Shifting Destiny

Chapter Four

The fire doesn’t stop.

It consumes me from the inside out, licking up my veins like flames racing through dry brush. My skin is blistering, splitting apart from the sheer heat of it, though I know there are no visible burns. It’s deeper than that, something twisting, reshaping me from within. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. My lungs feel too tight, too small for the air I’m desperately sucking in.

Every inch of me burns, my muscles locked in a vice of unbearable agony. It’s as if my blood has turned to liquid fire, pulsing with an intensity I can’t contain. My bones feel like they are cracking, shifting, reforming into something unnatural. Something foreign.

I want to scream, but my throat is too raw, my voice stolen by the inferno inside me. My body shakes violently against the cold sheets beneath me, drenched in sweat. I twist, writhe, anything to escape the fire, but it follows me, clings to me, devours me whole.

There are voices—distant and fading, as if I’m slipping beneath the surface of something dark and endless. They come in broken pieces, words I can barely catch before they vanish into the pain.

“She’s still alive?”

“Impossible.”

“The wolf…”

The wolf.

My mind latches onto the word, desperate for something to focus on besides the torment swallowing me whole. I remember golden eyes piercing through the dark. The low, guttural growl that rumbled in my ears. The glint of teeth before they tore into me. The hot rush of blood down my skin, the way my heart slammed against my ribs in terror.

The bite.

A fresh wave of agony crashes over me, and I arch off the bed, my body seizing as the fire spreads deeper. My spine locks, then convulses violently. Someone is shouting, the sound muffled, like I’m hearing them from underwater.

“Hold her down.”

Hands press against my burning skin, trying to restrain me, but their touch sends shockwaves of pain through my nerves. I thrash, a strangled sound ripping from my throat—a sound that isn’t human.

“She’s shifting.”

The words don’t make sense. My mind is too fogged, drowning in fire and fear. I don’t know what they mean, only that I want it to stop. That I want to breathe. That I want to wake up from this nightmare. But my body doesn’t listen.

I can feel something pulling at me, stretching, demanding that I break apart. My bones are snapping, shifting, elongating. My skin tingles, prickling like a thousand needles stabbing into my flesh all at once. My heartbeat pounds erratically, my pulse surging with something wild, something that doesn’t belong to me.

Someone whispers my name, soft and urgent. But I can’t respond. The pain has taken everything from me—my thoughts, my voice, my sense of self.

Then I see them.

Golden eyes watching from the shadows, unwavering and intense. The wolf.

I hear more murmurs—some filled with worry, others with certainty. The heat pulses again, rolling over me in waves, and I feel something shift inside me, deeper than my bones, deeper than my soul.

“She has to make it through.”

“If she doesn’t stop fighting it, she might not.”

What am I fighting? What is happening to me?

I feel my limbs seizing again, the convulsions stronger. My fingers twitch, and for a second, I swear my nails feel sharper, longer. My breath comes in ragged gasps, my entire body trembling, but I can’t move.

The fire inside me rages higher, and suddenly, there is nothing but pain, nothing but the unrelenting force tearing me apart.

And then, everything shatters.

Pain explodes in a final, unbearable wave, and my world goes dark.

But before the darkness swallows me whole, I swear I hear a voice—low, soothing, and not entirely human.

“Hold on, Feyre.”