28. Phaedra

PHAEDRA

T he grand dining hall was just as I remembered it, filled with the important people Connor and my parents had stressed I needed to impress. My dress was magnificent, and I'd felt like a princess in the smooth, elegant fabric. It was the color of rubies and hemmed with flowers that were embroidered with silver thread. Though beautiful, the dress was fragile enough to tear apart when I shifted. Obviously, that hadn't happened.

I shouldn't have been surprised that the fated mark would be located in my most traumatic memory, but I was back in the headspace I'd been in when I was sixteen years old. All thought of the fated marks, of Kestrel, and of Asher fled my mind as I knelt in front of everyone and tried to call forth my wolf.

There were over a hundred pairs of eyes on me. In my memories, the faces of the crowd were blurred except for Connor's, Edgar's, and my parents', but now, I saw each person as clearly as they saw me. Among them were political allies to the Salcedos: artisans; bankers; every prominent member of high-wolf society had come to watch me shift. Their children, many of whom were my friends, were there as well.

All their gazes were trained on me as I struggled to contact my wolf. As the seconds passed, they grew impatient, shifting from foot to foot in their expensive shoes, swirling their expensive wine in their glasses. I couldn't manage anything with them staring at me so intently.

Because I was a shifter, I should have been able to summon my wolf, but when I reached out to make contact, my wolf's presence was nowhere to be found. Never before had a wolf failed to shift when the time came, but mine wasn't there. When I closed my eyes, the most I caught was a glimpse of my wolf—a vision I was sure was just a figment of my desperate imagination.

I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, and when I opened them again, that vision had come to life.

Just behind the crowd of socialites sat a large wolf made of shadow. As I stared at her, flabbergasted, her eyes opened. Two cornflower blue eyes glowed from the void that was her body. When she got to her feet, she towered over the crowd. No one seemed to notice her presence, nor she theirs.

When she stood, she revealed a glowing collar of script at her neck. The script resembled the runes in Kestrel's spell book and what was carved into the Heartbridge. The collar was connected to four chains that glowed as brightly as the moon, and those chains were connected to the ground.

As I looked at the script, I felt like I was just a little girl again, struggling to learn the alphabet. It was as if I could pick out which letter was an X and which was an O because they were so simple and unique, but I couldn't put them together and make the word ox. The wolf watched me with expectant eyes, though her gaze wasn't anywhere near as judgmental as the eyes of the crowd surrounding me.

" Shift !" Edgar commanded.

The moment Edgar spoke, the shadow-wolf faded away.

I blinked, coming back to myself. Now I remembered. After failing to contact my wolf on my own, Edgar had tried to command me as an alpha to coax the shift out of me, but it did nothing. I heard him yell at me, but I didn't feel an answering tug inside. I'd seen wolves react to alpha commands before—they were meant to be instantaneous—but for some reason, it did nothing to me except increase my anxiety.

"I said shift," Edgar said again.

When nothing happened, the crowd began to whisper around me. "Poor Connor," they hissed. "His chosen mate, a shiftless girl."

"She's no better than a human," another agreed. "What a shame for her parents. Sixteen years of an investment down the drain."

They weren't even trying to keep their voices low. People who I had been close to, people I had once called my friends, turned their backs on me all at once, none of them offering even an ounce of sympathy, not even my parents. When I looked at them, their faces were horrorstruck. I thought I heard someone call my name, but when I glanced toward the voice, all I saw was the stoic wall of people.

When I got to my feet, Connor stomped up to me, wearing a ruby-red suit designed to match my dress. I shrank back as he approached, fear bursting inside my chest, just as it had every time Connor lost his temper. When he was calm, I sometimes forgot how intense and frightening he could be when he was angry. There was no forgetting the expression on his face.

He glared down at me with all the fury he could muster, his eyes a pair of dark pits. I cowered as he loomed over me.

"What the hell is wrong with you, Phaedra?" Connor raved. "Shift!"

"I-I don't know." The words trembled out of me. "I-it won't c-come out. I could try again? I might be tired or n-nervous…"

But he was shaking his head, the disgust in his eyes cutting straight through my chest. "This is not happening. My chosen mate can't be a shiftless disgrace."

Each word was a separate blow to my body and my mind, each more devastating than the last. "Connor, please," I whispered. "Give me another chance. I can do it, I know I can."

"If you can't do it now, you'll never be able to," he snapped and ran both of his hands through his hair, mussing the carefully coiffed strands. He was behaving as if he was suffering his greatest humiliation in front of everyone, and there wasn't an ounce of compassion for me, his chosen mate.

