Touched By Oblivion (The Fourth Pack #1)

Prologue

Twelve years ago…

“Hold her down!” The echo of a strange man roared in my ears.

He wasn’t speaking to me. No, the command was for my mother.

Her clammy hands were pinching my arms as she held me down on the floor.

Her hot tears spilled off her face and onto my cheeks.

“If I don’t get this right, we are all dead.

There is too much oblivion in her, and this is the only way they won’t know.

This is the last chance we have! Listen to me… it worked with the boy, and she—”

The world faded in and out, and my head burned like someone was hitting it.

I knew something was wrong when I came home from exploring the markets with my brother, and my mother had made a cake.

The moment I ate a mouthful, a taste like ash stuck in the back of my throat, weighing down my chest, and I fell off the chair.

There was a stranger, a smell of herbs in the air, and the taste of magic.

This magic tasted like ash and moonlight, like the moment the world begins to burn into the stars.

Like oblivion. Mother said all magic tastes different to us.

“They are coming, and we are all fucking dead if you don’t keep her still!” The strange man with grey hair looked to my older brother, who was pale and shaking in a chair as he watched this happen to me.

“Help me,” I pleaded. They all ignored me. I was so weak I couldn’t even lift my head.

“Boy, get in here and make sure she doesn’t make a sound!” The man lifted a knife, the blade flashing in the dim light from the fireplace. “Why did this happen so soon? She isn’t of age! This shouldn’t have happened here!”

The world blackened again until I woke with a scream. The stranger continued to cut into the skin on my stomach, and I screamed until my throat was stinging, even with my older brother’s hand clamped down on my mouth. His eyes were closed, his golden hair shining, and tears streamed down his face.

The pain didn’t stop, neither did the man as he continued to cut me.

It was my birthday. My eighth birthday, and it seemed pointless to want anything, but I wanted to watch the stars burn at midnight, like they did every year on my birthday.

Every single star burns, swirls and casts out a brilliant aurora light across the night sky.

The Fallenstar Day, the day I was born, and the day it is said the Mother, Maiden and Crone goddesses are closest to our world.

The room was spinning, and I could barely see my mother’s face, but I knew she was crying, because I felt the wet drops on my cheek. I focused on her face, focused on anything but the pain. “I’m sorry, this… It’s the only way you can stay out of their—”

A crash echoed and a smack not long after, which I thought was a door coming off the hinges.

“NO!” Someone screamed in agony. I thought it was the strange man with the knife.

It might have been my brother…but I didn’t know.

I couldn’t open my eyes. I could barely feel my body.

Am I dying? The smell of blood was thick in the air.

I remember rolling over, reaching for my mother only to find her lying next to me, her eyes unseeing. Dead.

A wail ripped from my throat.

Horror and sickness filled my weak body as I struggled to reach for her hand, to clutch her, but I couldn’t save her.

My body refused to move or do anything. Wolves’ growls echoed around me, followed by the snapping of bones, until there was a man standing over me.

No, not a man. A shifter. One of them. Mother always said we had to hide from the wolves and never let them see us.

With every bit of strength I could manage, every muscle as my body screamed, I crawled over my mother’s body, protecting her.

I looked up at the man with long grey hair and dark eyes. “Do-on’t you touch her!”

“A human, nothing more. Spirited, it seems. A damn shame she isn’t a shifter.

They left her here with that thing.” The man grabbed me, and I kicked, I screamed, but it was useless.

“Wipe her memories and throw her into the human district. Burn the bodies here and clean the place. We are done. I will tell the alpha there were no survivors.” I cried for my mother, for my brother, calling their names, begging for my life even as he dragged me away.

Death has followed me ever since, and it’s screamed oblivion.