Chapter 8 - Sophie
My heart threatens to burst right out of my chest as I slam the bedroom door shut and lock it behind me, sliding to the floor as heat still surrounds my body.
With trembling fingers reaching for my temples, I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to get control of my breathing, trying to stop my head from spinning.
But nothing works.
I'm burning all over, and whatever just happened…
No, nothing happened.
That's what I keep trying to tell myself, but there's a knock on the door, and a gentle voice that pulls me into the reality of what actually happened.
“Sophie…are you okay in there?” Damian asks sweetly, and I hate how my body responds to his voice with desperation. I hate how my heart squeezes with an ache so ancient that it hurts my chest.
“Go away…” I mutter, but I hear Damian trying the door. Groaning, I pull myself together, get to my feet, and open the door only a crack.
The moment I see his face, a surge of violence spreads through me, and I blame him for everything. Whatever is going on is Damian's fault.
Damian's fault for bringing me here.
Damian's fault for forcing me to marry him.
Damian's fault for even existing.
“What did you do to me?!” I demand, watching as his brows furrow.
“I didn't do anything to you, Sophie,” he defends with quiet confidence, but I shake my head fervently as I throw the door all the way open and glare up at him.
Something inside me, while I was outside, snapped, responded to danger, and now, my fists are responding to Damian being close as I curl in defiance.
“You did! Something happened out there, and it was because of you!”
As I lift my fists to pound at his chest in frustration, Damian seizes my wrists and stops me, staring deeply, firmly into my eyes.
“I didn't do anything to you, Sophie,” he says measuredly.
His grip is firm, but not painful, his thumbs pressing lightly into the insides of my wrists as if he’s grounding me, anchoring me to something I don’t want to feel.
Heat flares again beneath my skin at the contact, a restless, volatile pulse that makes my breath hitch and my teeth clench.
I hate that my body reacts to him like this, hate that it feels familiar, intimate, right in the most dangerous way.
“Let go of me…” I hiss, trying to pull free, but he doesn’t budge. His eyes search my face, scanning me the way I scan patients when something is wrong and they won’t tell me what it is.
“Sophie…” he says quietly, deliberately, like he’s afraid a wrong word might shatter me. “You’re not imagining things.”
That does it.
The last fragile thread holding me together snaps, and I wrench my hands out of his grip, shoving him back a step. My chest heaves as I glare at him, my nails biting into my palms as I fight the urge to scream, to cry, to demand answers I’m not sure I want anymore.
“D-don’t,” I warn him, my voice shaking. “Don’t say that. Don’t try to convince me I’m not losing my mind.”
“You’re not,” he responds immediately. “And I won’t lie to you anymore.”
I let out a harsh laugh, backing away until my spine hits the wall. “That’s rich, coming from you. What makes you think I’d believe anything you tell me? You kidnapped me, forced me into a marriage I didn’t want, locked me in a room, and now you’re standing here telling me you’re done lying?”
“Yes,” he says, without hesitation, eyes as sincere as I’ve ever seen them.
The certainty in his voice unsettles me more than anger ever could.
“The valley you’re in,” he continues slowly, watching my face like he’s measuring each word’s impact, “is hidden. Protected. It doesn’t appear on maps the way you know them. People don’t just stumble into the Bitterroot Valley. Not where we’re hidden, anyway.”
My heart stutters, but I scoff, folding my arms tighter around myself. “So now you’re telling me secret societies exist? Are you involved in some kind of cult?”
“Werewolves exist,” he says, and the words land wrong—too flat, too calm, too serious.
I stare at him, blinking and waiting for the punchline. When it doesn’t come, when his expression doesn’t crack even a little, something cold slithers down my spine.
“And demons exist,” he adds, again too calm to imagine that he’s being anything but serious. “What you saw in Hamilton, the thing that chased us in that alley and into the park…what you burned—”
“I didn’t burn anything,” I snap, my denial sharp enough to cut through glass.
But there’s no illusory mirror in front of me, just Damian’s face.
Too serious, too certain. “I didn’t do that.
I’m a nurse, Damian. I save lives. I don’t—” I gesture around me helplessly, my arms flailing defeatedly, my throat closing around the rest of the sentence.
His gaze softens, but he doesn’t back down. “You heal. You feel deeply. You’ve always felt more than most people do. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”
I shake my head, my curls slapping my cheeks as panic builds.
