Page 39 of Logan

She heard the words, and part of her wanted to slap his chest and tell him he was nuts. But another part dreamed of little dragons flying in the skies. One of them was purple with her eyes, and she sighed before the night took her.

CHAPTER 17

Emily awoke with a start, the echoes of a distant roar reverberating through her consciousness like a thunderclap. Before she could fully grasp the situation, Logan’s voice yanked her from the embrace of sleep, before he dragged her unceremoniously from the bed. She coughed, realizing the air was thick with the acrid scent of smoke.

As she recovered from the vestiges of sleep, chaos unfolded before her. Flames burst through the window with an angry ferocity, shattering the fragile barrier of glass and igniting the tartan curtains in a blaze of fiery hues. Panic surged within her as she stumbled toward the side of the room, her movements clumsy and disjointed as she fled the rising heat.

Logan shielded her, keeping his body between them and the door as he planned their escape. With a determined resolve, he guided her toward the safety of the hallway, his broad frame forming a formidable shield against the encroaching flames.

Just as she thought they would make it to freedom, Lothos burst into the room. His clothing was charred, and his eyes were red with anger.

“Give me the pearl,” he demanded.

Logan stood between Emily and his twin. “We do not have it. You have that ability to sense our mother’s pearl. You kept it locked in that safe, so I couldn’t.”

Lothos sneered at his brother. “That is true, but we have interrogated the humans, and they believed Emily was to steal it. Her uncle did not betray me. He has remarkable ethics for a criminal.” He glanced at Emily. “Well, in most cases.”

“You know the pearl isn’t here. Why have you come? Your dark army is no match for the dragons of color. Many will fall by my brothers’ hands.”

“Your brothers. What a farce.”

Logan huffed. “You gave up the right to call me family when you turned.”

Lothos smiled, but there was no humor to it. “I guess I will have to take your mate.”

Emily’s heart pounded in her chest as the scene unfolded before her in a tableau of primal fury and familial strife. Logan lunged toward his twin with a ferocity that mirrored the roaring flames consuming the once-tranquil cabin. The clash that ensued was a symphony of growls and snarls, a visceral dance of predators locked in a battle for her life.

As Logan and his twin grappled with each other, their forms blurred in the swirling smoke and flickering firelight, Emily found herself recoiling instinctively to avoid their destructive wake. The ceiling above billowed with rolling smoke, a dark harbinger of impending doom, while fiery ash rained down like ominous confetti from the heavens.

With each passing moment, the flames licked greedily at the walls, devouring the cabin with an insatiable hunger. While Logan was impervious to fire, she had no idea if druids were. Her instinct to survive kicked in, and she darted toward the door.

Emily heard the clock chime as she was about to exit the bedroom.

But she stumbled, as something deep within her stirred. It was a primal force long kept dormant, now awakening with a voracious hunger. It was as though a part of her had been slumbering, lulled into a false sense of tranquility, only to be abruptly jolted into awareness by the chime of the clock.

With each faltering step, she felt the duality within her grow more pronounced, like two halves of a fractured whole yearning to merge into a singular entity. Her mind, once clouded by confusion, now sharpened with a clarity that bordered on the surreal, as if veils of illusion were being stripped away to reveal a truth long concealed.

Before she had awoken to the nightmare engulfing her cabin, Emily had been ensnared in dreams of two wolves, guardians of a sacred temple shrouded in mystery and ancient lore. Their presence lingered in her consciousness like ethereal phantoms, their vivid forms etched into the very fabric of her being.

Now, as she crawled from the room, her movements sluggish yet determined, Emily found herself grappling with the enigma of her newfound awakening. What was happening to her? What latent power lay dormant within her soul, yearning to break free from its shackles?

Agony seized Emily with a merciless grip, starting as a dull ache in her jaw before blossoming into a relentless onslaught that coursed through every fiber of her body. With each passing moment, the pain intensified, a malevolent force that refused to be ignored, spreading like wildfire until it engulfed her in its fiery embrace.

Barely able to muster the strength to crawl, Emily’s movements were slow and labored, her body betraying her with every agonizing inch of progress. The very bones within her seemed to protest, emitting a sickening crack as her shoulder bore the brunt of her weight, eliciting a primal scream of anguish that pierced the air like a banshee’s wail.

As if in mockery of her suffering, fate intervened with cruel indifference, sending her tumbling down the stairs she had hoped to navigate. The descent was brutal, each impact reverberating through her already tortured form until she landed with a resounding thud on the unforgiving floor below.

But even as her body lay broken and battered, Emily’s torment was just beginning. With a sickening sense of inevitability, she felt her jaw start to elongate, contorting into a grotesque semblance of its former self.

As Emily’s transformation surged forth with a primal force, her human form gave way to the embodiment of the wild, her skin erupting in a symphony of fur and sinew that overtook her body. Once on all fours, her muscles thickened, and her eyesight became more distinct. With a guttural growl that reverberated through the air like a primal declaration of dominance, she tore at the fabric of her shirt, rending it asunder with a ferocity born of instinct.

Amidst the chaos of her metamorphosis, Emily found herself teetering on unsteady paws, her newly-formed limbs trembling with the weight of her new form. But even as fear threatened to overwhelm her, determination ignited in her core, propelling her forward with a relentless resolve.

With each tentative step, Emily navigated the unfamiliar terrain of her lupine body, her movements at first clumsy and disjointed, like a newborn struggling to find its footing. But with each passing moment, she felt the raw power of her instincts guiding her, a primal rhythm that pulsed through her veins like a heartbeat from the forest.

And then, as if by instinct, Emily found her stride, her movements fluid and purposeful as she bolted through the open door with a newfound sense of freedom. In that moment, she was no longer Emily, but something more, a creature of the night bound by neither chains nor constraints.

With the wind at her back and the moonlight guiding her path, Emily raced into the night, her lupine form a blur of motion against the backdrop of the wilderness. And as the echoes of her transformation and the roars from the fighting dragons faded into the distance, she knew that she had embraced her true nature, a creature of instinct and intuition, forever bound to the call of the wild.

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