Northern Lands: Bound by fate

Chapter 16

CALANDRA

A strange awareness stirred me from my deep and blissful sleep. I tossed and turned as my mind wandered through the occurrences of the day. Many emotions had been unleashed and it felt like they all wreaked havoc in my chest.

These last few days had been daunting, the revelations harder to face than what I had initially thought. While the Aurora pack stepped in where the Northern Lands Council failed, I still felt torn about the consequences. I was putting people in danger for my own safety. It felt selfish, and I was not normally wired that way.

My eyelids fluttered, offering resistance as I tried to open them. I lay in bed with Zander, my mate, after coming together in bliss. I had felt the bond strengthening between us as we both became one last night.

The werewolf's pagan magic almost completed the band woven around our wrists. Our design melted together as we grew more intimate, creating something unique in the forest, green tattoos etched on our skin. The representation of his Moon Goddess in the sky had appeared as a shadow on mine between the two smaller moons of Asterion.

While I had noticed him and Conan holding back as we made love until we both rested next to each other, I was grateful to him for not pushing me into marking. Even if we were destined to be together, it was a step I wasn't ready to make yet, and I loved him even more for it. The sentiment blossomed in my heart as I lay still, hearing his even breaths as he slept peacefully beside me.

But, it was also the only thing I heard. No nightly sounds of the forest that surrounded us, while I remembered them being present the previous night.

An icy breeze flitted through the room towards me. The sliding doors that led to the deck behind the packhouse were open. I could've sworn that Zander closed them before we went to bed.

That was when I noticed the shadow moving outside in the murky darkness and the burning smell that drifted on the wind. Fear crept over my skin, goosebumps rising in its wake. The urge to rub them away failed me. Something wasn't right.

I tried to move, to awaken Zander, but I couldn't stir an inch. My limbs wouldn't budge. Panic overcame me, but no sound could pass my lips. I had been rendered mute.

I had lost all control over my body, except for my vision and my thoughts. I hadn't been drugged, as my mind was still sharp, and I could see everything that happened around me. A heavy feeling of dread overcame my senses.

My eyes teared up in fear as shadowy spiders with ghostly tendrils made their way from the window, over the ground, spinning a misty web over the carpet. Their tiny beaded eyes shone with a carmine gleam and from their thin black legs smoke arose, engulfing them. Penumbra critters, from the Shadow Isles.

They scuttled over my skin, seizing control of my limbs. Like a sinister whisper in the night, they wove a spell around me.

My wide eyes drifted towards Zander. My heart froze at the sight, the air I was breathing stuck in my throat. A larger penumbra specimen was on his stomach, weaving a veil over his body with his long talons. Keeping him trapped in his sleep, unable to help me or call out to Conan.

The sound of the pointy fangs scraping against each other was food for nightmares. The rows of beaded eyes inspected my body, and the clicking sound that one produced was a call to follow.

And so my body moved at the command; sliding off the bed gracefully. Translucent strings where the shadowy tendrils had seeped into my skin weaved around me. Following the call from their master as a burnt smell hit my nostrils, my feet positioned themselves one after the other in a magnetic pull towards the window.