“You’re trying to manipulate me. You think because I care, because I feel things deeply, you can spin this into some…
some destiny story. I don’t want it—whatever this is, I don’t want it.
You can’t force it on me. You can’t control me because we’re married on paper. ”
“The marriage wasn’t about control, Sophie,” he sighs remorsefully, and for the first time, something like pain flickers across his face. “It was protection. For you. And for my people.”
I laugh again, but it sounds brittle even to my own ears. “That’s what every leader of a cult would say. A tyrant. A narcissist.”
Something flashes behind his eyes then—frustration, restraint, regret—but he doesn’t argue. He just steps aside as I shove past him, my bare feet hitting the cool wooden floor before I storm out of the cabin and into the open air, needing space, needing proof that I’m still me.
The valley greets me with a silence so vast, I’m not sure if my mind is playing tricks on me, or if it’s just usually this quiet. I keep my head up, not giving a single glance to that spot where—
No. I won’t even think about it.
The river murmurs gently nearby, mist curling above its surface like warm breath on cold glass.
I stalk toward it, dropping to my knees beside the bank, my hands trembling as I plunge my fingers into the water.
It’s warmer than it should be. Not hot, just…
alive. Steam curls faintly upward, brushing the skin of my forearms like a whisper.
I yank my hand back, staring at it as if it’s betrayed me.
Around me, the wildflowers closest to my knees wilt suddenly, petals curling inward, their colors draining, only to bloom again a second later, brighter, richer, impossibly vivid, as if fed by something unseen.
“No,” I whisper, scrambling backward as I see this response in real time, witnessing it, but unable to accept what I’m seeing. “No, no, no.”
Footsteps crunch softly behind me, but they don’t belong to Damian.
When I turn, a woman is standing at the edge of the clearing, her face unfamiliar; tall, dark-haired, her presence heavy in a way I can’t explain. Her eyes don’t hold pity, or fear, or judgment.
They hold recognition in their softness, the amber orbs radiating a glow that could only belong to a mystical being.
“I’m Anastasia,” she says gently as she reaches out an arm. “I was asked to check on the progress of the bond.”
“The what?” My voice comes out hoarse as I frown.
“The mate bond. I assume Alpha Damian told you about it.”
My eyes flicker to the cabin behind her, but the only sign of Damian in there is the kitchen light. Did he send this woman after me, or am I imagining her being here?
“Alpha?” I ask with a frown, and the woman, Anastasia, confirms this with a graceful nod.
“You might be human, Sophie, but you are no ordinary one. You are special,” the woman says as she nods to the ground at my feet, bringing my awareness to the fact that there are suddenly new blooms around them, as if commanded to grow by my hands lying loosely at my sides, fingers pointed obliviously to the ground.
“You saw what happened?” I ask, brows rising, teetering between fear and shame.
She doesn’t answer right away. Instead, she produces a small bowl of water from underneath her cloak and sets it on a flat stone between us. “I heard about what happened, and that’s why the council sent me here. Place your hand over the bowl,” she requests softly.
“I’m not doing your test,” I snap. “What council? Is this a government experiment?”
She only waits, patient, unthreatened. “Is that what you think this is?”
There’s a part of me that wants to call out for Damian, as if he can protect me, as if I can trust the things he’s been telling me, but there’s also a part of me that trusts this woman, because deep down, I know she isn’t a threat to me.
And something about the way she's watching me keenly already answers my question.
This isn't some experiment.
She's serious. So is Damian.
Against my better judgment, against every rational instinct I’ve ever trusted, I extend my hand toward the bowl. The water warms instantly, then begins to glow faintly in a light orange, a soft, pulsing light that mirrors the frantic beat of my heart.
Anastasia exhales slowly. “You’re not human, Sophie,” she says, not unkindly. “Not the way you think.”
The world tilts, and I stumble back, shaking my head violently.
“You’re all insane.” Those words echo in my head like a driving force that continues to sound even as I bolt toward Damian's cabin—the only place I know in this strange place. That’s why I run inside, only to find him waiting for me in the kitchen.
I run again, violently racing to the bedroom, where I immediately throw myself into the bed and hide under the sheets.
