6. Chapter Six
Chapter Six
Halley
My eyes open, slow and heavy, as if I'm rousing from the deepest sleep of my life.
My vision is blurry. I strain to focus and the world swims before my eyes like a watercolor painting left in the rain.
The full moon hangs above the forest, spilling silver light over the branches swaying overhead. I stare at them for a few breaths, waiting for the haze to clear.
Cold seeps up from the ground and through my clothes. It should be miserable, but the sensation steadies me. Cold means I still have skin, and having skin means still having a body. A body means that somehow, against the natural order of things, I'm alive.
My heart beats in my chest.
Thump-thump.
I inhale, breathing in the scent of damp earth, pine, and woodsmoke.
I rub my thumb against my forefinger, letting the tactile sensation anchor me. The tingling in my extremities lessens, and more of the world floods back in.
I huff in disbelief.
I'm mother-fracking alive.
I wait for the panic to swallow me whole.
It should, because I died.
I remember dying.
The pain. The blood. The awful snap of our bonds breaking apart in my chest.
Fear moves through me, but it doesn’t own me the way it used to. Beneath the confusion and the weakness in my limbs, there is a strange steadiness I don’t recognize.
The world already did its worst.
I came back anyway.
I look to my side and jolt.
A large black shadow is hovering beside me.
Oh frack, it’s death.
He’s pissed I escaped, and he's come to drag me back.
Alarm punches through me, but it doesn’t hollow me out. I curl my stiff fingers into the dirt, weak as I am, and prepare to fight him anyway.
My breath comes fast, and it makes my lungs burn as they stretch from stillness.
The shadow shifts.
A rough, animal sound slips from my throat.
My mouth is bone dry, and swallowing hurts. I lick my lips, but my tongue is like sandpaper. Each inhale and exhale creates a harsh, rasping sound that rattles from my throat.
"Drink, baby girl," a familiar voice orders gently.
Water drizzles over my lips, and my tongue laps at it before I can think. The first swallow hurts, but the next one burns less. I try to sit up, chasing the canteen, but my body refuses to cooperate.
Strong hands catch me and ease me against a warm, firm chest.
"I’ve got you, Sparkles," another voice murmurs near my ear.
I sag into him.
The canteen touches my mouth again, and I drink greedily, sighing as the cool water soothes the raw ache in my throat. The wheezing rattle eases, and the world settles into focus.
I'm lying in a pool of blood, on the forest floor, in a strange camp. Kneeling before me, pale but still heartbreakingly handsome, is my Beta, my Shade.
"Hi?" I croak. It's barely a word, more of a hiss.
Shade’s face crumples, and a choked sob breaks free. "You’re here. You’re really here."
"And where the fuck did you think you were goin', Sparkles?"
Blaze’s voice shakes beneath anger, but I know he's not angry at me. His hands run up and down my arms, over my shoulders, across every part of me he can reach, like he is checking I'm real by touch because he doesn’t trust his eyes yet.
"Um."
It comes back in pieces.
Maddie.
The gun.
The pain.
I lift my hand with great effort, and it shakes from the strain. I run my fingers over the side of my neck where I remember the blinding agony erupting from.
Now there is only a raised scar.
"I died?" I ask, because the words are too ridiculous to be real.
"Yeah," Blaze snarls. "You did. You fucking died."
The rumble in his chest travels through my back, a deep vibration that makes me want to burrow closer into him despite the scent of rage pouring from him.
It's a lot. Too much to take in, and I can't make sense of it.
How am I alive?
"You healed after death," Shade says, his voice low and shaken. "It should’ve been impossible, but your wounds closed, and then your heart restarted."
The bond is there again, linking me to Shade and Blaze, but it feels tender and strange, like a limb torn off and sewn back on.
A few faint memories drift through me, hazy and broken around the edges.
"Did we talk while I was dead? Through our bond?" I ask, my breath shaking around the words. My voice sounds raw and unfamiliar.
"I don’t think you were still dead by then," Shade says carefully. "I think your mind reached for us after you came back. Like you were trying to find your Pack before your body fully caught up."
It’s too dark to read his expression, but I can picture his eyes moving the way they do when he’s solving a problem.
"I felt the bond shatter," he says. "Completely. There was nothing there. Then it started coming back, piece by piece. I stayed with you, so I heard your heart beat first. Blaze was slower to respond. He had a..."
Shade’s gaze flicks over my shoulder.
Blaze goes still behind me, and through the bond, something jagged and ugly flinches away before I can catch it.
"A rough time of it," Shade finishes.
"Rough time?" I ask.
Shade gives me a small shake of his head, silent and firm.
I’m tired, feeble, and too confused to push. Whatever happened to Blaze while I was gone, I know instinctively that I’ll need more strength before I can face it.
"And Viper? Knox?" I ask instead, suddenly aware of the two missing pieces of my Pack. I feel the chill of their absence.
‘Viper?’
I reach for him through the bond, expecting the same strange but healing connection I have with Shade and Blaze. The thread hangs slack between us. It's there, but distant and unanswered.
Shade goes still.
"Fuck," he breathes. "Oh shit."
Panic spikes through him so fast it cuts through the haze in my head, making it painfully obvious that our bond is once again attached. Blaze must feel it too because his arms tighten around me, and the air changes, heavy with fear I don’t understand.
"Shade?" I whisper.
He scrambles to his feet, looking around like he’s lost something vital. "They left. They don't know. Fuck. We have to find them."
They don’t know what?
That I’m alive?
Shade looks terrified.
"Are they doing what I think they're doing?" Blaze asks, still holding me firmly. His hands are steady now, and his voice has lost the bite of anger from earlier, replaced with a growl of worry.
Shade nods once. "Viper was in a bad way. Knox didn’t think there was another option."
I frown, trying to make the pieces fit, but my mind is slow and my body is weak. "What option?"
Neither of them answers.
Blaze eases me back onto the ground and rises in one fluid motion. "Fuck. Try the radio."
Shade shakes his head. "Knox didn’t take it."
Blaze’s jaw tightens. "The bond?"
"Nothing," Shade says. "Not since…"
His eyes flick to me, and he squeezes them shut like he’s shoving a memory away.
He abruptly turns to Blaze.
"What can you hear?"
Blaze stills, head angled toward the forest. His jaw flexes as he listens.
"Two clicks northeast," he says. "They’ve stopped. They’re talking, but I can’t make out the words."
"We have to move," Shade says. "Now."
They turn toward the trees, already falling into a plan I’m too foggy to understand.
Panic continues to surge from them through the bond.
My heart stutters.
"Wait!" I shout, and the word cracks through my aching throat.
They stop, turning to me with twin expressions of frantic determination.
"Please," I rasp. "I don’t understand. I can’t follow what you’re saying, I can’t even stand, and you can’t leave me. Not this soon after…"
My voice breaks on a sob before I can finish.
I swallow back a taste of iron and whisper with as much earnestness as I can manage, "Take me with you."
Shade’s face crumples with sorrow, but Blaze is already moving.
He returns to me in a flash, crouches, and hauls me onto his back as if I weigh nothing.
His hands lock beneath my thighs while I wrap my arms around his neck and press my cheek to his shoulder.
Even those small movements leave me drained.
"Hold on, Sparkles," he says, voice low and urgent. "We’ve gotta move fast."
I nod against him and tighten my grip.
Then they run.