"Fuck this." He turned to his father. "This is a disaster."

"What do you want to do, Connor?" Edgar asked, touching his son's shoulder. "Think on this carefully, son."

I clasped my hands in front of me. "Connor." I pleaded with my voice, my eyes, my body. As I fell to my knees, every ounce of dignity and pride I'd constructed over the sixteen years of my life vanished. I'd just realized my future as a member of high-wolf society was in jeopardy, that my fate was in Connor's hands. Before then, I'd never, ever worried he would reject me. Even when he frightened me or forced me to obey him, I'd believed he would be at my side.

That belief shattered the moment he shrugged off his father's touch and turned away from me. "She's no mate of mine," he grumbled. "Get her out of my sight."

Edgar sighed. "Consider it done. I guess high-wolf society doesn't have the space for someone like you?—"

"Phaedra!" Asher's voice cut through Edgar's words. He took my shoulders in his hands and shook me.

I blinked, coming back to myself. The scene was frozen there, with Connor in mid-walk and the guards coming toward me. I looked up at Asher as tears burned my face.

"Goddess, Phae." He crouched next to me and thumbed away the tears. "I am so sorry. It's awful that Connor did this to you in front of all these people. It was so, so wrong."

My lip wobbled. I let out a sob, then another, and let him pull me in close to his chest. "Where were you?" I wailed. "I-I didn't know I was in a dream. I-I thought it was happening again." But oh, it was such a relief to have Asher here to comfort me when no one else did.

"I'm sorry," he said again. "I tried to reach you sooner, but that crowd was impossible to get through."

He held me for a while longer. I wasn't sure how much time had passed while emotion washed over me, but after I'd cried every tear inside me, I took a deep breath and started to piece myself back together.

I leaned into his touch and let out a long, deep breath. "I understand," I said. "In your memory, it was almost impossible to get through all of the trees. I think that's just more evidence that the mark is fighting against us."

"Must be." He touched his forehead to mine, grounding me, and my heart rate began to calm.

"Edgar told me he hadn't known my parents weren't going to fight for me," I said. "He said that if he had, he would've done more for me. But knowing he was unaware doesn't make reliving the memory any less painful."

"Of course it doesn't." He hugged me for a few wonderful moments, and then, too soon, he let me go. "Is your fated mark somewhere in here?"

"I think so." I wiped my face. "I think it has something to do with shifting, but I'm not sure."

As I finished speaking, the scene started to reset itself around us, with the crowd, Connor, and Edgar returning to their original positions.

I gasped. "I think it's just going to loop over and over until I get it."

"Gods," he breathed, looking at me with so much concern that my heart twisted in my chest.

"I'll be okay," I assured him. "I just have to find out where the mark is."

"Do you want help?"

I shook my head. "You need to focus on solving yours."

"Right." He looked at his puzzle box and frowned. "I guess I need to start this thing over again."

"What?"

He showed me. "I'd started working on it, but now it's back in its original position."

"Damn it." That meant each time I failed to find my mark, the loop would restart, and Asher wouldn't be able to solve his puzzle box. This was turning out to be much harder than I'd expected.

I lost count of the number of loops I went through. On the one hand, I was getting more comfortable with this traumatic memory, but on the other, I still wasn't sure where my mark was. Asher told me he was getting closer to solving the puzzle each time, but he was missing something. Whatever it was, it was the same thing that had stumped him as a kid. He looked as frustrated and exhausted by all of this as I was.

In yet another loop, I stared at the wolf, at the script of her collar as Connor yelled at me. The scene played out whether I responded or not. I stepped toward her, catching a glimpse of a red mark among the runes on her collar. It was hidden just out of my line of sight at the curve of her neck.

I stepped forward, reaching for it, but the sudden whining of my wolf, my real wolf, not this giant shadowy one, caught my attention. She had been quiet for so long, I thought I was the only one in this dream world.

" Shift with me ," she urged. " Let me out. "

I tried, but Edgar's sudden shouting broke the connection I shared with her. So, that was the trick. Something about this fever dream was blocking me from shifting. I tried reaching out to her for the rest of the loop, but I didn't feel even a glimmer of her until the memory restarted. I needed to try to shift when the shadow wolf appeared.

I heard Asher grunt in frustration. When I looked at him, I saw him glaring at the box. He paused, as if thinking about something, and then all at once, he started smashing the puzzle box against the marble floors. I shouted in surprise. The bludgeoning of the box caused him to fuzz out for a second. He clutched his chest, right where his heart was.

With horror icing through my veins, I watched him pitch forward and land on the floor.