Somehow, despite my heart hammering and my head all over the place, sleep finds me anyway. I know I'm asleep, I know I'm dreaming, aware of what I'm seeing, but not able to pull myself out of this illusion.
I dream of fire.
The dream takes me violently, without transition.
Thick, suffocating heat slams into me first, clawing its way down my throat until every breath burns.
The air is choked with smoke, heavy and metallic, carrying the taste of ash and blood down my constricted throat.
Flames roar all around me, devouring wooden structures that collapse with deafening cracks, sparks spiraling upward like dying stars.
People are screaming, their raw, animalistic sounds torn from throats already ruined by fear, but I can’t see their faces clearly, only silhouettes fleeing through a firelit haze.
Wolves run alongside them.
Massive bodies streak through the chaos, fur singed, eyes glowing with a ferocity that feels protective rather than savage.
Some fall mid-stride, struck by shadows that move with too much fluidity, too large, unraveling and reforming like living smoke.
When those shadows strike, the air shrieks, a sound so sharp it pierces straight through my skull.
I want to run. I want to scream. But my feet won’t move.
The ground beneath me cracks, veins of molten fire splitting the earth as if something ancient is waking up beneath the village that burns ahead. My chest aches, tight and frantic, and I realize I’m crying even in the dream, tears evaporating before they can fall.
Then I see him.
A wolf larger, more majestic than all the others, stands at the center of the destruction, fire radiating from its fur instead of consuming it.
Flames ripple across its body like living armor, bright enough to hurt my eyes.
Where its paws strike the ground, the fire bends, obeys.
It turns its head, and for a split second, its gaze meets mine.
It feels like recognition.
Not memory, but something deeper. Something older.
In its jaw, impossibly gentle despite how strong it is, he carries a baby wrapped in cloth already tied at the edges.
The infant is crying, tiny fists clenched, unaware of the war tearing the world apart around them.
The wolf bounds forward, weaving through fire and falling debris, until he reaches a pair of human arms extended toward him—hands shaking, desperate, terrified.
The wolf pauses.
The fire around it flares brighter, violent and beautiful all at once, and I feel a wrenching sorrow slam into my chest so hard it steals my breath. This is not a rescue.
It’s goodbye.
The wolf lowers its head and places the baby into the waiting human arms with reverence, as if surrendering the most precious thing it has ever known. Its golden eyes linger on the child for one unbearable second longer, burning, full of grief and resolve.
Then it turns back toward the flames, lifts its head, and howls with so much sorrow that the sound makes my own heart wrench.
“No,” I sob, my voice finally breaking free. “Don’t!”
The wolf doesn’t look back.
The shadows surge all at once, swallowing the wolf in a storm of black smoke and fire. The village collapses in on itself, screams cutting off one by one, until the world is nothing but roaring flames and falling ash.
The baby's cries slice through the air, the sound echoing, stretching, warping, until it becomes my own.
I wake with a sob tearing out of my chest, my body curled in on itself, hands clutching at my shirt as if I can still feel the heat, the loss, the grief vibrating through my bones. My face is wet with tears I don’t remember shedding, my heart hammering like it’s trying to escape my ribcage.
For a long moment, I can’t breathe.
And then a pair of warm, soothing hands pull me closer, until I'm pressed up against a solid chest that feels safe enough to sob into, his prominent scent surrounding me like protection.
When I finally open my eyes, my vision blurred, I look up to find Damian holding me tight, his expression raw and unguarded in a way I’ve never seen before. His eyes are dark, almost haunted, like he saw something, too.
I choke on a breath, a part of me wanting to say something, wanting to push him away, but after what I saw, what I felt in that dream, I can't bring myself to fight him. Not now, anyway.
It's as if Damian can sense that shift, and he holds me tighter, cupping my face with one hand and stroking away the tears on my cheek with the pad of his thumb. His presence is firm, steady, an anchor that pulls me into reality, even if it's a reality I'm denying.
There's so much I don't know, but suddenly, it feels like I can rely on Damian. It may be a fleeting feeling, a volatile one, and it may disappear in the morning, but for now, his presence is what I need to know I'm not going insane.
And for the first time since all of this began, I don’t push him away. I curl up into him, closing my eyes and allowing myself to feel safe. For the first time, Damian doesn't feel like the enemy, even if it's something I'll regret feeling in the morning.
It's what I've learned in the past. Trusting Damian has only hurt me.