My bloodshot eyes finally yielded to the desperate need for sleep.
But this was no sleep. It was being imprisoned within a frozen pocket of time. Everything was vivid, —too real to be a dream, too solid to be a mere nightmare.
The ground beneath my feet reeked of frozen blood and decaying leaves. As I walked, I heard a wail rising from amidst the snow. No, it wasn't the wind. Hundreds of wolf bodies, huddled together and frozen stiff, wrapped in white shrouds, covered the forest floor.
These bodies, once powerful and proud, now lay like cold statues in the lap of an eternal slumber. Their white fur was adorned not with the innocence of snow, but with the pallor of death. Each was a covenant, an extinguished fire, a broken vow.
And there, in the center of this silent graveyard, I stood—not in my thin silk robe, but utterly naked. My porcelain skin was bruised purple by the frost of this eternal winter, illuminated by the faint, silvery glow of my hybrid awakening.
I was trembling, not just from the cold, but from the sheer terror of the silence and the crushing vulnerability of my own nakedness.
At the end of the path, in the heart of the forest, stood a massive throne. It wasn't woven from tree roots, but from bones and frozen blood, sealed with the mark of darkness.
And on that throne sat Varg. His raven-black hair cast shadows across his face.
My husband. My master. My tyrant.
His upper body was bare; the wounds on his chest were smoldering even in my dream, flowing like dark rivers across his bronzed skin. His eyes, those burning embers, were the only source of light in this nightmare.
His gaze was like a mountain collapsing upon me—devoid of desire, devoid of pity. There was only the icy rigidity of a thousand-year law and absolute authority.
He was the sole ruler of this frozen kingdom. The shrouded, frozen wolves around him were the silent witnesses to his savage tyranny. They had either bowed to his will or paid the price for their disloyalty in this eternal winter.
Varg reached out. His hand—rough, calloused, and massive—felt like a glowing coal in the chill of the dream. He pulled me from among the frozen wolves, lifting me from the white shrouds.
I found myself in his lap, pressed against his bare, wounded chest. When my naked skin met his bloody, warm flesh, my mind clouded with his familiar, feral scent. In the shadow of that unrefined giant, I felt smaller and more forsaken than ever.
I was in the lap of a tyrant. I was begging for the mercy of a monster, yet I was involuntarily claiming him as mine.
"Do you see, Luna?" Varg growled, his voice a landslide drowning out the forest's hum.
I felt the hardness of his masculinity against my hips—the rawest, most dangerous truth of this dream.
"This is your place. This darkness, these frozen bodies, and my lap. You are but a slave glowing in the middle of this wild world, tossed by the wind. And I am your master."
His coarse fingers traveled over my bare shoulder, tracing my collarbone. His touch hurt, yet it fueled the fire within me. In that moment, I saw that behind Varg's impassable walls was a monster struggling with his own wounds—but this proximity was no cure; it was a poison.
"Sleep, Vespera..." he said, his voice echoing with the coldness of a tombstone. "Your nightmare is only beginning."
Sobs caught in my throat; the tears falling from my eyes turned to ice before they hit the snow. And there I was, imprisoned by Varg's smoldering eyes, left in the embrace of an eternal winter.
As the wreckage of the dream collapsed onto my soul, I was startled by a sharp sound.
Tap.
For a second, I thought it was the final echo of the mirrors shattering in my dream. But the sound repeated. Sharper, more insistent.
Tap. Tap.
I bolted upright, gasping. The sweat on my body turned to ice the moment it touched the freezing air of the house. The ointment Varg had applied had dried across my skin like armor; with every movement, my skin tightened, reminding me of the sting of his humiliating "problematic child" treatment.
I stepped out of bed, my bare feet pressing against the ice-cold stone floor. I walked toward the window, toward the white absolutism of Alberta. Behind the glass, there was a savage silence where the moonlight painted the snow blue. But down below, in the shadow of the castle, stood a dark figure.
I leaned in and saw the small stone hitting the window ledge. My heart began to hammer against my ribs as if trying to tear its way out. This wasn't a sound belonging to Varg's coarse world. This was the click of a secret language, a forbidden escape.
"Who's there?" I whispered, my breath creating a small cloud of mist on the glass.
The shadow below moved. The moonlight caught a glint beneath the hood. My eyes presented every minute detail in the darkness to me like a film strip.
In that moment, I understood: Varg might have locked me in this room with the ghosts of an unnamed woman and his own fears, but outside, there were those ready to follow this "freakish" light.
I cracked the window open slightly. The freezing wind rushed in, slapping my wet hair against my face.
"Vespera..."
The whisper came from below. The voice wasn't as coarse as a wolf's growl; it was as smooth and metallic as a blade scraping against a whetstone.
Kael? It couldn't be Kael.
He couldn't enter this den, surrounded by so many wolves.
Varg had locked the door on me, saying he wouldn't sleep in the bed of anyone who wasn't his Luna. Varg wouldn't call out like this either; he would break down doors, walk right in—he wouldn't throw stones at a window.
I reached for the stone. I put my hand out, feeling the icy wind between my fingers.
"I'm here." I said into the dark. "And no lock will be enough to keep me in this room anymore."
Varg could continue to mourn with the ghosts whose names he longed for. For me, the dreams were over; the wildest, and most bloodiest part of reality had begun.
The persistent tapping on the glass carved through Alberta's freezing silence like a knife while my heart beat against my chest. The silvery tension left on my skin by Varg's ice-cold ointment shivered as the wind seeped through the cracked window.
I grabbed the thin, silky rope and surrendered myself to the embrace of the darkness. When my feet touched the snow without a sound, the shadow took a step toward me. The moment I opened my lips to ask who they were, a warm, scary hand clamped over my mouth.
As my back pressed against the cold wall of the house, the hooded stranger leaned toward my face. Only a single whisper echoed, as sharp as a command and as deep as a secret.
"Shhh..."