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1495 Words
Somewhere between sleep and not. I felt it.
A heat. Not the kind that burns your skin. No, this heat came from the inside. Like my bones were steeped in fire, like my blood had been set alight. I couldn’t move. Didn’t want to. My limbs were heavy, my chest too tight. Breathing felt like dragging air through velvet.
His scent hit me in crashing waves
Him.
Wild pine. Smoke. Rain just before it storms.
His presence clung to me and somehow I wished I was in his arms. He gives off the same aura just like the man in my dreams. The predator. That faceless voice.
My skin tingled like it recognized him before my mind did. My pulse fluttered like it wasn’t sure whether to fight or flee.
But I’d tried fleeing.
Didn’t end well.
I felt someone’s hands on me. Gentle. Bathing me maybe. But I recoiled inward. This touch didn’t belong. My body knew it.
I remembered almost hitting the ground, he grew impossibly large, wrapping around me like a bear? It sure felt that way.
The jarring shock of being caught, the snarl in my ear, the crackling pull that had torn through my chest like a wire had snapped inside me.
And now… now I was drowning in it.
In him.
In this.
Something inside me was stirring. I was plunged in out out of a dream, one where a moon dripped red above black trees. A howl broke through the forest and I balancing on the edge of something I didn’t understand.
Someone whispered my name.
Lilith. It’s time.
Not my friend. Not a voice I knew. But it called to me. Claiming me.
I gasped. Awake. But my eyes didn’t open. Couldn’t.
Sweat soaked the sheets. I shook hard.
Too hot.
Electricity licked down my spine. My back arched.
I screamed.
Muffled voices.
A scuffle.
Someone barked a command.
Still that scent filled the air. That maddening, addictive, wrong-but-right scent. Funny how it felt like just what I needed. Heat pooled between my thighs, and shame followed fast behind it.
What the f**k was happening to me?
My heartbeat picked up, too fast, too loud. My gums throbbed. My skin prickled. Something inside me wanted out.
Then
Warmth.
A body against mine.
His.
Arms wrapped around me and my whole body lit up like striking flint against stone.
His scent. His touch.
it clouded my mind like thick smoke curling through glass. I was burning, but not in pain.
No, this heat ran deeper.
It swirled in my gut, pooled behind my ribs, flushed through my veins like I’d just taken a breath laced with cocaine. Euphoric. Every inhale rewired. Alive. Food to my soul.
The pain dulled, dimmed, faded like an echo.
I realized I was being held. Rocked. Cradled maybe. And I hated that I didn’t hate it. Whoever this was… they were lulling me to sleep. Or something worse.
I slipped.
Not into unconsciousness but into something else entirely. Like reality blinked and I fell right through it.
Falling.
Falling.
Then
Stillness.
I was standing.
Somehow.
Nowhere.
Black. Endless. Heavy.
It wasn’t night. Night had stars.
This was just… absence.
⸻
I sensed it even before I reached the room she was in, something was wrong.
Her scent had changed. Violent. Tangled. My wolf was pacing, claws dragging against my insides. I was on the brink of shifting. I didn’t wait to think. I just moved. I took the stairs two at a time and burst into the room without knocking.
The nurse was frantic, pacing, probably linking her mate for backup but my eyes were only on one thing.
Her.
My mate. Screaming. Clawing at the sheets. Her skin slick with sweat. Her body shaking like it was breaking from the inside out.
“Alpha,” the nurse stammered. “I—I’m sorry. Welcome—”
I barely heard her. It took everything in me not to shove her out of the way.
“Move.” I stepped around her and went straight for the trembling form of my mate, gathering her into my arms.
And the world changed.
It was like being struck by lightning.
A surge, like someone hardwired her pain into my chest and flipped the switch.
Electricity tore through my veins. My wolf fell silent, quiet like he was listening to a holy thing.
I rocked her gently, grounding her. Her breath began to slow. Her screams softened.
The bond shouldn’t be this fast. Or this fierce. But nothing about her was the normal. I didn’t want this but she is not giving me a chance to fight it either.
I reached inward, searching for my wolf
Nothing.
No growl. No howl. No demand to mark her.
Just silence.
Maybe he was satisfied. Maybe having her in our arms, touching skin to skin was enough for now at least for her.
But me? I wasn’t fine.
I could feel myself pressing against my pants, painfully hard, the need coiling low and tight. I ground my teeth. She was quiet now, breathing a little more evenly, and thank the gods she was unconscious. If she’d been awake, she would’ve felt everything, everything, I was barely containing.
The nurse murmured that the doctor was close.
Good.
Because I was about two breaths away from losing control.
For now, I’d just hold her.
And pray to every moon goddess listening that I didn’t lose myself in her before she ever got the chance to understand what she is.
The door clicked. Dr. Emric stepped in, face pale, files clutched in one hand.
I laid her gently back on the bed. His mate rushed to tuck her in.
“Speak,” I growled, jaw tight.
He turned, face pale. “She’s not… normal.”
“No s**t,” I snapped, “get to the part I don’t know.”
He inhaled through his nose and nodded. “Her DNA doesn’t fall into any known spectrum, not human, not shifter, witch, fae, vamp. It’s like she’s outside classification. An outlier. Or…”
“Or?” The word came out like a threat.
“Off-spectrum entirely. Her genome’s… stable but undefined. Like the template was built from scratch.”
I narrowed my eyes. “So she’s not from here?”
“Maybe not even from now,” he muttered, flipping through a chart. “But there’s something else, Alpha.”
He set the file down and pointed to a highlighted portion. “You remember the research we started during the war with the Eastern Clan? When they were experimenting with genetic alterations trying to slow aging, enhance healing, live forever?”
I stiffened. “That was classified.”
“And a failure,” he nodded. “They couldn’t stop telomere degradation. Even the witches couldn’t solve it.”
He tapped the file again. “But hers? Her telomeres are nearly untouched. Intact. Long. No breakdown. None. We ran the sequencing four times.”
Silence stretched.
“She’s not aging,” he whispered. “At least not like we do. Maybe not at all.”
My wolf howled in my chest, suddenly wide awake.
“Are you saying she’s immortal?” I asked, voice low and cold.
“I’m saying whatever she is it’s not from our timeline” he replied.
The air between us grew tight.
Then, quietly: “Alpha… I don’t think you’ve just bonded with any mate.”
He looked up, eyes uneasy.
“I think you’ve bonded with a relic of the gods.”
I just listened to him my expression stoic, although my mind was in a frenzy cause how did she go from human to immortal my voice was steel when I issued the order:
“You’ll remain here with her. Set up base. I want answers, everything you can find. No one else must know what you know.”
Emric nodded, pale but resolute.
I linked Landon, my second-in-command.
“I’m coming. Have Bjorn with you.”
“Yes Alpha” he echoed down the line
But before that, I had another task. I had to contact the Seers.
I moved through the estate quickly, up to the third floor, west wing the place only few had clearance to enter. My private study, lined with obsidian wards and runes drawn in blood and salt. The air here didn’t just hum. It listened.
In the far alcove stood a wrought-iron perch. On it rested a sleek black bird, eyes like onyx, feathers shimmering with violet undertones.
The Crow.
Trained for one purpose.
To carry messages bound by ancient rune and blood magic.
I only ever used it in emergencies.
I extended my claws letting them cut a mark into my palm and let the blood bead. The Crow leaned forward.
I whispered the words as I marked the air:
“Come. Immediately.”
The runes flared gold.
The bird took flight into the night, vanishing like smoke into shadow.
- Writer
