Tasha's POV
I told myself it was just a dream. A strange, too-vivid dream, spun from sunstroke and dehydration.
But the lie unraveled the moment I caught my reflection the next morning.
The bathroom mirror stared back at me with an almost accusing clarity. My curls stuck out in stubborn tangles, my lips were dry, and shadows lingered beneath my eyes.
Normal.
Human.
Except for the faint warmth clinging to my skin, like I had been left too close to a flame. The golden flicker I swore I'd seen in my irises during the night was gone now, but the ghost of it haunted me. My pulse thrummed in my ears, restless, as if my body was whispering secrets I couldn't quite translate.
I gripped the porcelain sink until my knuckles blanched. Get a grip, Tasha. It was nothing. Just a dream. Just your imagination.The kind of pep talk that sounded strong only inside your head.
I forced myself away from the mirror, tugging on shorts and a tank top like the simple act of getting dressed could strip away the unease growing in my chest. But it clung to me, insistent, pressing against my ribs like a trapped animal.
And then the world betrayed me.
The air itself felt too alive. Every inhale carried layers I had never noticed before: damp grass clinging to the earth from last night's watering, the faint sweetness of vanilla woven into my mother's lotion, the spice of breakfast that still lingered even though the pans had been scrubbed clean.
Sounds sharpened, too. The refrigerator hummed low and steady like a hidden beast. Leaves outside scraped against one another in whispers. Distant footsteps too far to be heard, and yet I did beat against the street with clarity, as if the world had peeled back its skin and let me glimpse the pulse beneath.
And beneath it all, louder than logic, louder than fear were heartbeats.
Not mine alone.
Too many.
They felt like threads of rhythm, some fast, some steady, but each thudded like an invisible orchestra playing through the silence.
I staggered back against the counter, pressing a hand to my chest.
It's nothing.
You're imagining this.
But the thought rang hollow.
I tried to bury it beneath normalcy. College prep. Shopping lists. Texts from Mina are buzzing with emojis and dramatic theories about our upcoming classes. I clung to those things like anchors. Things that made sense. Things that belonged to the world I knew.
Yet unease clung tighter, like a shadow determined to remind me it was there.
By late morning, I stood in the kitchen rinsing out a glass when it happened.
The lights flickered.
One heartbeat, the room was ordinary the hum of the refrigerator, the gleam of overhead bulbs, the cool water spilling over my hands. The next darkness. The bulbs dimmed, the hum faltered, and the air itself stilled as though the house had stopped breathing.
A hush so deep it roared.
Then, as abruptly as it came, it ended. The lights returned. The hum continued. The world exhaled as if nothing had happened.
But I hadn't imagined it.
The glass slipped slightly in my grip, and I tightened my hold, my breath quickening. My eyes darted upward to the ceiling, as though I could catch some sign of what had just occurred.
Was that… me?
The thought stabbed through me before I could stop it. My fingers trembled, droplets of water sliding down the sides of the glass.
No.
Impossible.
It's all just a power surge.
An imaginary coincidence. That's all it was.
But deep inside, beneath reason and denial, something stirred. Something ancient, something certain, something that whispered with chilling clarity: You know better.
Mina's POV
I noticed it before she even spoke.
Tasha wasn't herself. Not exactly. On the surface, she was the same sarcastic as ever, rolling her eyes at my ridiculous theories, still walking beside me through the aisles of the stationery store. But there was something off.
Her energy was wrong. Like static before a storm.
Her attention drifted. Her laughter sounded brittle, hollow at the edges. More than once, I caught her pressing her fingers against her temples as though she was fighting off something she couldn't name.
"Are you okay?" I asked, pausing with a notebook half lifted from the shelf.
She blinked hard, like I'd yanked her out of another world. "Yeah. I'm fine. Just tired."
Liar.
Tasha was many things, but subtle wasn't one of them. I'd known her since we were seven, since we used to sneak cookies from my dad's kitchen and swear loyalty with sticky fingers and milk mustaches. I could tell when something was eating her alive.
But I also knew her rules. She never opened up if you pushed too hard. She needed space, air, the illusion that her secrets were hers to guard.
So I smirked instead. "Fine. But if you start turning into a zombie or something, dibs on your room."
Her response was automatic, like muscle memory. "You'd just steal my books."
"Obviously."
She laughed, and for a moment the sound warmed me. But her eyes betrayed her the light didn't reach them. Shadows lingered where her spark should've been.
I dropped the subject, but inside my chest, unease knotted itself tight. Something was happening to my best friend. Something she couldn't or wouldn't say.
And whatever it was, it scared her.
The Lycan's POV
The visions came as they always did splintered fragments of a world just beyond my reach.
Her world.
A girl with curls that refused to be tamed, with warm brown skin kissed by moonlight, with fire smoldering behind her gaze. She carried her fate like a crown buried deep, unaware it already gleamed.
Tasha.
Her name alone thrummed with power, echoing through me like a drumbeat. She had not yet awakened, and still she shifted the balance between realms, dragging me closer without realizing it.
I stood at the edge of the void, where the veil rippled like dark water, separating my world from hers. Through its shimmering skin, I glimpsed pieces of her life her laughter with the friend called Mina, the absent-minded way she traced patterns in sand, the tilt of her head toward the moon as though her soul recognized it while her mind did not.
She was awakening.
And I felt her.
The pull was relentless, woven into my marrow like hunger, like gravity. Every breath she took dragged me closer, and no resistance I conjured could sever it.
Tonight, the tether snapped taut.
Her touch brushed against something ancient, a scar of magic carved into her world. The moment her fingers found it, a shockwave tore through the veil, rattling the cage her parents had so carefully built around her.
For one breathless instant, I saw her clearly.
She stiffened, her soul trembling as my whisper threaded into her spine. She didn't know what it was, not yet, but she felt me. And I knew she had.
I pressed closer, golden eyes burning against the mist. I am coming for you, my Luna.
And nothing no seal, no parent, no fear would keep me from her.
They thought they could bury her essence beneath human normalcy, but fate does not ask permission.
I knew this truth too well.
My father had been the strongest Alpha to ever walk this earth. My mother, the last queen of a vampire bloodline hunted to extinction. Their love was forbidden. Their union, a crime. I was the proof of it the abomination whispered about in prophecies.
When their enemies came, fire consumed everything. I should have died with them.
But she found me. The ancient witch. The one who plucked me from the ashes and dragged me into the shadows between worlds.
There, where time twisted and reality bent, she raised me. She carved me into a weapon, whispered prophecies into my ears as if they were lullabies. One Alpha would rise, she said. One who would unite the fractured realms.
She said it was me.
For years, I rejected it. I had no desire to be fate's pawn. But fate does not ask.
And now, standing before the veil, with Tasha's soul thrashing against its bindings, I understood.
She was the key. My Luna. My equal. My doom, or my salvation.
And the world had already begun to shift to bring her to me.
She was remembering.
Slowly. In fragments. But it was happening.
She would notice the changes soon, the sharpness of her senses, the whispers in the wind, the way her soul would call out for something she couldn't name.
And when she did, I would be waiting.
Because nothing in this world, or any other, could keep me from her.
Not even the gods themselves.