Chapter 145

AURORA

I fought him, my mind pulling back from everything this creature was, everything it wanted from me. But he leaned over me, grinned, and inhaled. Black smoke rose from my chest and curled into a ball of black obsidian that hung between us, like a dark mirror image of the pearl pendant that had channeled my power as a healer.

I felt my heart start to turn cold as, one by one, my memories of the good things in my life began to wink out like dying stars. Evander’s easy smile. Trajan’s steadying voice. Dane kissing me. Dane… My children laughing as I read them a story.

It was all slipping away. “No!” I cried. I tried to fight him, to hold on, but it was like water slipping through my fingers. My heart screamed for what I was losing and started to freeze.

Chapter 145

At the same time, memories of my life as a young woman in Broken Forest were revealed. The Reeds twisting my mind as a little girl, corrupting me, forcing me to believe that the only way I could be worthy and loved was to embrace loss, pain, and the dark. That's what the Nameless wanted from me. To be his beacon of pain. To spread it across the world.

I had to fight. Desperately, I flung my mind and my heart out, searching for an anchor. Something to hold just a small part of me. There was no moon tonight, only darkness outside the windows. And yet… I suddenly felt the smallest touch of… something… and a voice whispered, Even in the darkest times, I am here.

I grasped that power. It was all I needed. Dane…!

DANE

I ran in my big, dark gray wolf body at the head of my newly enlarged pack back to the pack house. The nighttime forest whipped by as we surged downhill through trees and undergrowth. Piper needed me. Holden was there. I’d lost Aurora already; I couldn’t lose my sister, too. I had to get to her in time. I had to… Dane…!

My paw caught on a root at the edge of an outcropping. I stumbled and my head slammed into a stone. Darkness washed…

AURORA

I blinked, and suddenly I wasn’t in the terrible, cold palace with the Nameless. I was on a hill, overlooking a wide lake in the middle of thick woods. The lake and sky were blue with the coming evening. The trees were golden with autumn leaves.

“Aurora?” I spun. It was Dane. He ran down the hill toward me and caught me in his arms. I pressed my face against his chest. I couldn’t believe it, but he looked and felt and smelled so real, so good. Like himself. “Dane… you’re alive?”

His face was grim, but he lifted the pearl pendant I had dropped near his hand. “Thanks to you. Where are we?”

“I don’t know, I—” My gaze caught on the sky just above the trees, where a round, white moon hung. It was much larger than it was supposed to be.

Chapter 145

But that didn’t make any sense. It was the new moon right now. The sky was supposed to be completely dark.

I cannot give you much, a feminine voice whispered. I can’t stop what’s happening to you—only you can. But I can give you one moment to cling to. One moment of hope. One stolen second of time between time. Don’t waste it. The years ahead will be dark…

The voice faded. I met Dane’s dark eyes. “That was the goddess.”

“What did she mean, ‘years’?” he growled. He still held me in his arms, and they tightened around me. “We’ve been through so fucking much. We’re the goddess’s chosen, aren’t we? We tried to do what she wanted and free the relic but found shadows instead. Why should we have to deal with more?”

Another person might not have heard the anguish hidden in the powerful Alpha’s voice, but I did. I knew him so well.

I raised my hand to his cheek. “We’re the goddess’s chosen,” I said in a heavy voice, though I managed to hold back my tears. “We’re needed. By her. Maybe by the whole world.”

Dane’s eyes were shadowed by a fall of his dark hair as he cupped my face and tilted it back so he could brush his lips over mine. “I don’t give a damn about the world, Aurora. All I care about is you and our family. I would burn the world, myself, if it meant I could have you.”

My breath caught. “You can’t say things like that. I’m not worth it.”

His fingers tightened, gently digging into my chin. “To me, you are. To me, you’re everything.”

“What will happen to our children if the world burns? I want you,” tears choked my voice, and it took everything in me to push them back down. “…but we have to think about them. Their future.”

I swallowed. “The moon goddess had said that we were in a moment of time between time. Already, I can feel it slipping away from us.” I hesitated, then said, “My body is somewhere, tied to a throne with cords of silver, while the dark creature that opposed the goddess is drawing out all of my memories one by one.”

“No,” Dane growled. The response was a knee-jerk reaction, as if he could command me to remain myself.

“There’s nothing we can do,” I whispered, “We don’t have much time…”

Dane’s eyes seared into mine. “What do you need me to do?”