Chapter 45

AKELA’S POV

I gasped and opened my eyes, breathing heavily. I realized that it was a dream, but it felt too real. I looked at Dakota and found that she was looking at me right back. Her eyes were wide in shock, with a hint of fear in them, and breathing very fast. I looked towards the window and saw that it was open, I could have sworn that I closed it before coming to bed. And the floor of my room looked a bit foggy, just like in the dream, making me wonder if it was a dream.

“What happened?” I asked Dakota.

“A bad dream,” she said in a whisper. I took her hand in mine and pulled her to me, wrapping my arms around her, burying my nose in her hair and breathing in her scent.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” She was silent, and for a while, I thought that she wouldn’t respond. She took a deep breath and nodded.

“The dream…it was very weird. And it felt so real.” I began to massage her scalp as she spoke.

“There was a man…woman…I don’t know. Couldn’t see their features. Whatever it was was standing over there…” She turned away from me to point at the window, the same place where I had seen the shadow. And I felt my blood still. I didn’t like where my mind was going, but it was beginning to look like my mind was right.

“I felt a little tired to move, but you…you did. The whole room was so foggy that I almost couldn’t see what was going on. You walked to her and asked her what she wanted.” My hand stilled in her hair. Did we just have the same dream?

“Then what happened?” She took a deep breath, as though to gather strength from the air around her.

“That thing…did something to you, and then you were on your knees. I was so scared. I tried to move, but it felt as though my body was placed on some sort of spell.” Dakota shuddered in my arms, and I pulled back just enough to look at her face. I wiped the tears that had fallen from her eyes.

She took a deep breath and pulled away from me, sitting up on the bed. She took deep, calming breaths and wiped her whole face with her palms.

“It was as though something was controlling your body. Some sort of external force. You remained on your knees. Why it would do that, I don’t know.” She sighed. I hated that she was doing that too frequently.

“Then I felt as though there were fingers in my head, trying to get inside or something. And then…then it felt like I was in another dream. Like a dream in a dream…what I saw…”

Dakota shuddered and wrapped her hand around herself. I, on the other hand, was worried. Her narration was a little too familiar, but I didn’t want to interrupt her till she was done. I needed to understand what was going on here.

“Then what happened?”

“War. Blood. Destruction. Death. And standing in the middle of it all was Odin.”

“Fuck.”

“Then I saw my dead body, lying next to yours.” She looked at me, and her eyes welled with tears. “Everyone I knew was lying there in a pool of their blood. Alphas lay dead, alongside their mates. Those who refused to submit themselves to Odin’s rule were killed. And by rogues. That was the surprising part.”

Dakota took a deep breath, and more tears ran down her cheeks. I sat up as well and took her into my arms, rubbing her back, while waiting for her to let it all out. I looked toward the window again, and conviction settled in my gut that whatever happened last night was out of the ordinary and was meant to come as a warning of sorts. I decided to tell her of my suspicions when she had calmed down enough.

“Dakota.”

“Hm.”

“Don’t freak out, but there is something I have to tell you.” She looked up at my face with wide eyes.

“You do know that when you tell someone not to freak out, that is all the reason the person needs to freak out, right?”

“Right. But still. Listen.”

“Okay.”

“Your dream. It was the same as mine.” She stilled for a few seconds, then she moved away from me and sat opposite me, turning the bedside lamp on.

“What?”

“Shh. You’ll wake up the house.”

“What the fuck did you say?” she whisper-yelled.

“We both had the same dream. Every single detail you narrated to me, I saw the same thing too. It was almost like…we had the same dream.”

“Wow. That’s wild.”

“Yes. What’s wilder is the fact that I have a hunch that that wasn’t a dream.” Her eyes grew as wild as saucers.

“What?” I gave her a look, and she clamped her hands over her mouth. “What makes you think that?”

“Well, for starters, the window was open when I opened my eyes.”

“You might have forgotten to close it?” I shook my head. I hated more than anything leaving my window open.

“Not just that. The same fog that was in our dream was still in this room, though not as thick as it was in the dream. But it was there nonetheless, just on the floor.”

Dakota looked around the room in disbelief. We could still see tiny traces of the fog. For whatever reason, and somehow, the fog had cleared.

“My goodness. Do you think that maybe that was a warning? A vision? A threat?”

“I don’t know, Dakota. But I know that we need to know about Odin’s every movement. The whole dream had him as the main threat.”

“Yeah.”

“You mentioned rogues. Remember when Odin was traveling a lot, and word around the pack was that he was making alliances with other packs?” She nodded.

“Yes. What about that?”

“And you also remember we asked my dad to look into it, and he said that there were no new alliances whatsoever. What if?” I cocked a brow at her and let her connect the dots. She gasped.

“What if the alliances he has been making have been with rogues?” I felt chills down my spine. If our speculations were true, then there was a fire on the mountain. Not just in this pack, but in all the packs around the world.

“Fuck. What do we do, Akela?” I opened my mouth to respond and then remembered what the shadow had told me. To protect Dakota. Not that I needed anyone to tell me to do that. I would gladly lay my life on the line for her.

“First of all, we need to see to it that you’re trained.”

“I am trained.” I scoffed.

“Properly trained.”

“I am properly trained.”

“Quit your whining, Dakota. You know the skills you have are not adequate.” She slumped her shoulders.

…because part of protecting her was making sure that she could adequately protect and defend herself. Just in case we get separated, she needed to be able to hold her own.