Chapter 8 - Willow
The walls of Thane’s house are too quiet; the walls of this bedroom feel as if they're closing in on me.
It's too still, too suffocating.
No matter how much I tell myself that I’m free now, that Blood Claw can’t reach me here, the silence feels like a new kind of cage—polished, tidy, with its own invisible bars. The yellow walls in the bedroom aren't a symbol of hope, but the false guise of it.
The air feels heavy with the scent of cedar and smoke, faintly filling the room.
I catch it in every breath I take as I sit on the edge of the bed, fingers twisted in the sheets, trying to ignore the tightness growing in my chest. Why does it smell familiar?
And why does the smell remind me of the Thane I knew in the past?
The only difference is that the Thane from back then didn't stir up whatever I'm feeling now. I can still feel the phantom pulse where Thane grabbed my wrist earlier, and where his hands had been planted on my shoulders as if that electric spark burned my skin and refused to fade.
I should hate him.
I do hate him.
But the thing about hate is that it can't exist without the existence of love, even if the latter has since faded into nothing. It burns the same way, sears the same part that once hoped for tenderness. It's just the opposite end of the spectrum.
And the hatred I feel for Thane reminds me that it was once love I felt.
Groaning with irritation, I lie back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, counting the beams as if the repetition might ground me.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
My pulse slows eventually, my eyelids growing heavy, but sleep doesn’t come gently. It drags me under, rough and unrelenting, into the place where my mind twists truth and fear into the same dark thing.
The scent hits me first—smoke and iron. The copper tang of blood on the wind and on my tongue, faint but evident enough to be noticed.
I’m standing in the middle of the forest where the greenhouse used to be, but it's not there anymore.
The trees around me are stripped bare, the earth charred black and left with blankets of ash, and a red moon bleeds through the branches like an open wound in the sky.
Something moves between the trees, catching my attention. I listen closely and hear soft whimpers.
Familiar.
Desperate.
My own voice.
“No…stop…I didn’t mean to….”
The sound of my own pleading rattles through the woods like an echo from another life, prompting me to move forward.
Then I see her—me—kneeling in the dirt, trembling hands pressed against the chest of a lifeless body.
A man’s body.
His face is obscured by dark shadows and the bleeding red moon, but I recognize that build, the hair, his side profile from where he's lying on the ground.
Thane.
But not the Thane I've known for most of my life. This one's face lacks life, color, the essence that makes him so extraordinarily appealing.
My breath catches and lodges in my throat like a lump as I stumble forward, my bare feet crunching over brittle leaves that turn to ash underfoot.
“No…no, this isn't real…” I whisper. “It can't be....”
But when I kneel beside him, the shadow that hides his face flickers, and I see golden eyes staring back at me, glowing even in death.
The skin on his face is cracked, mimicking the scar I wear from being abused in Blood Claw, but his is burned through with light—the same gold that bled from my fingertips the last time I was here.
I yank my hands back, shaking, staring down at Thane and an apparition of me that weeps over his lifeless form.
The same veins of gold crawl beneath my skin, glowing brighter, burning hotter until pain tears through me.
“Stop!” I scream, but the ground opens beneath me, flames bursting through the cracks. The trees catch alight one by one, hot licks of fire curling into the shape of snarling wolves.
Then comes the whisper, threading through the roar of the flames—smooth, silken, and cruel.
“You can’t save him, Willow,” it roars, taunting me, haunting me with the truth.
My breath turns to smoke. “Who are you?” I demand, and a figure steps out from the fire, cloaked in black, eyes like pools of obsidian that reflect my terror.
“You were never meant to love him,” the voice hisses. “Your love is meant for destruction.”
The ground trembles violently, and the flames roar higher.
“No!” I cry out desperately, clutching my head as light bursts from my palms, the same golden fire consuming everything around me. The figure lunges—and suddenly, there’s a hand on my arm again.
Thane’s voice, rough and desperate, breaks through the chaos.
“Willow! Wake up!”
The dark, ashy world shatters. I gasp, choking on the air as the nightmare tears away.
The dark of the bedroom folds back around me—familiar shadows, the faint glow of moonlight filtering through the curtains.
My throat burns, my body slick with sweat, and I barely register that someone’s holding me upright until I hear his voice again.
“Hey…hey, it’s me,” Thane says softly, his voice hoarse, a steady hand on my shoulder. “You’re safe. It was just a dream.”
Blinking rapidly as I gasp for breath, I take the water Thane offers me, chugging it down in one gulp until my parched throat is quenched, and images from the nightmare I had come flashing through my mind.
“It was a nightmare,” I correct Thane as I pass him the empty glass, catching a glimpse of his side profile when he turns briskly to place the glass on the nightstand.
A stark contrast to what I saw in the nightmare, Thane's face is full of life now. A wave of relief washes over me, and with it comes a flood of emotion that rushes in, confusing me with its intensity.
“I know…” Thane whispers gently, turning to face me, his forest-green eyes ensnaring me in their warmth despite the darkness of the room. Wrapped in only the natural light of the moon, his tanned cheeks appear golden, but not the color I've been afraid of in my nightmares.
This gold oozes warmth—the kind that has me absentmindedly lifting my hand to touch his face as my eyes flicker back to his, another bout of relief washing over me when I feel the warmth of his flesh beneath my palm.
But I also feel the magnetic tingle in my fingertips, the first stirrings of awareness that have been setting in ever since I returned to Girdwood.
This time, I don't flinch or mentally recoil from the touch. This time, I'm amazed.
