Chapter 83 — Between Dream and Reality

Chapter 83 — Between Dream and Reality
The first thing Kori registered was the weight of the air. Thick. Heavy. Too quiet.

Her eyes fluttered open, and the familiar ceiling beams above her blurred into focus. The farmhouse. Her room. Safe. But—something was wrong. She could feel it in the ache that pulsed deep in her belly, in the faint metallic tang that clung to her tongue.

Her head shifted slightly on the pillow, just enough to catch the faint glow of moonlight filtering through her curtains. The room was empty. No Jared, no Sam, no one. Just her, swallowed by silence.

Confusion tightened her chest as her mind scrambled to remember.

She had been in bed… alone. Naked, still warm from her thoughts of Jared. The creak of the floorboards had reached her too late. A weight crashing down on her, a hand over her mouth—

Kori’s stomach lurched, bile rising at the memory of him. Matt. The familiarity of his voice, the rancid anger in his words. Her body flinched before she could stop it, the phantom pressure of his weight pressing her into the mattress all over again.

Her breath hitched. More fragments surfaced—his tirade, his claws flashing, the burn of them tearing into her flesh. The pain. So much pain.

Her hand trembled as she moved it over her stomach, bracing herself for the gaping wound she remembered. Instead, she found smooth skin. Tender, but whole. Not torn open, not bleeding. Whole.

Her brows knitted together, confusion sinking deeper. She remembered crying out, remembered the searing agony, the rush of blood flooding her fingers as she tried to hold herself together—

And then… warmth. Fierce, overwhelming warmth that pushed into her veins, pulling her back from the edge.

Her thoughts snagged on it. That moment.

Jared.

She remembered the feel of his arms around her, the frantic edge in his voice as he said her name. And then—heat, sharp and crushing, exploding through her shoulder as teeth sank into her flesh. A sound had torn from her throat, half pain, half something else entirely.

Her hand rose shakily, fingers brushing the side of her neck. Right there. The spot throbbed faintly, though the skin was smooth beneath her fingertips.

Kori’s breath stuttered. The memory was vivid, too vivid to be dismissed, but surely… surely that had been a dream. A desperate imagining born from her fading consciousness.

Her eyes slipped shut again, her palm pressed over the spot where she swore Jared had bitten her. The ghost of his voice echoed in her mind, rough and desperate, begging her to stay.

If it was a dream, it was one she didn’t want to wake from.

But if it was real…

Kori swallowed hard, her heart beating unevenly against her ribs as the question gnawed at her: What had Jared done to save her?

Kori’s fingers stayed pressed to her neck long after the phantom memory faded. She tried to slow her breathing, to convince herself that everything was fine, but her body wasn’t listening.

A strange feeling began to creep across her skin—light at first, almost like static clinging to her in the dry air. She shivered and shifted beneath the blanket, but the sensation followed.

It spread across her arms, her stomach, her legs. Not heavy or painful—just… wrong.

Her brows furrowed as she dragged her nails lightly down her arm. The sensation only grew sharper. Little pinpricks prickled along her skin, spreading like invisible sparks dancing over her flesh. The itch burned in places she couldn’t quite reach, deep under the surface, as if her body itself was trying to claw its way free.

Kori’s chest tightened. She kicked the blanket down, desperate for air.

Her eyes darted around the room. Still empty. Still quiet. Still safe. But her body didn’t believe it. Her body screamed that something was happening—something inside of her—and she didn’t understand it.

A buzzing rose in the back of her mind, faint at first, like a whisper she couldn’t catch. It grew louder, pulsing with the rhythm of her heartbeat, the edges of it curling around her thoughts like smoke.

Her hand pressed harder against her temple. “What… what is happening to me?” she whispered, though no one was there to answer.

Panic coiled in her gut. Was she losing her mind? Or worse—was she dying, after all? Maybe whatever Jared had done to save her had only bought her a little more time. Maybe her body was shutting down and these strange feelings were just her brain breaking apart.

Her nails dug into her thigh, searching for grounding. But the buzzing only intensified, the pinpricks sharpening, driving her restless body into a state she couldn’t escape.

She curled onto her side, clutching the sheets as though holding tight to something solid might keep her from unraveling completely.

Whatever this was, it wasn’t normal. 

And for the first time since Jared had walked into her life, Kori was truly terrified of herself.

Kori dragged in a shaky breath, every muscle in her body taut, every nerve stretched to its breaking point.

The pinpricks didn’t fade. They multiplied. Her skin hummed with overstimulation, every brush of fabric against her body unbearable. The sheet that had once comforted her now felt like sandpaper against raw flesh. She pushed it away, desperate for relief, but the air itself carried weight—too heavy, too thick.

Her hands trembled as she ran them over her arms. The simple touch made her flinch. Her skin was hypersensitive, her body reacting to every stroke of her own fingers like it was too much. Too much heat. Too much sensation. Too much everything.

Her chest rose and fell in sharp bursts. It felt like her body wasn’t her own anymore, like it had been hijacked, and she was locked inside with no way out.

The heaviness grew next. A bone-deep weight that sank into her limbs, pulling her down into the mattress as though gravity itself had sharpened its grip on her. Her muscles trembled with the effort of moving even a fraction, as if her body wanted to pin her in place until… until what?

Until she broke? Until she burned from the inside out?

Her throat tightened with the effort not to cry.

She curled in on herself, clutching her middle, rocking slightly as the buzzing in her head merged with the heaviness in her body. Her breath shuddered. A part of her screamed to call for help, to scream for Frank, or Sam, or anyone—but she couldn’t. The words caught in her throat.

Her mind reached for only one person.

‘Jared.’

It wasn’t spoken aloud. It wasn’t even whispered. But in the midst of her fear, the name rose silently in her mind like a prayer, a plea carried out into the dark.

‘Please… I need you.’

She didn’t know if the thought would go anywhere, didn’t know if it would vanish like smoke the moment it left her. But she clung to it anyway, the only thread of hope she had in this storm of sensation tearing her apart from the inside out.