9. Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine
Taylor
T he forest shimmers with an energy I've never sensed before. I drink in the verdant hues, the light greens of the leaves contrasting with the darker shadows beneath the canopy. The scents are rich and earthy, and the freshness of the woodland mingles with the faint sweetness of wildflowers carried on the gentle breeze.
Even the sounds seem amplified, every crunch of leaf litter and distant scurry of small creatures through the undergrowth reaching my ears with startling clarity. Suddenly all my senses are dialed up to an intensity I've never experienced, leaving me overwhelmed by the vibrant symphony of the forest.
I can't begin to explain this sudden resurgence of energy coursing through my veins. Just days ago, I could barely muster the strength to make it through the day, my body slowly betraying me as debilitating fatigue took its toll. The tiredness had crept up on me so gradually, I didn't even realize how depleted I'd become.
But now...now I've been reborn, every ounce of weariness banished from my body. I’m more alive than I have been in years. Of course, I know it can't last. Nothing this wondrous ever does, but I'll be damned if I won't savor every second in the meantime.
Liam walks beside me, his presence a comforting anchor even as it fills me with an inexplicable sense of connectedness. I still imagine I sense his emotions flowing into me, a palpable weight of solemn urgency coalescing in my chest.
I don’t understand why. Perhaps I’m finally losing my mind, and being here in a beautiful forest with a man I could fall in love if I had a lifetime ahead of me with is a mind-trick. A delusion drawing me away from reality, whereby I’m really lying in a hospital bed drawing my last breaths.
“Taylor.”
Liam utters my name, weighted with urgency. This is the tone someone uses when offering bad news. I brace myself, turning to face him as a chill sweeps through me. But it's not Liam's intense gaze that captures me. It's the sight of the clearing beyond his shoulder. The clearing from my nightmare. Breath catching in my throat, I brush by Liam and stumble past the ancient trunks of the forest.
This can't be real.
It simply can't.
And yet, the details are unmistakable, from the green grass waving in an unfelt breeze to the edge to the rickety thatched hut at its center. The hut shouldn’t be standing. Not how it’s made from dead, twisted branches, all rough and uneven. The roof is made from thatch and is angled impossibly high. A thin trail of smoke curls from a chimney.
There was a crooked man who lived in a crooked little shack …my mind spins off an old childhood rhyme, but the man who steps from the door is not a crooked little man. Recognition flares through me. It's him. The man from my dreams but in the waking world, however, his appearance is almost disappointingly ordinary.
He’s a man who blends into a crowd. Nothing about him stands out in any way. He has wavy blond hair to his ears and wears a nondescript blue shirt and faded jeans. His face is attractive in a bland sort of way. There's nothing outwardly menacing about him, nothing to justify the way my heart lodges in my throat as a smile edges across his face.
Liam tenses beside me, his hand tightening around mine. “We need to go,” he murmurs, urgency and dread lacing his words.
My mind screams agreement but my body refuses to obey. An unnatural compulsion grips me, rooting me to the spot as the stranger opens the shack’s front door wider. Despite the dissonant alarms blaring through every instinct, I find myself unable to turn and run.
“Please, come inside,” he calls out in an affable tone completely at odds with the dread coiling through my gut.
His voice reverberates around me, the words an irresistible summons I'm helpless to defy. My feet begin moving of their own volition, carrying me toward the hut with Liam in tow, his own movements stiff and jerky, as if he's physically battling against the unnatural compulsion driving us forward.
A growl rumbles from deep within his chest, guttural and feral in a way that has the fine hairs along the nape of my neck standing on end. Coarse gray fur erupts along his forearm before vanishing just as quickly, leaving me to wonder if I've simply slipped into the depths of a waking nightmare.
A presence stirs to frantic life inside me. It writhes and twists in the confines of my body, straining against an unseen barrier just out of reach. I try to give voice to the panic clawing at my mind, but the words shrivel on my tongue.
All I can do is keep walking, toward the hut and the stranger. The air around the hut shivers with an eldritch energy, which sucks me in the closer I get.
“Enter,” is all he says, a simple command that resonates through every fiber of my being, banishing any last vestiges of resistance.
Against my will, against every desperate plea screaming through my mind, I step across the threshold. Liam follows, his features contorted in a mask of impotent fury.
As I step inside and the door swings shut behind us with a dull thud of finality, it takes a moment for my brain to catch up with my eyes. What I'd assumed was a ramshackle hovel reveals itself to be something far more imposing up close. The crooked beams and gnarled logs are woven together with an almost architectural precision, runes and sigils etched into the wood in dizzying, overlapping patterns. Shelves crammed with ancient tomes and glass vials filled with ominous liquids line the interior visible through the open doorway. The inside is far, far bigger than what it appears to be from the outside.
In the center of the space, a crackling firepit casts flickering shadows across the walls, highlighting a large cauldron suspended over the flames. The scent of herbs and spices hangs thick in the air, mingling with the metallic tang of something far more unsettling.
