Zara's POV
The moment my fingers touched the Vessel, the air vanished..Not like breath-holding. Not like suffocating. Just gone. Time collapsed inward. Space folded. My heartbeat stopped cold, and for a moment, I wasn't standing. I wasn't falling. I wasn't me.
I was every version of me.
A woman's hands cradling me, crying into my newborn hair. "You'll be safe," she whispered. "You'll live, even if I don't." Her blood was on my blanket. My mother. My real mother.
Not those who raised me in that suffocating town. Not those cold-eyed werewolves who flinched when I shifted. This woman smelled of rain and moonlight and ash. She pressed her forehead to mine, and in her voice, I heard power. I mean a voice exactly like mine.
I stood tall, taller than I am now, older too. A battle
