Page 45 of The Alpha Dire Wolf (Bloodlines & Bloodbonds #1)

Sylvie

B oom-boom.

The drums sounded in the dark again. I stood on the precipice, my toes sinking into the cold soft muddy bank of the river. One more step and I would enter the waters.

Darkness reigned supreme, everywhere except in a perfect circle around me.

Showing me the river ahead and … I frowned.

The river behind? I turned on my circle, revealing it to be nothing more than stone in the center of the thrashing frothy rapids.

The only smooth spot to stand amid sharp, shattered rock interrupting the flow of water.

Where was I?

Boom-boom.

The drums drew nearer. Something was coming. Was it the wolf? I searched the dark for its eyes, the yellow and blue combo, but they were gone.

I had sent the wolf away. Told him I didn’t forgive him and kept him at a distance. Now my dreams were empty of the protection.

“Lincoln!” I screamed his name, but the darkness swallowed up the sound the instant it left my mouth. There was no calling for him, no begging him to save me. He’d done that enough.

It was time I saved myself. But how? The river was impassable, and I was trapped in its center. Either way I went, I was screwed.

Laughter sounded from the far bank. I looked over to see a quartet of pale figures standing there laughing at me. Comically long fangs spilled over their lower lips, reaching nearly to their chins. Blood dripped from them.

Vampires.

Boom-boom.

The nameless, faceless drums beat their slow marching tune, shaking the very air with the skull-splitting noise. The vampires didn’t seem to notice it. One of them hissed and pointed behind me. I spun.

There where the banks of the river had been was a giant beast with yellow eyes larger than I stood tall. Ruby-red scales covered its body from snout to tail, and smoke spun in helixes upward from each nostril as the dragon spread its wings, drowning out the tiny bit of light.

Boom-boom.

Out of the darkness came a glow of orange fire. Dragon’s breath. It billowed toward me like the storm clouds the day before, but just before it incinerated me, it morphed, splitting in half and taking on the amorphous shapes of all sorts of creatures.

A cyclops, a minotaur, dancing fairies, an ogre, goblins by the dozen—all paraded past. Magical creatures from a world that I now knew existed. A world I didn’t just know about but supposedly belonged to.

“Grandma, why didn’t you tell me?” I moaned as the fire twisted around me, spinning like a hurricane at eye level.

My feet stayed rooted to the rock. Rooted in reality. The only reality I had ever known in my entire life.

But it was a lie.

Boom-boom.

The stone cracked, the sound like lightning. My world was a lie. Everything I had believed was a lie. Lincoln was a lie. My attraction to him was a lie.

The fire roared higher. Darkness retreated.

Beneath me the stone shattered into a thousand spinning pieces, and I fell, screaming, into the void.

Boom-boom.

The drums were down . They were below me. I fell toward them, full of anger at everything happening to me. Why was it happening to me ?

I should have stayed. If my parents had never left, my grandmother could have told me who I really was, and not had to keep it hidden. If the logging company had never shut down, they never would have had to leave! It was everyone’s fault. Not mine. I didn’t want it.

“ I don’t want this! ” I screamed into the void at the top of my lungs.

Bloodbound.

“Oh, no.”

It was the same voice I had heard in my head when the tree-thing attacked. The same pounding, impossible to pinpoint sense of “needing to escape.”

“ What do you want from me? ” I shouted.

Bloodbound.

The word slammed into my skull in time with the drums. Bloodbound. Over. And over. I screamed, clapping my hands to my ears as they bled. More blood poured from my nostrils as my brain overloaded.

Fiery creatures from a new world continued to cascade around me, whipped into a fresh frenzy by a wind that appeared out of the dark. I shied away from them, but they followed. Always going where I went.

Beating back the dark. The fire was all I could see by.

Was it … on my side then? Somehow a part of me?

Bloodbound!

I screamed in agony as the word hit me with physical force, tossing me like a dog toy. The fire stayed with me. Lighting the way … though all it lit was more darkness.

Reaching out, I touched the fire. It didn’t burn. There was a warm tingle, a promise of comfort and strength that rushed up my arm and into my chest, banishing a cold I hadn’t known was growing in me.

Bloodbound.

Without thinking, I tried to shield myself from the word as it struck again out of the dark. The fire coiled like a chain around my wrists and sparked brightly, diluting some of the force.

I still hit the unseen ground but less hard this time.

Bloodbound. Bloodbound. Bloodbound.

The word hit in rapid-fire. My body jerked like one of the bad guys on television sprayed with bullets, and I flopped limply on my stomach. The fire dimmed, but it didn’t go out.

“Please,” I whispered, spitting blood. “Help me.”

A heavy footstep sounded nearby. The fire burned hot and bright, and out of the dark came the “hand” of the tree-thing, reaching for me, ready to plunge its fingers into my body. To kill me.

It had me. It was over.

I thrashed, driving it back, but only momentarily. The hand came back and plunged its spindly wooden tips into me.

I felt no pain, but I screamed anyway as cold spread from each entry point, numbing me like poison.

Bloodbound …

There was no warning. The last drumbeat in my head faded away with the end of the word, and then the darkness I was staring at faded, congealing into two circles.

One yellow-orange. The other cold, furious blue.

The wolf was on us. It snapped the tree-thing’s arm from its body, ripping its fingers from me. They pulled out—not with blood but dark shadow dripping from the tips. The shadow flowed back into me.

I screamed as something in my mind burned bright and clear for just a quarter second.

“Hey!”

Twin cords of steel wrapped around me, binding me tightly and holding me in place as I screamed and thrashed.

“Sylvie! Sylvie, it’s okay. It’s me. It’s Lincoln. You’re awake now.”

I cried out and flailed for another second or two while Lincoln held me tightly, not letting go.

“You were having a nightmare,” he said. “Your screaming woke me up, but it’s okay. It’s over now. I’m here. I’ve got you.”

I met his eyes. “Don’t let them get me, Linc. Please. Don’t let them get me. They want me. They want me.”

“I know,” he said, pulling me into him. “But they won’t get you. They can’t have you. I told you once. I will protect you. I meant it. You can be mad at me, you can hate me, but Sylvie, I will never let any of them hurt you. Ever. I won’t abandon you. I promise. Do you understand?”

I curled into a ball. “We have to go.”

“Go? Go where?”

Dawn’s first light appeared on the wall behind him, lighting his face and showing his surprise.

“Don’t you get it?” I whispered. “They’re coming for me. It’s coming for me. We have to get to the heart before it’s too late. We have to stop them.”

“It’s too late,” Lincoln said, attention now solely focused out the window. “They’re already here.”

The light on the wall behind him flickered like flame. It wasn’t dawn yet, I realized in horror.

The den was burning.