Liam's presence is a seething force at my back. His growls have taken on a guttural, feral edge, punctuated by the occasional jerking motion, as if he's physically battling against whatever unnatural compulsion holds us in its thrall.
Trepidation gives way to outright terror as the man turns, fixing us with an impassive stare. “Sleep, wolf,” he intones.
Liam goes unnaturally still. Panic claws at my throat as I try to whirl toward him, only to find my own movements equally restricted, unable to so much as turn my head in his direction.
“That's better,” the stranger remarks without a flicker of expression on his face. “Now follow me.”
My feet follow the stranger from the relative warmth of the room to a dark doorway. A dank corridor stretches out before us, the rough-hewn stone walls glistening with moisture. Frigid air clings to my skin. An acrid undertone of rot and decay mingles with the damp, musty scent, filling my nostrils with each shallow breath.
Terror streaks through me, but I can't give voice to the screams building in my throat. Can't fight, can't flee, can't even turn my gaze from the path ahead as the shadows twist and contort in the flickering torchlight. We reach a cell at the end of the corridor, the heavy iron bars and crude stone walls sending a fresh wave of dread crashing through me.
“Get inside,” is all he says, the mild tone at odds with the undercurrent of power resonating through those two simple words.
I find myself obeying and stepping into the confines of the cell. Liam passively follows me, his eyes wide and wild, his features twisted into a mask of fury and panic so visceral, I can practically taste it on my tongue.
A mirrored torrent of emotion slams into me and leaves me reeling. I want to scream, to fight, to get the fuck out of here, but I'm utterly helpless, a prisoner in my own mind and body as the cell door clangs shut with the dull, final thud of the lock sliding into place.
Only then does the unnatural hold over me loosen. I stumble on shaking legs. Liam, too, is in motion the instant the invisible bonds release their grip. He charges the bars in an explosive burst of speed, snarling and snapping like a beast as his hands—no, his claws—reach through the unforgiving iron.
How have his fingers turned into claws?
“Let my mate go!” The words tear from his throat in a bestial roar that has the hairs along my nape standing on end. “I'll do anything you want, just let her go!”
Mate? What…what does that mean? The term, spat with such vehement possession, sends a fresh jolt of confusion lancing through me. I stumble backward, until I hit rock.
“Who the hell are you and why in the name of the goddess have you brought us here?” Liam rakes those deadly claws that should be his fingers against the bars.
The man sighs. “I suppose it’s only manners I introduce myself. You can call me Rowan. And in answer to your questions, it’s quite simple. When I have your wolf under my control, all you have to do is bring me the Chalice of Lunar Rites, and I'll release you both. Refuse and your mate...” His gaze slides to me and his lips lift in a cold smile. “Surely he's told you the truth by now?”
I shake my head, increasingly convinced that we've stumbled into the stronghold of a madman. “The only truth I know is that you’re insane. Whatever you think we can do for you, I assure you, we can’t. We're not important, I swear.”
The man chuckles, and the fine hairs on my nape rise again. “Not important? Oh, but you are, little one. The most important guests I've entertained in quite some time, in fact.”
The weight of his stare intensifies in a way that has me shrinking back against the chill stone wall.
“You,” Rowan murmurs, something like reverence tingeing his words, “are going to be the one to turn your mate feral.”
The words make no sense, whirling through my mind in a tsunami of confusion and disbelief. How can Liam turn feral ? He's just a man…
“It's easy, you see,” Rowan explains with a casual wave of his hand. “Simple even, to twist a fated mate wolf shifter's instincts until he becomes a mindless beast who will serve me without a thought in his head. All I need to do is use the bond. Don’t worry. You won’t miss out. You’ll feel exactly what he does.”
Fated mate? Wolf shifter?
The bottom drops out of my world in an endless spiral. The man is insane. Irrevocably, certifiably insane. I open my mouth, but no sound emerges save a thin, reedy whine of denial and dawning horror.
This can't be happening. We're going to die here, tortured and slain by a raving lunatic for reasons that cannot possibly be grounded in reality.
“Oh, you’ll definitely be tortured.” Rowan's smile widens and I realize I spoke out loud in my terror. “And I also see you need to fully understand your situation.” He turns his attention to Liam who clutches the bars with talons the length of my hand. “Show her who you really are, wolf.”
For an endless, breathless moment, silence is broken by the harsh rasp of Liam's exertions. Then, he shudders, staggers, contorts.
“No!” The word wrenches from him, but it doesn’t stop his body from warping.
Bones stretch and reshape with a series of pops and crunches. His shirt shreds, as do his jeans. Tatters fly to the ground. Muscles cord and ripple beneath his skin.
A savage snarl rips free from his throat, quickly morphing into a howl of anguished rage as coarse gray fur erupts along his arms, his legs, his entire body. I can only watch in mute, numb horror as the man I'd been so drawn to reforms into a massive wolf glaring at me through glowing eyes.
The scream building in my throat refuses to be voiced, trapped behind a wall of shock and unmitigated terror but there’s no denying the impossible truth right in front of my eyes.
Liam isn’t a man.
He’s a wolf.