2: SECOND DAWN
1603 Words
AMY'S POV
Holy s**t, I'm alive.
That was what I experienced the first time I woke up crying out, my hand flying up to my throat as if I still sensed that blade of silver cutting through my flesh. Yet there was nothing. No cut, no blood, no burning agony. Only me, panting for air in what seemed to be my room when I was a kid.
My bedroom. The sophisticated one I hadn't lived in as a kid.
I moved up so suddenly the room spun around me, and I was holding on to the edges of my bed to prevent me from collapsing. This wasn't happening. The blue walls with the naughty boy band posters I never let Sarah touch. The white dresser I had painted myself with awful swirly designs when I was sixteen and believed I was an artist. The awful fairy lights Sarah had helped me string up around my window.
It was all exactly as I had left it when Damian and I moved in together.
My fingers shook so violently that I could barely touch my phone, but the date on the display confirmed to me something my mind was adamant on not believing. Six(6) years earlier. Six(6) full years before that horror in the forest.
"This is not real," I said to my vacant room. "This isn't real."
But it felt true. The sun in the hospital shone down on my body, and I inhaled my mom's coffee smell carried up the stairs from downstairs. Outside, I heard pack members starting their routines – children laughing as they hightailed it off to school, adults yelling back and forth.
Nausea hit me like a freight train.
I was vomiting up all of the food that I hadn't even realized I'd eaten. I huddled there, on the tile floor of my bathroom, wiping at my mouth with a shaking hand, when the horrid realization occurred to me.
The morning sickness. The exhaustion. The sore and sensitive n*****s.
I was pregnant.
"No, no, no," I breathed, snapping my palms down over my eyes so hard that stars exploded behind them. "Please, not again."
I still despite myself, I knew. If I really was in the past, if this was really happening somehow, then I was pregnant with the same child I'd died having. Damian's child.
The boy he would never have been able to see because he was going to kill me first so that I would never be able to inform him.
A soft knock at my door stopped me. "Amy? Are you okay? You missed training this morning, and Mom is getting worried."
Sarah's voice.
I started to sob then, a great shock that shook my whole body, Sarah lived. My friend, my sister in every way but blood, lived and breathed and worried that I'd missed training.
In my reality, she'd died two years ago. Died at the hands of rogues for the reason that I'd been too weak, too stupid, too slow to defend her.
"I'm fine," I yelled, and god, how childlike my voice sounded. So pure. Like I still believed the pack was a place where people did not hurt those they loved.
"Bullshit. I'm going in." Sarah yelled.
Before I could object, a knock at the door and Sarah standing in front of me, blonde curls bobbing and bright-eyed worry. She was just as I remembered her as a twenty-two-year-old – beautiful and fierce and completely unaware that she had less than four years to live.
"Jesus, Amy, you're awful." She climbed on my bed and ordered for me to get in next to her. "Something's wrong. And for goodness' sake don't lie to me and say 'nothing' because I can smell tension radiating off of you from halfway across the room."
I staggered out of the bathroom and collapsed next to her, still reeling from everything that was going on. "I had a nightmare. A really, really bad one."
"Gotta have been something of a dream. You're shaking like a leaf." She wrapped me in a hug and I almost cried all over again. God, I'd missed this. Missed her. "Want to talk about it?"
How was I supposed to tell her that I'd lived six more years of the living hell? That I'd witnessed her death, witnessed our pack fall apart, witnessed the man that I loved become a monster who'd kill me before he'd even listen to me?
"It felt so real," I said instead, my voice almost a whisper. "Like it wasn't a dream at all."
Sarah rubbed my back the way she used to when I was a kid as I woke up from nightmares. "Dreams are really real sometimes. Especially when you're worried about something."
Stressed. That was one way to describe it.
"Sarah," I said cautiously, "do you know anything about the Blackfang Pack?"
The change was immediate. Her hand hesitated against my back, and when I looked up at her, her look of worry had turned into suspicion.
"Why are you asking about them?"
"I just. I overheard that they're coming soon."
"Next week." She sounded even calmer, all the sugary sweetness removed from her voice. "Alpha Blackfang is stopping by to speak to your father regarding some border agreement." She stepped back to actually examine me. "Amy, for the love of everything holy, tell me you're not getting any stupid notions about him."
If only she did know. "What stupid notions?"
"Those kinds of people who get young she-wolves murdered." Her grip on my shoulders was strong, almost painful. "I've heard things about him, Amy. Horrible things. He is not a boy hero from a novel you read. He is not to be trusted."
If I were in my previous life, I would have rolled my eyes and told her she was being dramatic. I would have informed her that she was jealous, that she could not stand the fact that I had found my soulmate and left her there.
Since I now knew, she had been in the right all along.
"Things like what?" I asked.
Sarah hesitated, as if she wasn't certain that she was prepared to tell me. "There are rumors that he's looking for a mate, but not in the appropriate manner. Apparently, he's looking for an alliance with a strong pack and that he wouldn't care who he would destroy in the process."
"He'd just use someone?"
"If it served his agenda, yes. I think he would." She drew my hands closer to her. "I want you to promise me you will stay away from him when he gets here. I know how you go off in circles defense of Alphas – all dreamy-eyed and romantic. But this man is not Prince Charming, okay?"
I almost laughed at the sarcasm. Prince Charming. That is what I'd presumed Damian to be, the first time I'd laid eyes on him. Tall, dark, good-looking, in control. All a she-wolf could ask for in a mate.
It had taken three years to discover that Prince Charming was actually the villain in the fairy tale.
"I promise," I told her, and I meant it. "No love eyes, no romance, no stupidity."
She studied me up and down for a moment, then nodded. "Good. Because I have a bad feeling about this visit, and I don't want you in the middle of whatever political games these Alphas are brewing."
I closed my door on her and sat on my bed, attempting to get the last few minutes in perspective. If this was actually happening – if I actually was in the past – then I could do something about all of this. Save Sarah. Get my baby safe. Prevent Damian from getting another shot at killing me.
But before all of that, I needed to get organized on how to make it through the week.
I strolled over to my mirror and examined myself. I was so young. So innocent-looking. My face was smoother, no creased with pain and betrayal like it had done such an outstanding job of doing in my previous life. My eyes were bright and trusting, without the suspicion that had become second nature since all those years of having a watchful eye behind me.
This little girl in the mirror had no idea what awaited her. Had no idea that the man she would be so hopelessly in love with would turn out to be the very same one who would destroy her.
Now I did. And I was going to make that knowledge mine.
I pulled out a notebook and started scribbling down lists. Everything I could remember about Damian's pack, his friends, his enemies. Every single one of our talks about what he needed, what he wanted, what he was afraid of. Everything I knew about Selena – her past, her business partners, how she'd played the game to get what she wanted.
Knowledge was power, and I'd had six years' worth of it.
When I was done, I had three pages of scribbled notes and a plan starting to form in my head. It wasn't good – too many variables, too many things that could go wrong. But it was a start.
I placed my hand on my stomach, above the tiny life growing within me. "I'm going to protect you this time," I whispered. "I promise. No matter what it takes, I am not going to let him hurt us again."
Seven days. That's how long I had until I was prepared for the fight of my life.
I would not lose this time.
- Writer
