Page 67 of Nightmare Island

And now I’m trapped in my own body, watching as my dead husband takes control.

Shit!

I feel my lips curl into a smile and see my hand reach out as if practicing how to use it again.

Watch closely, Omega,Jarl purrs in our shared mind.I’m going to make you hurt him in ways you never imagined. And the best part? He’ll think it’s you doing it.

I scream, but the sound stays trapped in the darkness with me. On the outside, my body just smiles wider.

“Ghost,” my external voice says, but it’s all wrong—Jarl’s inflections, Jarl’s cruel amusement. “I feel so much better now.”

I can’t even scream to warn Ghost.

I’m locked in the dark, and Jarl is in charge.

Chapter

Seventeen

GHOST

Just a little longer. Even as Hel sinks to her knees in the Gravewater pool, the first convulsion rocks through her body. When she cries out my name, it takes everything I have not to lunge forward. Every instinct I possess—wolf, warrior, mate—screams at me to grab her, to pull her to safety. But I can’t. Not if we want this to work.

The spirits are crawling up her legs now, tendrils wrapping around her thighs like pale smoke, dragging her deeper. She’s panicking—I can smell it rolling off her in waves.

This has to work.

That fucker inside her needs to come out, and the spirits, they’re trying to help. They have to be.

“Ghost,” she calls me again.

But something’s off. Her voice isn’t quite hers. My blood turns to ice, every hair on my body standing on end. This is wrong. So fucking wrong.

“I feel so much better now,” she continues, and something inside me shatters. That voice coming from her lips—it’s like watching someone puppeteer her body, and the wrongness of it triggers something primal in me.

Pure panic hits me like a sledgehammer to the chest, and suddenly, I’m moving without conscious thought. My hand snaps out to grab the back of her neck while the other fists in her shirt. I yank her out of the water like she weighs nothing. The fear coursing through me makes my movements savage, desperate—I know I’m being too rough, but I can’t stop myself. Not when every second she’s in that water feels like another second I might lose her.

She stumbles as I drag her onto the bank, coughing up water that looks too dark, too thick, to be natural. But I can’t give her a moment to recover. My fingers find her chin, probably leaving bruises as I force her face up to mine. Her skin is ice cold, and fuck if that doesn’t send another spike of fear through me.

“Sweetheart, tell me he’s gone!” The words come out more like a growl than actual speech.

“Ghost, it’s me.” The words that escape her are pure Hel—all sass stripped away by fear, leaving behind something raw and vulnerable that makes my chest ache. “But… but he took me over completely. I can’t go in the water. It gives him strength over me.”

My chest feels as though it’s being ripped apart as I watch her struggle. She’s trembling in my arms, soaked to the bone, and there’s a war being waged behind her eyes. And I’m standing here fucking useless.

The rain beats down on us as I grasp her close, feeling her shiver against me. Memories I’d rather forget claw their way to the surface, triggered by her pain. Each tremor that runs through her body is like a knife in my gut.

But I know spirits. An idea forms—desperate, probably stupid, but when has that ever stopped me? In this new world, sometimes the worst plans are the only ones we’ve got.

I take her hand, skin cold against mine. “Come to the water.”

She jerks back as if I’ve burned her, eyes wide with terror. “No! Are you fucking insane?”

There’s an edge of hysteria in her response that cuts me to the bone.

“Because I’ve got to tell you,” she begins. “Swimming with spirits once today was enough for my quota. Actually, it’s enough for my lifetime. Maybe even in my next lifetime.”

“Do you trust me, Hel?” The words come out rougher than intended as I take a step into the water. The cold bites at my ankles, then my knees, and the spirits are already reaching for me.

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