Chapter 24 - Aurela
This time, when the dream comes to me, I recognize what’s happening and I try to fight it.
Tara is there, standing somewhere in the woods, but the smoke is too thick for me to make her out, for me to see anything clearly but the choppy, uneven blue hair on her head. She stares at me with a hungry sort of look.
I try to wake up, to reach out for Soren, but he’s not there, and no matter how much I resist, I feel myself falling deeper and deeper into the dream, walking closer to her in the clearing, though I try to drag my feet, to turn around and walk away.
“If you were strong enough to resist me,” Tara coos tauntingly, “you would have done it a long time ago, Aury.”
And when I wake up, it’s not just a dream.
“Finally,” Tara says, her real voice harsher, cutting through the space between us with a clarity she didn’t achieve in my dream. “You’d think such a nice, long walk would make you wake up faster, Aury.”
“Don’t call me that,” I say, but my voice comes out weak, half-formed.
When I look around, I realize there’s one difference between this reality and my dream—there’s no fire here. The forest is relatively calm, an owl hooting in the distance, the cicadas just beginning their low, consistent humming, singing through the forest with a haunting reverie.
Just from the sight of the trees alone, it’s hard to figure out exactly where I am, but I know it’s a long, long way from town. My feet hurt, and I get the sense that Tara was telling the truth about me having walked a long, long way to arrive in this clearing.
“Why not?” Tara asks, tilting her head at me. Slowly, as though she doesn’t want to spook me, she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a red lollipop, the kind she used to eat constantly in high school.
Even standing this far from her—ten feet, at least—I can smell her scent. A little sharp, minty. Cool, like menthol.
Popping the sucker into her mouth and dropping the wrapper on the ground, she says, “Hello, earth to Aurela? Are we having a conversation or what?’
“How do you keep bringing me out here?”
She throws her head back and laughs, the sound throaty and impossibly cool.
In high school, I thought she was the epitome of the aloof, collected girl I wanted to be.
Now that I’m older—and she doesn’t seem like she’s aged a day, physically or in maturity—I see her for what she is.
Maybe a little insecure. Trying too hard to act like she doesn’t care because caring means getting your feelings hurt.
“I’m not bringing you out here,” Tara says when she’s done laughing, dropping down onto a tree stump and crossing her legs. “You just can’t stay away from me, Aury. It’s like you’re obsessed or something.”
“I see you in my dreams.”
“Aw, that’s very sweet.”
“Seriously, Tara.” I suck in a breath, taking a step back from her and holding my hands up. “I have to go tell the supreme about this. I don’t understand why you’re doing all this. Yeah, things weren’t great after the fire, but we all turned out okay. You didn’t have to become a feral.”
Tara’s expression shifts subtly, her lips tightening, her brows drawing down.
For a moment, I see a flicker of jealousy, of anger, before it dissipates again.
“I don’t have a choice, Aurela. Don’t you get that?
I never had the option to just join the pack and have a grand old fucking time like the rest of you. I need the fire.”
“You don’t—”
“I do!”
When Tara shouts, her voice drops an octave, seeming to echo off the foothills around us, bouncing between the trees and sending a shiver up my back. She’s breathing hard, her hands balled into fists, and she takes a deep breath, closing her eyes, trying to compose herself.
Quieter, she says, “I can’t believe you haven’t figured this out yet, Aurela. I know Maeve is the smart one in the group, but it’s not like you’re stupid.”
“Figured what out?” I demand. “Why you’re doing all this? Why you keep starting fires even though it’s hurting people? Hurting me?”
“Maybe you created me, but I’m not your fucking servant,” Tara hisses, stepping closer to me, her combat boots crunching through the pine needles and the silvery coating of daemon ash that seems to exist everywhere in these woods.
“I know you were raised to believe you’re the center of the universe, but you’re not.
And that attitude really starts to get grating after a while.
Maybe your new boy toy is putting up with it for now, but—”
“He is my mate,” I say through my teeth, even though it’s not important.
I don’t have to defend myself to Tara. She’s always been against the idea of me being with Soren.
Insisted that any of us dating was a bad idea.
