Page 68 of She is the Darke

Move.

Stacia pushed herself upward and bolted for the road. One glance back, and she could see the back end of her car wrapped around a tree. Eyes glowed in the dark. There was a snarling fight somewhere close.

“Alex?” she called. She didn’t recognize her voice. It was deeper. Huskier.

She didn’t feel like herself.

Her knuckles were bleeding.

A flash of memory consumed her, and she pitched forward on her hands and knees on the asphalt as she saw a world that didn’t exist anymore.

The vision was shaky. Sepia toned. It blurred in and out of focus like an old movie. She was standing at an altar, smiling up at Callum. He was dressed in an old-timey suit, and she was dressed in a frilly cream dress that was fitted on the top and full at the skirts. No, that wasn’t her.

The woman laughed at something Callum said and ducked her gaze to the side, and Stacia could see it. She had soft brown eyes.

A wolf howl sounded again. “Alex,” she pleaded as she looked to the woman in the light blue skirts standing next to Iris, holding a bouquet of white roses. Her maid of honor? Alex couldn’t hear her. The vision blurred out of focus and went completely dark, and then flashes of something horrible overtook her. Stacia…Iris…Stacia…Iris…she pitched forward and slammed onto the asphalt, dragging in shallow breaths to lungs that were frozen in her chest. Iris was in a dark room. Herbs were hung on the ceiling rafters, and she was wearing the wedding dress, only it was old, dirty, tattered, ripped to shreds at the skirts. Her shins were scratched and bleeding, and Iris was tied to a wall. Her head hung limply. A shadow moved in front of her, blocking Stacia’s view. A woman in a hooded cloak was chanting something in a language she didn’t understand.

A wolf howled outside, and the woman in the cloak looked at the door. Her eyes were glowing like the embers of a fire. Iris lifted her head weakly and glared at the creature. “He’s going to kill you.”

The woman laughed a nails-on-chalkboard sound and knelt in front of Iris. She licked a stream of blood off of Iris’s wrist. “I already have what I want.”

“What do you want?” Iris whispered.

“The power that comes from a love bond, and the power that comes from a pack bond. I’ve used it to create a curse, so you see, so long as the curse lasts, I’ll never really die.”

Iris huffed a weak breath and her eyes rolled back and forth as she struggled to focus on the woman…the witch…

“You see, Iris…Cal was never yours. He was always mine.”

Iris’s body went limp, and a keening sound shattered her ears. Stacia clapped her hands over her ears to save them, but she wasn’t in the cabin anymore. She was on the road, tears burning her cheeks like snaking dynamite fuses, fingers stretching toward the painted white line. The siren busting her eardrums was her own screaming.

Around her was chaos. Wolves were latched onto each other, snarling, scratching, blurring in a violence she’d never witnessed before. Her car had caught on fire and was illuminating the battle, flames flickering a gold hue onto everything.

There was a wolf on the edge of the fight, watching her. Its fur was black and the eyes glowed like embers. Its face flashed from wolf, to woman, to wolf, to woman, and she knew those eyes.

Those eyes belonged on the face of evil.

She was here.Matilda. The name whispered from inside of her in that husky voice of the woman who looked like her. The woman who had died for love to feed evil.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair.

A massive black wolf slammed another into the trees and stood in front of Stacia protectively. His coat shone like dark silk in the glow of the firelight.

The flames flickered shadows across the massive bodies of the wolves. The one protecting her glanced back, and she recognized him. Those bright blue eyes. Callum. Her Callum. He didn’t belong to Matilda. Never had.

Rage simmered through her at what she’d seen. At what she now knew. At what she’d seen of Iris’s last moments. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.

Gritting her teeth, Stacia stood. Her blood painted the pavement, but she still didn’t feel a thing.

You have to burn her. Protect him, and burn her.

Something was wrong with her arm. It was gashed open and streams of red fell from her fingertips, but something was humming through her with such power, she felt bloated with it.Iris?

I’m here.

A snarl rippled through her throat, and she should’ve been scared. She wasn’t the only one in this body anymore. She should’ve been scared, but she only felt rage.

Callum had been stolen from. Iris had been stolen from. Alex had lost her friend and had to watch her brother suffer without the one he loved…

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