Chapter 1 #2
I exhaled loudly and sought the supposed remaining symbol. As I started to doubt it existed, the final carving several steps ahead caught my eye. This was the strangest one so far—an imperfect circle, the edge of it thicker and darker like a frame, and the inside of the loop a lighter orange.
The woman and the man in my dream realm wouldn’t help me decipher the symbols. One was running away from me, and the other was hiding.
Think, Breanna. Make use of your mythology degree.
The symbols I studied in college were the base of many ancient languages and the first way of communication.
The flame must be fire. The tornado looked like a swirl of wind or air. The star had five points, a pentagram, so these could be five elements? That meant the weird waves had to be water, and the bizarre circle must be earth. Fire. Air. Water. Earth.
Four elements.
I must be missing something. Many cultures, like the ancient Greeks, used five elements of nature. What was the fifth element? The witch hadn’t mentioned more missing symbols.
Crunch.
I froze. What was that?
When I lifted my gaze, a figure popped in and out of sight up the path.
I gasped. That was it! The last element was the spirit, which was called by different names in various cultures. Some believed these five elements comprised one’s soul—and the spirit was the person’s fated mate. The other half.
“Hey, stop running away.” I started after the man again. “Just tell me who you are.”
The stranger was supernaturally fast, and I lost hope I could catch up to him with my human speed.
He crossed a meadow of white daisies with bright-orange discs that swayed slightly in the cool breeze—the same type of flower I had as a birthmark on my leg.
That couldn’t be a coincidence.
The man trampled over the flowers, leaving a path of leveled daisies behind him. Each blossom withered, and soon, like a giant wave hitting the shore, the entire field had turned to ash. Black specks floated around me, and the flowery aroma turned to smoky charcoal.
But worse than that, I felt the distinct lingering presence of death.
He was ruining my dream realm and, with it, me.
I had to stop him, but the man turned abruptly before I could. I gasped.
Torin.
The werewolf Alpha-turned-vampire stood only a few feet away.
How was he suddenly so close? His black hair fell over his shoulders, shorter pieces framing his unearthly face.
The invisible force between us only intensified—my every sense aroused, and my every thought set on fire with need for my mate.
He loomed a breath away from me, his proximity startling. My body suddenly simmered with unwanted sensations. His tantalizing scent of wilderness and masculinity filled my nostrils, not helping me stay calm before him.
No, no, no. He couldn’t be my fated mate. I’d rather not have one, throne be damned.
But no matter how much I shook my head, I wasn’t waking from this nightmare.
Alpha Torin’s amber eyes narrowed on me with all-too-familiar anger, just like they had when he rejected me.
“Torin, get out of my dream realm,” I shouted.
“You shouldn’t have followed me,” he barked. “Leave. Now. Before I hurt you.”
The memories of his rejection five years ago rushed back, and the forgotten pain simmering in my chest resurfaced. My heart clenched until I couldn’t take another breath. Tears stung my eyes, and my throat felt raw with unshed sobs when I finally exhaled.
But now wasn’t the time to weep. The enchanted trees were disintegrating into dust. Soon, it’d be my turn.
Gray stones turned into black powder and floated in the air. The forest and everything in my dream realm continued to wither and evaporate. It was a matter of minutes before everything collapsed around me.
I was running out of time.
Without sparing him a glance, I sprinted toward the trail.
The path ahead forked, and two thick trees stood tall on each side with doors etched into the trunks. But before I could reach one of the doors, my foot caught on a stone, and I tumbled to the ground.
Ouch. I glanced at my scraped palms as I pressed them into the ground and pushed myself to stand. Grinding my teeth, I looked over my shoulder.
My breath hitched as Torin transformed. His amber eyes flashed crimson and zeroed in on my hands. His nostrils flared. My eyes widened—oh no. Blood dripped down the side of my palms.
As Torin sucked in a deep breath—and, with it, the scent of my blood—his fangs protruded, and he licked his lips in a way a predator would before eating his prey.
I’d never seen Torin shift into his vampire form because the King had forbidden him to do so in the kingdom.
And tonight, I wasn’t in the safety of Dad’s territory.
Torin raced toward me, hunger burning in his red eyes.
I spun around and rushed to the closest tree.
“I told you not to follow,” the woman hollered over the boom of cracking wood, crumbling branches, and rupturing earth.
“It’s really not the time for an I-told-you-so talk,” I said breathlessly as I ran.
The woman’s cackle filled the surrounding space.
I hurried to the nearby tree door before the grass beneath my bare feet disappeared.
I twisted the doorknob and opened my bedroom in my London apartment, home and safe.
Or so I thought.
I hadn’t woken up yet, so I stared at my bedroom door for a long moment, expecting Torin to storm inside.
Why was I still dreaming? How could I exit my dream realm?
I wanted to jump into bed and pull the quilt over my head, but my bedroom door creaked, making me jolt. My blood froze in my veins as I imagined myself as vampire food.
Instead of Torin, my bodyguard from the kingdom stood at the entrance—tall and smiling, a few blond strands of hair dangling over one eye. Why was Hayden here?
Dad had told me only my fated mate could enter my dream realm. So, how had my bodyguard accessed it?
And then it hit me: Hayden—the man my father, the King, trusted to protect my life—must also be my mate.
No, that couldn’t be right. The Fates didn’t make a mistake. My father didn’t make a mistake. I could only have one true mate, so who was it? And why was I bonded to a second one?
“Hayden, w-why are you here?”
Without speaking a word, my werewolf bodyguard strolled inside the room, closing the distance between us, and then stopped inches away from me.
As I took a deep breath, my chest brushed his. His fingers wiped the tears off my face, leaving tingling sensations over my skin. His sky-blue eyes caressed me with so much desire that the urge to respond to his touch overtook me.
The same invisible, irresistible force from earlier with Torin tugged me closer to Hayden, and my breath hitched as hot blood throbbed in my veins.
My body filled with uncontrollable warmth as I succumbed to its power.
The mate bond with Hayden was just as alive and alluring as it was with Torin before he’d shifted into his vampire form.
“Hello, sweetheart,” my bodyguard whispered.
He had always been the only one who could get away with using that pet name for me instead of calling me by my name or title.
The intense need to rake my fingers through his light stubble overwhelmed me.
But wait—Hayden was my second mate. I clenched my hands and willed them to stay at my sides.
Hayden leaned in, then hugged me so tightly I couldn’t breathe. His supernatural strength was on the verge of breaking me.
My lungs constricted as if filled with water, and I drowned further into Hayden’s touch.
He would never hurt me, I told myself. He’d saved my life so many times before.
“H-Hayden, let go…” I fidgeted in his solid embrace, desperate for my next breath. I gulped for air, but only a wheeze escaped my throat. I swallowed hard. “Too tight, Hayden.”
He released me, and I coughed, my lungs desperate for air. Finally, I drew in a deep breath.
His hands grasping my shoulders left sparks under my skin, and I remembered Dad telling me how divine a mate's touch was. He bent his head to kiss me—his lips inches away from mine, his breath hot on my face.
Although Hayden and I had shared more than a kiss three years ago, I couldn’t get past the idea that I was mate-bonded to two men.
Two very dangerous men.