Deep darkness was surrounding me, trying to find me, to envelop me. I tried to make the rune signs for protection, but I couldn’t lift my hands: my fingers weren’t working. I’d been bound, just as Cal had bound me to entrap me. Smoke and flames burned in the back of my throat, and I heard a voice screaming, “Not again!” Somehow I knew the voice belonged to my birth mother, Maeve. Then faces rose up out of the smothering darkness: Selene and Cal. I begged them to leave me alone. I pushed my lips together tightly, knowing, somehow, that they wanted me to breathe in the darkness, wanted it to become a part of me. Just as I felt myself about to suffocate, I saw a tiny sliver of light. The faces of Cal and Selene dissolved as the light approached. And then I began to see a new face in its midst. Hunter. I woke up, sweaty and gasping for breath. My heart raced, pounding hard in my chest. I pushed my hair away from my damp forehead and looked around the room. I was in my own bedroom.
