Page 11 of Savage Prince

But the ache in my chest remains.

Usually, my wolf manages emotions better than I do. It’s not that he doesn’t care, he just sees things through a different lens. My wolf knows deep in his bones that he’s part of something bigger, a link in an unbreakable chain that stretches back for millennia and will stretch on into an unimaginably vast future. But at the same time, he also realizes that life happensnow. He’s aware of his connection to the past and the future, but his focus is always on the present.

It’s hard to get too upset about anything when you’re existing for the breath in your lungs and the sand under your padded feet and the warmth unfurling in your belly as food fuels your body. No matter what a single moment holds, good or bad, it’s almost never more than you can bear. It’s dwelling on the past or worrying what happens next that makes human emotions so hard.

But today, even my wolf is struggling.

I lie down and rest my muzzle on the pine needles covering Juliet’s remains. The acrid smell of the ash makes my eyes water, but I don’t rise to find another place to rest. I need to be close to her, to guard her, to be here when she comes back to me.

She’s coming back to me.

She’ll be here when I wake up.

All you have to do is close your eyes, I tell myself.

But deep down, I don’t believe it. I’ve seen a lot of incredible things in my life—shifters, vampires, witches with the power to curse a girl into the body of an owl—but Death rules the land beyond this one with an iron fist. Once you enter His territory, you don’t return. It’s the ultimate one-way trip.

In my heart, I’m starting to believe I’ll never see Juliet again, that she sacrificed her life to save mine and that’s the way our love story ends.

And then a new day dawns, and nothing is what it was before.

SIX

born anew

THE FIRST DAY (JULIET)

I risefrom the darkness like an air bubble seeking the surface of the water, swift and relentless and desperate to return to the place I belong.

I have to get back to the world of air and light.

I have to escape the bony fingers clinging to my ankles, my wrists, whispering that I don’t have to go. I can stay if I’d like. I can rest. I can join the legions in the shadows beyond and finally be free of all my troubles.

But I can’t.

There’s something I have to do, someonewho’s waiting for me on the other side.

I burst upright, covered in dirt, and gasping for breath, instinctively swiping at the ash covering my eyes. It sticks to my eyelashes and clings to my lips like cotton candy sugar, sticky and stubborn. It’s between my fingers, too, caked under the fingernails I can barely see in the pre-dawn light.

I hold up my hand, shocked by how slim and small it is.

Wasn’t it bigger before?

Wasn’tIbigger…whoever I am?

I run my fingers over my face and through my long hair. I pull a handful of it forward, but I can’t tell what color it is. It’s too caked in ash. It’s like I took a bath in it.

Or ran through a sprinkler and then rolled in the dirt, just like we used to do…

The thought vanishes before I can finish it, evaporating like smoke rising from a fire. Whatever that memory is, it’s lost to me now.

It belongs to whoever I was before.

It feels like I’m rising in an elevator car, leaving the person I was, and all her memories, on the floor below me. I sense faint murmurings from that realm, but it’s nothing I can see or hear or access.

Still, I know I’ve been here before. I’ve been this girl before.

As I stretch my legs out in the sand and soot, wiggling my toes, the way my muscles flex feels familiar. I know how to move in this body. I know it can run slowly for hours but quickly for only a minute or two. I know it craves lean protein and feels sluggish after too much bread or sugar. I know these fingers once played an instrument, though I can’t remember which one, and that I could probably learn to play one again without too much trouble.

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