I returned to consciousness slowly, like swimming up from the bottom of a very deep lake. Awareness came in fragments—the antiseptic smell of the medical building, the soft beep of monitoring equipment, hushed voices nearby. My body felt impossibly heavy, as if gravity had doubled while I slept.
As reality solidified around me, another world began to fade—the false Silver Fang I'd inhabited while unconscious. Images flickered through my mind like photographs scattered by wind: my unmarked face in a gilded mirror, Victoria's calculated warmth, Sophia with my birthmark covering half her face, Damien's possessive touch, the perfect bedroom that had never been mine.
The ceremony. The choice. The rejection of that false paradise.
When I finally managed to open my eyes, the first thing I saw
