Page 111 of The Alpha Dire Wolf
Boom-boom.
The drums sounded in the dark again. I stood on the precipice, my toes sinking into the cold soft muddy bank of the river. One more step and I would enter the waters.
Darkness reigned supreme, everywhere except in a perfect circle around me. Showing me the river ahead and … I frowned. The river behind? I turned on my circle, revealing it to be nothing more than stone in the center of the thrashing frothy rapids. The only smooth spot to stand amid sharp, shattered rock interrupting the flow of water.
Where was I?
Boom-boom.
The drums drew nearer. Something was coming. Was it the wolf? I searched the dark for its eyes, the yellow and blue combo, but they were gone.
I had sent the wolf away. Told him I didn’t forgive him and kept him at a distance. Now my dreams were empty of the protection.
“Lincoln!” I screamed his name, but the darkness swallowed up the sound the instant it left my mouth. There was no calling for him, no begging him to save me. He’d done that enough.
It was time I saved myself. But how? The river was impassable, and I was trapped in its center. Either way I went, I was screwed.
Laughter sounded from the far bank. I looked over to see a quartet of pale figures standing there laughing at me. Comically long fangs spilled over their lower lips, reaching nearly to their chins. Blood dripped from them.
Vampires.
Boom-boom.
The nameless, faceless drums beat their slow marching tune, shaking the very air with the skull-splitting noise. The vampires didn’t seem to notice it. One of them hissed and pointed behind me. I spun.
There where the banks of the river had been was a giant beast with yellow eyes larger than I stood tall. Ruby-red scales covered its body from snout to tail, and smoke spun in helixes upward from each nostril as the dragon spread its wings, drowning out the tiny bit of light.
Boom-boom.
Out of the darkness came a glow of orange fire. Dragon’s breath. It billowed toward me like the storm clouds the day before, but just before it incinerated me, it morphed, splitting in half and taking on the amorphous shapes of all sorts of creatures.
A cyclops, a minotaur, dancing fairies, an ogre, goblins by the dozen—all paraded past. Magical creatures from a world that I now knew existed. A world I didn’t justknowabout but supposedly belonged to.
“Grandma, why didn’t you tell me?” I moaned as the fire twisted around me, spinning like a hurricane at eye level.
My feet stayed rooted to the rock. Rooted in reality. The only reality I had ever known in my entire life.
But it was a lie.
Boom-boom.
The stone cracked, the sound like lightning. My world was a lie. Everything I had believed was a lie. Lincoln was a lie. My attraction to him was a lie.
The fire roared higher. Darkness retreated.
Beneath me the stone shattered into a thousand spinning pieces, and I fell, screaming, into the void.
Boom-boom.
The drums weredown. They were below me. I fell toward them, full of anger at everything happening to me. Why was it happening tome?
I should have stayed. If my parents had never left, my grandmother could have told me who I really was, and not had to keep it hidden. If the logging company had never shut down, they never would have had to leave! It was everyone’s fault. Not mine. I didn’t want it.
“I don’t want this!” I screamed into the void at the top of my lungs.
Bloodbound.
“Oh, no.”
