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I squinted, trying to get a good look at the man. Just before his face came into clear view, I woke up.
Sitting straight up, I clutched my chest, my heart pounding.
Ty jolted awake and sat up beside me. “Are you okay?”
The dream lingered, and my heart hurt so badly, I didn’t realize I was crying until Ty brushed away the falling tears with his thumbs.
“What’s wrong, Liza?” Panic rose in his voice as he tried to understand what was happening. “A nightmare?”
I didn’t know how to explain it to him. The pain I felt was so real.
But why?
It was just a dream, but part of me knew it was more.
It was a memory.
Chapter 25
Ty
It had been a long morning without Liza. A morning I spent worrying, knowing what she’d suffered as I held her, oblivious to the dream that had fractured her sleep and woke her with pain and such a strong, lingering fear that I could smell it on her. My worry for her had stretched into the evening and the night and another morning.
So, when she called me, relief came first and powered through me, right up until I heard her voice. Then the worry slipped right back in. She was coping at best, still suffering at worst, and I wanted to fix it for her. I wanted to make it all go away. Of course, that might’ve been selfish because if it went away, I would never have to tell her how my father and my pack destroyed her life.
Liza sighed into the phone. “I think I can tell you about it now.”
Because I wanted no one to hear my side of the conversation, I stood and closed my office door at the manufacturing plant, then pulled the shade on the window. Liza deserved my full attention, and damned sure, she was going to get it.
I was concerned about her. Even with a couple cups of coffee in her and a shower, she hadn’t been herself after the nightmare. She’d been so upset and exhausted that she couldn’t bring herself to talk about it. Not even with me. Now, a day later, she was ready to talk.
I slumped into my chair, wishing I could see her face. “I’m all ears.”
“It’s hard for me to describe it in a way that will do it justice.” She paused, probably to gather her thoughts. “It’s kind of like the nightmares I’ve had since I was a young kid, only this time it was different.”
“How so?” I asked.
I was afraid to hear her answer. Stone’s smug face popped into my head, and I couldn’t bear the idea of him influencing Liza’s memories—or lack thereof. Had his sudden presence in her life led to this horrific nightmare that was so bad she couldn’t even speak about it?
“Sometimes it’s only flashes of fire and blood and death. This time, the dream was bigger, longer, and in sequential order.” She paused and exhaled loudly into the phone. “There were no missing pieces. I could see and feel and hear everything going on around me like I was actually there—like it wasn’t just a dream.”
I grabbed a stress ball from my desk drawer and squeezed the shit out of it, preparing myself to hear what I was sure was a memory. After everything I’d learned from Stone and what he’d said to Liza about waking up, I could only imagine the horror she’d witnessed in her dream. But then I reminded myself that it was only a dream. Liza was suffering from an insane number of hormones flowing through her body. The hormones had probably made it all the more vivid and realistic.
Even as my thoughts tried to brush away the concerns, Liza continued. “A woman and a man who both looked a lot like me.” She paused. “My color, my features…I think they were my parents. They were terrified, trying to decide how to respond to some type of invasion.”
“Invasion?” God, I was an asshole, but I needed to know the details.
“Yes. I sensed someone was coming after them. After me.” She paused again. “They were afraid someone would harm me, so they forced me to leave with a boy. He also seemed very familiar to me, so I wasn’t afraid to go with him, but I didn’t want to leave the man and the woman. Before I left, the man told me to never forget that I was… royalty.”
Definitely a memory disguised as a dream, which meant I didn’t have much time to decide how to tell her I knew what had happened to her, and who and what she really was, because even I couldn’t explain this being a coincidence.
Liza continued. “Just as the boy pulled me from our home, I witnessed the woman shifting and then…” Her voice cracked, and she inhaled a shaky and stuttering breath. “She was shot.”
I closed my eyes. She had to be speaking about her real parents. “That’s awful, Liza. I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you. I know.” She paused again. “I wish I’d woken up at that point, but I didn’t.” Liza’s tone thinned, becoming softer but shriller. “The boy and I ran through the forest. The snow was soaked red with blood everywhere I turned. I could hear screaming and wailing from those who weren’t quite dead yet. And someone was chasing me, telling others to find the girl.”
Fuck. No wonder she couldn’t speak after waking from the nightmare.
