Page 34

Chapter 33

Rolf

T he battlefield was a bloody, muddy mess. Fallen comrades screamed for their mothers, for their lovers, as they lay dying while cannons exploded beyond them.

“Sir!” Rolf screamed, turning his head left and then right as he tried to find his superior. But he knew it was useless; the man was probably dead. The only thing Rolf could do was keep moving forward. He knew something lay beyond the field, something he was meant to get to. But the mud was so thick, the bodies were piled so high, and the enemy kept advancing, as if unaffected by the chaos of war around them.

This isn’t right , he thought.

Smoke filled his vision, and he started to cough. Now and again, he thought he saw creatures bending over the dead, but each time he tried to get closer, they would vanish into thin air. He reached down to help a fellow soldier get out of range, but his hand grasped at thin air. Confused, he looked at his hand, and then back at the soldier, who had somehow moved another foot away.

Rolf shook his head, the world around him warbling uncertainly. He must have hit his head, but when he ran his hands through his hair, there was no wound and no blood. There was something on the other side of the field; he knew it with his soul. He had to reach it, but trudging through this mud was getting him nowhere. Another cannon went off, and he dropped back down into the mud. It covered him, swallowing up his limbs, weighing him down.

No. It wasn’t like this. It had never been like this.

Another cannon exploded in the distance. He crawled forward agonizingly slowly. Another cannon, and then another.

“Attack!” Rolf yelled, trying to recall where his troops were, but it was hard to see anything for the smoke and debris that filled the air.

Nothing happened. There were no soldiers. He was the last one standing.

Where is everyone?

The mud kept getting thicker and thicker the further he crawled. Soon, he was clambering over bodies, still warm but covered in blood and with no hope for recovery from their wounds. Bile snuck up his throat as he pushed away a body without its upper half. This was worse than the old nightmares he used to have.

“This isn’t how this is supposed to be!” Rolf screamed to no one in particular. As soon as the words left his mouth, however, the scene before him faltered and changed.

What the fuck?

Now, instead of a battlefield, he was in the hospital, surrounded by rows and rows of fallen soldiers. Pain seared up his leg, and he grunted as he tried to put weight on it. He braced himself against the bed frame and hoisted up onto his good leg. A discarded crutch lay on the floor, and he bent over and picked it up. It all felt vaguely familiar, and yet, something seemed off.

Adeline was missing.

This is when I met Adeline. Where is she?

He scanned the room, the dying and injured faces, and the nurses. Nothing. She wasn’t here.

She won’t be here .

Adeline was here when it happened the first time, though. But this was somewhere different, and he had already had his time in the hospital. He wasn’t injured anymore. He wasn’t healing from the battle.

He dropped the crutch on the ground. He put all of his weight on his bad leg. It didn’t hurt. It hadn’t hurt in decades. In a century. Since he went through the stones and shifted into a wolf.

“Okay,” he said, out loud, if only so he could hear something he knew was real. “This isn’t real.”

The image before him warbled.

“This isn’t real.” His voice was louder. Whatever he was doing was working.

Where the hell is Adeline?

The edges of the room went blurry.

“This isn’t real, and I’m here to get what’s mine.”

Adeline .

The room shook, and medicine bottles crashed to the floor, shattering.

“This isn’t real, and I’m here to get what’s mine.”

Adeline . Mine.

There was a rumbling beginning deep inside his chest. A growl, a hunger for her. His wolf was trying to push through whatever kept them apart. Rolf growled with it, determined to make it to the end of the room. He took a step forward, and then another. The closer he got to the end of the room, the lighter he started to feel, his movement less of a trudge and more of a slow walk.

Mine. Adeline. Adeline. Adeline.

Her name was a mantra that propelled him forward. Nothing would keep him from her.

But he didn’t dare say it out loud lest he attract a real threat. The vampires were still in the castle, after all, and he had to get out of this gods-forsaken trap. Surely, if he could make it to the other side of what had been a hallway moments—or maybe it was hours—before, the illusions would end?

“There is no threat here. It’s some magical illusion to keep me trapped.” He smiled when his toes touched the end of the room, even though the image before him seemed to go on forever. “This isn’t real. I’m here to get what’s mine.”

Adeline .

He sighed with relief as his hands met stone and wood. Closing his eyes for a few moments, Rolf tried to call forth his wolf. They couldn’t be separated forever, but perhaps now that Rolf knew these were illusions and not real life, his wolf would remember, too.

There. The slumbering beast stirred, filling his head with cunning and his chest with hunger.

Nothing will keep us from her, his wolf promised, growling. Nothing.

Nothing , he agreed. And he opened the next door.