Chapter 48: Flash of Silver

STORM'S P.O.V

"Storm."

My brows furrowed, my fingers curling into silk sheets.

"Storm, wake up."

My eyes fluttered open, expecting the silk sheets that Anders had switched the ones we had ruined for, the untouched breakfast and the roses, the familiar heat of his skin.

My heart sank when I saw none of it. Instead, I was lying all alone, with nothing around for as long as my sight could reach, the skies so dark above me that even the moon above seemed to do nothing to dissipate the darkness.

"Where am I?"

"Where you truly should be. This place... this is where your true essence is."

I swallowed hard, standing up, my jaws clenching. I looked around, my heart hammering. There was nothing I could trace the voice to. Nothing I could hide behind. Just vast emptiness and this voice that seemed to be tearing at my own skin.

"Seer, if this is yet another..."

"It is not the seer," came the voice, low, almost amused. "It is me. The you that no one allowed manifest."

"Wh... what?"

"Don't you want to know what you are? Don't you want to know the sort of power you are capable of?"

"I am not capable of anything," I said a little too quickly, my chest heaving, my heart clenching hard. "I am only an omega, you have the wrong person."

"You are not," came the voice again, and then, the feeling of warm fingers beneath my chin.

I looked up, a flash of silver crossing in front of me. Not quite a wolf. Not quite a human being. More like an energy. Silver. Bright. And I hated how familiar it felt.

"You are lying to me, and to yourself. This is what the seer seeks too, but I seek it for a completely different reason. For truth. For salvation. For normalcy."

I closed my eyes. "Does... does any of this have to do with the fact that I am the woman beside Anders?"

"See?" The voice said, another flash of silver passing my eyes. "You know exactly what you are. You know exactly what you are destined to do. Stop lying to yourself and accept me. Stop waking up from the dreams where I can possess you. Stop looking at him and ignoring the permanent stench of blood he carries."

"No," I croaked, tears filling my eyes. "How... how can you be so heartless? How can you expect me to be so heartless? Anders saved me!"

"Because he is obsessed! Because, like a psycho, he carries images of you on his skin, and a lifesize portrait of you in his room. Because way before you even thought of walking to him, he saw you, and he wanted you. And right now he is moulding you to the same complacency that he has the pack under. Look at me, Storm. Look at us. This is what you really are."

"It's a lie," I whispered, my chest heaving with tears, mostly because deep down, I had felt it before.

In the flashes of confidence I felt sometimes. Like when I had told that councilman not to interrupt me, like I was aware of being more than just an onega, or a figurehead luna beside an extremely powerful man.

I closed my eyes, willing myself to wake up. Willing myself to shelf this away with all of the other dreams and pretend I never even saw it.

Before I could force myself awake, I felt fingers wrap around my chin hard, causing me to open my eyes.

It was no longer just an essence anymore. Right in front of me, was... me.

Just a different me. She didn't have the scar my mother had left on me. Her lips weren't kiss swollen and she looked ethereal. Her hair, still the same red as mine, was much longer, her eyes thin, her gaze powerful, confident. The sort of confidence that I mostly only felt around Anders.

"What.. what are you?"

"Can't you see?" She said, her voice breaking. "I am you. I am the woman you are supposed to be. Unbroken by your mother's infidelity. Unshattered by your mate's abuse. Untethered by a man who was born to kill you."

My knees almost gave way. "Why would Anders kill me?"

"Because of what you really are. Should I help you out of your confusion, Storm?"

"Please," I whispered. "Help me understand. All my life, I have been an omega and now..."

She leaned away, watching me, her hands gently falling away from my chin.

"You read Luna Lillian Ford's diary, did you not?"

I nodded slowly. "Yes. I..."

"You read about the cruel fate of Anders. The anomaly she caused by carrying the silver wolf... and mating herself to a lowly omega in a botched ritual carried out by a dark witch."

My breath hitched. "I..."

"You didn’t know. Now you do. When the same onega showed exactly why omegas are not mated to silver wolves especially the Fords, she killed herself. Tragic. But she left behind Anders, and he is the biggest punishment, to you, to me. To all of us."

She took a step back, a small smile lifting the edge of her lips. "Your mother was unhinged, but I needed a body to live, and she found the best after Anders. After Lillian's infidelity tore me, the silver wolf into two unequal pieces, me the larger one, and the other, just large enough to make Anders alpha still within him."

"So..." I said, my fingers digging into my palm. "How do I come into any of this? Anders possesses a silver wolf and..."

"No, he does not just possess a silver wolf. He possesses something far darker, something only I can tame, and even that, just for a short time." She tilted her head to the right. "As for how you come in, it is because your mother conceived you by sleeping with the man who should have been Anders's father if Lillian had not deviated. She slept with the man whose union with the Ford would have completed the silver wolf fully like the moon goddess wanted. Lillian's real mate."

I took a step back, my knees giving way as I fell straight to the floor, a single tear running down my left cheek.

"You are the silver wolf Lillian spoke about in her diary, Storm. You are what would rid all of us of Anders. Let me in. I am already too late as it is and your body is already starting to form another Anders. So please. Do not let the burning ritual happen. Bacuse if it does... he will take us too."