Page 96 of Fake Fae-Ancée

Darkness engulfed me.

I was back in the forest. Lying facedown in the snow, its icy bite burning in my skin. This memory was crystal clear now, no longer a blurry image haunting me at night. Rough hands ripped the curtain of fog apart that was usually covering my dreams. This was real, now. I was here. Left for dead.

Numbing cold was eating its way through the skin of my face, all feeling in my fingers and feet had long gone. My heartbeat had slowed. Soon it would stop forever. And that dark, treacherous shadow was luring me in. Deeper and deeper into its pull of sweet, cold sleep that would be my last.

A noise.

Broad paws crunching on frozen snow.

A shadow was towering over me. A dark shape, tall as a mountain. With shaggy fur and glowing eyes. A beast roaming this forest. It had come to find me. The stars had led it to me. And now, before I could go peacefully in my icy sleep, this thing had come to take me away and eat me while there was some warmth left inside me. But I was too far gone to fight or run. So I just closed my eyes, exhaled one last time and dove into the shadows…

And then, the worldswitched.

Turned on its axis, catapulting me out of my mind — and inside another.

I was the mountain now, that towering shadow looking down at the mere scrap of a girl that was dying in the snow. This wasn’t my memory — but his! I saw the world through amber glowing eyes. A feral need was burning deep with me, growling and snarling, urging me to protect the girl curled up in front of my giant paws that stood out sooty black in the white snow.

Words rang out, loud and clear, in the mind that was not mine.

— She is your Queen. She must survive.—

"No!" a strange, growling voice echoed in my mind — through both our minds. "Don’t go there! Come back!"

Something reached out. Reached into the core of what was slipping away from me. Somethingconnected.

Bear and girl were bound.

He pulled, yanked me from the depth of sleep, catapulted me back into my own head — and suddenly I was spinning back into the ballroom. Lights flared around me, the meteoric shine flickering like fireworks. I sucked in a desperate breath, swaying in Yuri’s arms not sure if the body I was in was the right one.

He stared back, eyes wide, face pale, equally dumbfounded, almost stumbling over the next step.

With my pulse tugging in my ears, I sucked in some more breath, realizing that Yuri had seen the exact same thing I had.

Hehad been there, the night my parents had left me for dead.

Hehad brought me back.

I should have died that night. He had not let me…

"My little star…?" His mutter was drowned out by the final flourish of the orchestra and the applause thundering around us.

"This king has returned," someone shouted. "The king and his queen!"

"All hail King Yuri, son of Alexeij!"

"Glory to House of Kalinin!"

Suddenly, we were surrounded by an ecstatic crowd, bowing and curtsying and calling Yuri’s name.

The plan had worked. The Bears had seen the prophecy was true. We had danced the dance of falling stars and made our grand entrance. The Bears were unaware of the revelation Yuri and I had just shared. Their king had returned and brought his future queen.

Nausea welled up inside me and I let go of Yuri’s hand, shouldered my way through the crowd and ran.

Kai

The icy waterfrom the faucet had been running over my wrists for almost two minutes now, but I had still trouble getting my breathing back under control.

This could not be true. I had woken up alone in the forest, in the middle of the deepest winter. I had second-degree frostbite and was fatally hypothermic when some park rangers had found me.

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