The Worst Kind of Wonderful

Chapter SEVENTEEN

✖The Worst Kind of Wonderful✖

"There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors."

-Jim Morrison

Chapter Seventeen~

Running. All I knew was running. All I could process in that moment was fighting through an untamed forest and searching. Searching for someone I had no way of finding from a place I was completely unfamiliar with. The trees were a dark canopy that cut out any hope of moonlight and stars mocked me in their fleeting glory as clouds rolled in. I was being chased but something in me refused to hurt my attacker. There was a resistance in me; a tie I refused to let snap.

Arrows shot out above, painted black and raining down like shards of the dark around me. A restlessness clung to every part of the vision, even trees shaking violently at the scene before them. There was betrayal, potent and thick in the air that sunk into my lungs and made it painful to take in air. Then in that second of impossible hate, I saw it.

Off in the distance the unmistakable sight of life was visible. It was familiar, glowing like a beacon of hope that was destined to give me every answer I longed for. I didn't stop until rough dirt and uneven rock disappeared into a grassy hill which would dissolve into a cobblestone path littered with civilians who looked at me in my distress with fear. I was to be feared, I understood that. I was a danger to everyone. Nearly everyone, a voice corrected me and I realized that these thoughts were not my own.

I came to the startlingly unreal realization that I had lost those who who had been chasing me through the forest. Observing the town suddenly I knew what this was. I had been here before. This was the town where Zak and I had had our date.

~~~~

I woke with a start, fingers gripping the blankets around me, eyes blinded by new morning light. Anna was on the floor beside me, still in the mountain of quilts she formed the day before while I lay cold on the floor. I might have laughed at how very Annabelle the situation was if my brain wasn't working to process the nightmare, jaw clenched in frustration. There was something particularly terrifying about the film in my head, and it wasn't just its lucidity.

It was as though I were living someone else's reality and as I woke up and my mind came from it's blurry state into focus I realized that it may have been just that. Xander. My wolf stirred in me at the thought. Something in my very blood screamed that he was in danger but I had no way of knowing.

"Why is morning a thing?" Anna groaned squinting her eyes and shoving her face beneath the covers before letting out an exhausted groan.

"We probably shouldn't have stayed up so late." I responded, rubbing my eyes and trying to escape the uneasy feeling in my gut.

"Thank goodness Doctor Alvi confirmed the stress theory or we would have gotten a lot less sleep."

"Seriously," I laughed at the ridiculousness of the day before. We had evaded my parents' suspicions by a wisp of a breath. "I have a feeling the doctor knows more about the situation than she's letting on."

"Let's hope not," Belles replied, appalled at the thought. "This secret's pretty much at max capacity for how many people know and if Elisabeth Alvi knows and is as dedicated to the council as she seems, we're screwed."

"You mean Xander and I are screwed." I pointed out, trying to distance her from the situation.

"We've talked about this. I'm not letting you become the badass heroine of this movie without me by your side, mooching off the limelight!"