Chapter 2

"Don't touch me!" I snarled like a feral beast guarding its kill, violently swatting his hand away.

Vincent stumbled back two steps, crashing into the mahogany bookshelf. Several heavy legal dictionaries tumbled down. He stared at me in sheer disbelief, clearly not expecting such raw strength from the frail, quiet society wife I was supposed to be.

"You..." He rubbed his shoulder, his gaze turning ice-cold. "Security! Get in here, now!"

Heavy footsteps and the crackle of walkie-talkies echoed from the hallway. Time was running out.

I spun around and threw myself back at the fireplace. There was something else beneath the charred earth. My sense of smell had suddenly become hyper-acute. I caught the thick, sickening stench of blood mixed with the acrid bite of burning pine. It was so visceral I felt like I was standing in the epicenter of a massacre.

"Richard, what the hell are you hiding from me..." I gritted my teeth, digging through the ashes with my bare hands like iron shovels. More fragments emerged. Scorched fabric that felt like ancient, coarse linen; several snapped, massive beast bones; and a shard of obsidian etched with bizarre, primal totems.

This wasn't proof of an affair. This wasn't even remotely modern.

"Mrs. Sterling, please step away from the fireplace immediately." Two security guards in black tactical uniforms marched into the living room, their massive frames blocking out the sunlight from the windows.

"Just give me one more minute!" I screamed, clutching the fragments tightly to my chest. My mind was racing. If this wasn't evidence of cheating, why was my subconscious so absolutely certain that Richard had lit this fire "this morning"? Why did these carbonized relics, which looked like they had survived a millennium, feel like they had just been buried by his hands?

*"The seal... hurry..."* The male voice echoed in my mind again, accompanied by the sickening sizzle of flesh being consumed by fire. *"Don't let them... find you..."*

My vision blurred, the fireplace morphing into a massive, burning black hole. In the dancing, phantom flames, I saw a towering silhouette. Drenched in blood, he stood between me and a horde of faceless shadows. He looked back, his molten-gold eyes locking onto mine as a single tear of blood tracked down his cheek.

It was Richard's face. But he was clad in tattered beast pelts, gripping a notched bronze broadsword.

"Evelyn!" Vincent's voice reached me as if through a thick layer of water. "Pull her off! Restrain her and prep a sedative!"

Two thick arms clamped around me from behind in a vice grip. "Let me go! The evidence! I found the proof!" I thrashed wildly, the obsidian shard pressed flush against my chest. The second the stone touched my bare skin, a violently overpowering surge of heat blasted straight into my heart.

"Ahhh!" A blood-curdling scream tore from my throat—not from pain, but from a suffocatingly massive flood of memories forcefully wedging into my brain, tearing at my very soul.

In the final second before I blacked out, I heard Vincent's cold voice echoing through the cavernous living room: "Ship her off to Silver Pines Wellness Retreat. Tell Mr. Sterling his ex-wife's psychotic break is irreversible."

What he didn't know was that in the darkness behind my closed eyelids, deep within the two-thousand-year-old dead ashes, pairs of eerie, luminescent green eyes—the eyes of a wolf pack—were silently flaring to life.

The sedative slithered through my veins like an ice-cold snake, creeping up toward my brain. But I couldn't sleep. I bit down on my tongue hard enough to bleed. The metallic taste of rust flooded my mouth, eerily merging with the scent of blood radiating from the obsidian shard in my hand.

"Get her in the car and take her straight to Silver Pines Wellness Retreat." Vincent's voice echoed down the hallway, his leather dress shoes clicking against the marble floor like a countdown to my doom. The two guards dragged me by the arms toward the estate's massive front doors. My feet dragged uselessly across the floor; one of my heels was already gone.

"Let me go... I need to see Lily..." I struggled weakly, but my arms felt like lead. "Once you're stabilized, the family court judge will consider your visitation rights," Vincent followed behind, his tone strictly business. "Until then, don't make me order a second dose."

The heavy doors were pushed open, and a biting wind mixed with snowflakes slapped me in the face. The instant the freezing air hit my lungs, a violent wave of vertigo hit my brain. The snowstorm in front of me suddenly shifted.

*It wasn't the estate's driveway anymore, but a vast, desolate tundra.* *The snow was nearly knee-deep. Richard—no, the man wrapped in heavy beast pelts—was pulling me tight against his chest, enveloping me in his cloak. His body heat was scalding, his chin resting on the top of my head.* *"Eve, once we survive this winter, we'll head south to the sun." His voice was a low, gravelly rumble.* *His calloused fingers brushed my neck, fastening a freezing cold obsidian necklace against my collarbone. "Keep it on. No matter what happens, never take it off."*

"Evelyn! Wake up!" A guard roughly shook my shoulder, violently yanking me out of the hallucination and back to reality. Gasping for air, I realized I had already been shoved into the backseat of a black SUV. Vincent sat in the passenger seat, glancing back at me with a cold sneer. "Your delusions are getting worse. Staring off into a snowstorm? It's the middle of summer, Evelyn."

Summer? I froze. There were clearly snowflakes drifting past the window. It wasn't heavy, but it was definitely snow. "It's snowing outside..." I muttered. Vincent frowned, glancing at the window. "That's the dry ice cooling mist from the estate's perimeter security system. Have you lost your grip on basic reality?"

I looked out the window. Sure enough, the white particles hit the glass and didn't melt; they simply dissipated into thin air. My grip on reality was fracturing. Was my brain broken, or had the whole world gone insane?

"Confiscate that garbage in her hand," Vincent ordered the guard next to him. "Before she harms herself." The guard on my right reached over to pry open my clenched fist. "Don't touch it!" I shrieked, pressing my hand desperately against my chest.

The exact second the guard's fingers brushed the back of my hand, the temperature inside the cabin plummeted. It wasn't the chill of the AC, but a damp, graveyard-cold draft that felt like it was seeping up from a crypt. A thin layer of frost instantly crystallized across the windows, and the overhead light began to flicker violently, buzzing with a harsh electrical hiss.

"What the hell is wrong with the climate control..." the guard grumbled, forcefully trying to pry my fingers apart. Then, I caught the scent.

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