CHAPTER 004
1055 Words
The whispers of dreams started hardly noticeable and quiet. I didn’t notice them at first. A brief shadow or a fleeting shadow of amber eyes here. Fragments of another life, a wild wisp of a life, that was far away. But they grew vaster and louder until they were no longer dreams but other things.
That’s what every night was for me, running through a dark forest with a cold wind scratching at my skin and the sharp smell of pine in my lungs. My feet were bare, but I didn’t stumble. I could feel the pulse of the ground beneath me, which felt alive. Shadows flicked with amber eyes, they watched; they waited. A wolf howled, and it should have scared me, but it didn’t.
It felt like coming home.
Waking, however, was a different story, my heart would hammer, my hands would tremble, and I would shoot upright in bed. The blanket tangled around my legs, the dream clung to me, as real as it was.
The girls noticed, of course. They noticed everything.
“Mama, are you okay?” One morning Sophia asked, and her brow furrowed, as it did, in a way that made her look much older than she was.
I smiled, brushing her curls back from her face. “I’m fine, sweet girl. It was just strange dreams, that’s all.”
She searched my eyes with her dark ones but didn’t press further. She was curious but intuitive. She had a sense about when to push and when to pull back.
But I wasn’t fine. The truth was stalking for me, like the edge of a storm clearing in. The dreams weren’t dreams. They were something more.
The pull started soon enough.
It started out faint, a faint tug on the fringes of my attention, like when you forget the name of a person, but just before you do, you almost remember it. And I felt it most when I stepped outside; he lunged towards me, the forest humming with a quiet energy that I myself could not ignore.
The trees were taller, the shadows longer, the branches swinging in a beat I couldn’t piece together. The air was different, heavier, charged with something ancient.
I tried to ignore it. I told myself it was stress, or maybe a trick of the mind, a lingering fear of Caleb. But every single day it grew stronger, a relentless force that wouldn’t be quiet. After weeks of restless nights and days of unease, I couldn’t fight it any longer one evening.
The house was quiet, and the girls were asleep, their breathing soft and even. I pulled my coat and boots on, fetched the flashlight from the drawer, and went out into the cool night air.
Before me was the forest, and the edges disappeared into shadow. Now the pull was stronger, banging in my chest like a second heart. My feet moved as if they knew the way, even though my mind didn’t, and I followed it.
The underbrush got thicker, the path got narrower, and I wasn’t hesitating. The pine and damp earth were intoxicatingly sharp, the air electric. The more I went, the farther the world seemed to shift.
The familiar trails were gone, replaced with something ancient, not a sign of time. The branches were intertwining in the canopy, blocking the stars. There were very few sounds, the rustle of leaves underfoot being one.
And then, I saw it.
It was like a dream clearing.
The gaps in the trees spilt the moonlight, bathing the space with a silvery glow. In the centre was a shrine, weathered stones with moss growing over them and etchings on their surface that seemed to beat with life.
Power buzzed across the air around it, a low, resonant hum that vibrated in my bones. My breath caught in my throat, and I stepped closer.
The lines on the symbols of the shrine shifted as if they were alive, glowing faintly. I stretched my hand out to touch the cold stone, and my hands shook.
The surface of the ball tingled beneath my fingertips the moment my fingers touched it, shooting shards of energy through me nearly making me stumble.
Wolves running in through the forest, shedding an inner light from its eyes, a woman stood on the edge of a cliff, arms raised to heaven, and a pack gathered around a fire, howling as a song, that hasn’t been sung and heard in the ages.
And then, a voice. “You are the Guardian.”
They weren’t spoken aloud, but I heard them, clear as day, deep inside me.
My heart pounded, and I stumbled back.
Its meaning was there, though it was gone, as heavy and unshakeable as a shadow. The Guardian. The words were foreign and familiar all at once, like a melody I had forgotten but had always been a part of me.
My hands dug into the earth, and I sank to my knees. My mind filled with memories that weren’t my own, of women before me whose faces are blurred, but whose strength was undeniable.
Were they guardians, protectors of the pack?
And now it was my turn…
I don’t know how long I sat in the clearing, the weight of the realisation crushing me.
For years, I ran from my past and put together a new life for me and my daughters. I was being pulled back into a world I didn’t understand, into a role I didn’t choose.
This wasn’t just some part of who I was that I’d forgotten. It was who I am.
When I got home it was breaking dawn, I stepped inside the house, which was still and quiet. I crept to the girls’ room and paused in the doorway to watch them sleep. They were my everything, my reason for everything.
I was supposed to protect more than just them now.
I sat by the window in the living room, looking out at the forest. The pull had faded to a steady, lower hum, but I could still feel it: the reminder of a responsibility acquired, I didn’t know what it meant to be the Guardian, not really. But I knew one thing for certain: the pack depended on me.
I would do whatever it takes for them.
- Writer