That boys wouldn’t really like us, or if they did, it would be for all the wrong reasons.
Whenever I spent time with Soren, Tara would grow sullen, her hair seeming to get duller, her usual sparkle muted. The other girls noticed, too.
Once, when we skipped one of our meetings—each of us occupied with our own stuff—Tara was so angry that when we came back to the little room we usually used, it was trashed. And she was nowhere to be seen.
Together, the four of us had quietly cleaned up the place. I remember it like it happened yesterday, the way my pulse skipped in my wrist, the sense that Tara’s anger was something with much more weight than a teenage girl’s temper tantrum.
And after that was the night with the fish, Tara pushing harder and harder for each of us to see what we were capable of.
I’d wake up each morning feeling completely drained, sullen.
Foods Club was my only solace, the only place I could restore some of the energy that seemed to be constantly drained from me, either from my mother insisting I skip breakfast or from Tara pushing me as hard as I could go.
“I can see the wheels turning in your head,” Tara says quietly, almost eagerly. “So, what have you figured out?”
The answer is what it’s always been—nothing. Every time I’m around her, it’s like my brain is scrambled. Stuck in neither the past nor present, but hanging somewhere in between.
“Okay,” Tara says, rolling her eyes, laughing, and springing up from the stump. She pops the stick from her mouth and throws her sucker, half-eaten, to the dirt. “Fine—I have to be the one to do fucking everything!”
“Tara—”
“Do you remember what it was like for you the last time?”
“Last time what?”
“The last time he left you,” she clarifies, swinging around and stalking just another step toward me. Only five feet between us now.
I shake my head, like the physical movement might keep her words from anchoring in my head. “No—”
“Yes,” she insists, nodding, her eyes locked on mine. “He left you once before, and he’s going to do it again, Aurela. When he finds out that you’re still best friends with me—”
“I’m not—”
“Then what are you doing up here?” she counters, and my words die in my throat. Chortling, she runs a hand through her blue hair, making it stand even more on end. “Here’s the short and sweet of it, since apparently, nobody else is going to tell you how it is, Aury.”
She pauses for dramatic effect, turning toward me, and unlike the moment with my parents, I feel my will to stand against her failing.
Tara was the only person who saw me in high school. Who made me feel like I was worth something. And after spending a full year following her lead and starting to feel more like a person under her care, it’s hard to write that history off.
It’s hard to struggle against the weight of her charisma, the convincing way she speaks.
Face growing somber, Tara says, “Soren left you. Back then, he dropped you the moment it was no longer fun for him. And in case me being up here hasn’t made this clear to you, people never change.
Think about it—what have either of you done to be different?
You sat in your house for a decade, and Soren ran around, following orders.
The moment he realizes who you really are, and the fact that you’re here, talking to me, he’s going to go to your supreme, and Sorel is going to cut your fucking head off in front of everything. Make an example out of you.”
“Soren would never,” I insist.
“Ha!” Tara wipes an imaginary tear from under her eye. “His pack, or you? His supreme, or you? Following the rules, or you? You think he’s going to change his entire personality just because you had a couple of good fucks?”
“Shut up,” I grind out through clenched teeth. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“And just wait until the baby comes,” Tara says, spinning around on her heel and starting to walk away from me so I can’t see her face.
“He’ll tell you things are going to be different for your kids, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned about shifters, it’s that you all can’t stop thinking about your place in the pack.
And that will lead every single one of you to use your children to get ahead, even if that means stripping them of their autonomy. Just like your parents did to you.”
“What are you talking about?” I say, even as I know exactly what she’s talking about.
I heard her whispering to me that day in the woods. I’ve felt the truth of it in my own body, sought out the growing life inside me with my magic. Avoided drinking, just in case it was true.
“Don’t play stupid,” Tara mutters, picking up a stick and running it along the top of the stump. “Just—”
But then, Tara freezes, her eyes going wide, her body as still as a deer in the headlights. There’s a sound from the trees behind me, and Tara vanishes.
Fear creeps up into my throat, sharp and acrid, and I can’t help but think the only reason Tara would run like that is if whatever’s behind me is much, much scarier than she is.