The bite between us

The dream

chapter 23

Zainab pov

I fall asleep thinking I won’t dream.

That’s the lie my mind tells me to feel normal.

The moment sleep takes me, the world changes.

I’m standing in a wide open place—no walls, no city, no sky the way I know it. The ground beneath my feet glows faintly, like embers buried under ash. Every step I take sends ripples outward, as if the land itself is listening.

I’m not afraid.

That’s the strangest part.

“You’re late,” a voice says—not aloud, but inside me.

I turn.

A woman stands a few steps away. She looks familiar in the way ancestors do in old photographs—similar eyes, similar posture—but older than time should allow. Her hair is braided with symbols I don’t recognize, her gaze steady and knowing.

“Where am I?” I ask.

“Where you’ve always been,” she replies. “You just forgot.”

The air shivers.

Images rise around us like reflections in water: moons layered over each other, wolves bowing their heads—not in submission, but in acknowledgment. Bloodlines weaving together like threads pulled tight by unseen hands.

I clutch my chest.

Something inside me responds—warm, awake, remembering.

“I’m just human,” I say, the words feeling thin even as I speak them.

The woman smiles gently. “That is the lie they needed you to believe.”

The ground beneath my feet pulses, light climbing my legs like a heartbeat.

I see myself—not as I am, but as something else.

Not powerful in the way Rowan is. Not dominant.

Foundational.

The kind of presence that steadies storms instead of creating them.

“You don’t command,” the woman says, stepping closer. “You align. You don’t rule. You bind.”

I shake my head. “That’s not possible. I don’t even know how I’m doing any of this.”

“Awakening isn’t about knowledge,” she answers. “It’s about acceptance.”

The air shifts again, and suddenly I feel him.

Not his body.

His weight.

His restraint.

His fear of becoming something he can’t take back.

Rowan.

My breath catches. “I don’t want to control him.”

The woman’s expression softens. “Good. Then you won’t.”

She reaches out, pressing two fingers to my forehead.

Light floods my vision—not blinding, but clarifying. I feel roots inside me, deep and old, stretching into places I didn’t know existed.

“You are not his weakness,” she whispers. “You are his balance.”

The world begins to dissolve.

“Wait,” I say urgently. “Who are you?”

Her voice echoes as everything fades.

“I am what remains when power chooses mercy.”

I wake with a sharp inhale, sitting upright in bed.

My room is quiet. Ordinary.

But my chest glows faintly beneath my skin—warm, steady.

Not burning.

Not pulling.

Grounded.

I press my palm there, heart racing.

I don’t know exactly what I am yet.

But I know this now, with absolute certainty:

I am not accidental.

And whatever is coming—

I was always meant to wake before it ar