supposed to end in pain. It always ends in pain.
Confusion ripples through the dream like a crack in glass.
This isn’t how it goes.
Why isn’t it going how it’s supposed to go? Where’s the fear? The panic? Where’s the voice telling me to shut up? To hold still?
All I feel now is the thud of footsteps. The comfort of a hoodie tucked around me. I’m safe.
I’m safe?
No. That’s wrong. That’s not what happened.
It can’t be.
It—
It can’t be—
I wake up gasping.
My heart jackhammers in my chest, loud and erratic. My throat burns as if I’ve been screaming. My hands are clenched into fists, nails digging into my palms. There’s a ringing in my ears, and my whole body is trembling. The sheets are twisted around my legs, sweat cooling on the back of my neck.
The room is too dark. Shadows move like ghosts across the wall, closing in. My breath comes short and shallow, the taste of panic thick on my tongue.
For a second, I don’t know where I am. I don’t know what year it is.
Then my eyes adjust, and my ceiling comes into view.
“Valehurst.”
It’s not an immense comfort, but it is something.
Although I still feel like I’m unraveling.
My hands continue to tremble as I sit up and drag the sheets off my legs. I press the heels of my palms into my eyes and suck in a breath, but it doesn’t go deep enough. My lungs won’t expand.
The dream was the same…and yet it wasn’t.
It started like always, but it didn’t end like it should have.
The fear is still there. The weight. The smell of alcohol. The helplessness.
But over it…under it…threading through it like gold through stone…
Is them.
Ronan. Silas. Lucian.
One’s voice. One’s eyes. One’s warmth.
You should ask yourself if what you think happened that night…is the whole truth.
I drop my hands from my face and stare at the dark wall across from me.
What am I supposed to do with that? What does it mean?
I’ve spent years believing whoever hurt me was the owner of that voice. That those hands touching me were rough. The blue eyes cruel.
I’ve been so certain that they were the ones who hurt me.
I don’t remember anyone else being there.
And now…I don’t know what to believe.
Reaching for the glass of water on my bedside table, I gulp it down. It does nothing to remove the bad taste in my mouth.
I hate Ronan for this. I hate that his words have wormed their way into my head.
I hate that they’ve cracked something open inside me.
I hate that I’m doubting myself. I don’t want to believe he’s telling the truth.
I don’t want to think the people I’ve feared all this time… didn’t do what I’ve blamed them for.
Because if they didn’t…
Then who did?
A chill spreads through me, bone deep and ice cold.
I force myself off the bed and cross to the mirror on shaky legs. My reflection is pale. My pupils pinpoint. There’s a tightness to my mouth I recognize—a tension that hasn’t left since that night.
The girl in the mirror doesn’t look like someone who trusts easily.
She looks like someone haunted.
Someone lost.
I grip the edge of the dresser and close my eyes again.
What do you know?
What if I don’t know what I know? What if I can’t trust what I remember?
What if I was wrong?
I force myself to breathe slowly, to let the air settle, but it does little to help. My thoughts won’t stop racing.
This is what Ronan wanted. He wanted to make me question everything, and it’s working. I know trauma scrambles memory. The drugs. The fear. The shock. It distorts things. Rearranges them. But I never thought I could have been wrong.
I slide to the floor, my back to the dresser, legs folded in front of me. The wooden planks are cold beneath my thighs, but I don’t move.
Because for the first time in years…
I don’t know who the villain is anymore.
And that terrifies me more than anything.
By the time I pull myself together, I’m too late to stop and grab my usual order of an oat milk honey latte before class. I slip in through the door just as the professor calls for everyone’s attention at the front of the room.
Quietly moving to my regular table near the back of the room, I drop my bag on the floor and slide into the seat. It’s only as I pull my laptop out that I realize there’s a to-go coffee mug on my table, steam escaping through the slit in the lid.
I look around at the students seated around me, but no one is paying me or the drink any attention. Weird.
I can see something handwritten on the side and turn the cup enough to read it. Wren Winslow.
Who the hell is getting me coffee and leaving it for me in class? Who even knows I’m in this class?
Cautiously, I bring the cup to my nose and inhale. I’m met with the warm, creamy smell of honey and cinnamon. Who the hell knows my coffee order?
I glance once more around the room, properly taking in the faces of the other students, but still, no one seems to be paying me any attention. Everyone’s focused on what the professor is saying at the front of the room.
I know better than to accept a drink when I don’t know who gave it to me or why, so I set it back down, untouched, even as my taste buds crave a sip, and my fried brain cries out for caffeine.
For the next hour, I repeatedly glance back at the coffee cup, wondering who is paying close enough attention to know my class schedule and coffee order.
Only three names come to mind.
I already have a bunch of unread text messages from Lucian on my phone, and emails from Ronan with ideas for the youth charity event. And now this?
I already told these overbearing assholes to leave me the hell alone.
Looks like I’m going to have to tell them again.