Perhaps it's the aftermath of that strange dream—nightmare—that has me clinging to this moment as if to make sure he's truly still alive. What I saw was too real to bear, and though it doesn't make sense, it also makes perfect sense, considering what Rissa told me.
I'm not sure if I'm ready to believe it yet, but how much longer can I deny the strange sensations running through my fingers?
Is it because of him?
Or because of what I saw in that nightmare?
It felt like a warning.
And the worst part is that touching him sparks something inside my skin, electric, alive, like my body remembers something my mind refuses to believe.
That scares me more, and has me quickly snatching my hand away, aware that for a moment, I lost myself. For a moment, Thane didn't even flinch and allowed me to keep my hand pressed to his cheek.
Quickly averting my eyes, I clear my throat and try to become numb again, but my trusted defense mechanism isn't working fast enough. Glaring at my own hands as if they've failed me, as if they've betrayed me by touching him, I become highly aware of the scent filling the air.
Tobacco.
Mint.
My brows instantly furrow, and I snap my head up at him accusingly.
“You're still smoking. I thought you were quitting before camp.”
Thane appears taken aback by my strange, misplaced accusation, his cheeks filling with color as he chuckles nervously. He gets to his feet, rubbing clammy hands on his denim jeans.
“I—I did quit,” he reveals, rubbing a hand behind his neck. “I just found Brooks's stash, and I indulged. I needed it. But it was a one-time thing.”
“You don't owe me an explanation, Thane.”
“I know. But you always reminded me how dangerous nicotine and wolfsbane were. Didn't you say…a deadly combo?”
“Yeah, I did….” Nodding thoughtfully, I wrap my arms around my chest as I turn my face toward the wall, staring blankly ahead. It's none of my business what he does, but the smell of cigarettes brings me back to the night he'd rejected me.
In the midst of everything I've been hauled into since he found me in Seward, recalling the night of his rejection threatens to break my heart all over again.
It's probably because I'm about to enter an arranged mating ceremony with the man who rejected me in the past. And that's why I'm trying to look for some good in all of this.
“Are you o—”
“I'm fine,” I cut Thane off abruptly, tilting my chin with a hint of defiance that leads him to slowly back away toward the door.
He lingers for a moment longer, his tall, broad frame filling the doorway, and I do my best not to give him a second look, especially after that weird exchange when I touched his cheek.
Embarrassment with a hint of pride is a deadly combination for my pulse, and I wish he'd just go away so I can breathe again, but his shadow spills across the room with a heaviness of the weight of everything unspoken.
I can feel his eyes on me as if he's searching for something he’s already lost.
He clears his throat softly, a sound bordering on confusion and hesitation.
“Get some rest, Willow,” he says finally, voice low, careful, as if he’s afraid that if he speaks too loud, I’ll shatter to pieces.
I don’t answer. I can’t. I'd probably shatter into pieces if I did, and I'm trying so hard not to break.
When the door clicks shut, and the sound echoes through the stillness like a full stop on a sentence I never wanted to write, I let out a sigh of relief.
The silence that follows is louder than any fight we’ve ever had, and somehow, it feels like imaginary hands wrapping around my throat to suffocate me.
My body feels heavy when I lie back on the bed, my pulse still uneven from the nightmare—or maybe from him, I’m not sure.
The air in this room feels different now, thicker somehow. It smells faintly of tobacco and mint, and I hate that it’s comforting. I hate that it smells like Thane.
Like the boy who used to sneak into my greenhouse to tease me about talking to my plants.
Like the man who once promised I’d always be safe in Girdwood.
I hate that part of me still believes him.
Rolling onto my side with an exasperated sigh, I stare at the wall, at nothing in particular.
My mind won’t stop replaying everything—his touch, the look in his eyes when he caught my wrist, the spark that leapt between us like lightning.
It wasn’t just warmth. It was recognition. And that’s what scares me the most.
I feel seen, at a time I don't want to be feeling that way. Perhaps, in the past, I would have basked in that feeling. But when I wanted it the most, it didn't come, and instead, I was shattered.
Destruction.
The one from my nightmare.
I've already felt destruction, and now my nightmare is telling me about Thane's.
Is it revenge I'm meant to seek?
Or is the prophecy true? Believable?
Pressing my fingers into my palms until they sting, as if the pain can drown out the confusion clawing through me, I can't seem to get numb the way I usually would.
I can still feel.
Because underneath the hate is something much worse, something dangerously close to what I used to feel for him.
But I don't want to feel.
A sound escapes me, part laugh, part sigh, heavy with exhaustion and disbelief. I pull the blanket higher, curling into it like it might shield me from the truth I’ve been trying to ignore. The house is too quiet. The night is too long. And sleep feels like another trap I can’t escape.
My chest tightens as I close my eyes, the image of Thane’s face etched into the back of my eyelids—the way he looked at me tonight, not with pity, not even with guilt, but something else. Something raw.
I shake my head hard, as if I can throw the thought away.
The only reason I’m going through with this is to entertain my curiosity and figure out what my nightmares mean, and to see if what they’re saying about me is true.
A witch?
It’s highly unlikely. But I can’t explain the things I’ve been seeing, the things I’ve been feeling.
The only way I can figure out if any of it is true is if I stick around. I might not mate with Thane and unlock my powers—if I even have them to begin with—but Rissa can tell me more.
I just have to be open to it this time.
A sigh slips from my lips as I finally settle into the quiet.
My fingers twitch once against the blanket, and in the darkness, beneath the thin layer of fabric, a faint golden shimmer dances across my skin.
It fades before I can see it, leaving only warmth in its wake.
But the coldness of my horror remains, keeping me restless through the night.
Something tells me that this is something I can't escape.