Chapter 301

Chapter 301

Alex's POV

Caitlin's eyes were glowing gold in the dark of her bedroom.

I crossed the room fast and put both hands on her shoulders. She was shaking hard, her whole body tight, and her skin was burning through the thin fabric of her sleep shirt. Her fingers were gripping the bedpost so hard her knuckles had gone white.

"Look at me," I said quietly. "Caitlin, look at my face, not at your hands."

She dragged her eyes up to mine. They were still gold, still lit from somewhere deep inside, and there was real terror in them underneath the glow.

"It's happening," She whispered. "Right now. Alex, I can feel it, it's starting-"

"I know. I can feel it too." I kept my voice low and steady. "But you cannot shift here. Not in this house. You need to hold it back for just a few more minutes. Can you do that?"

"I don't know how-"

"Yes you do breathe right now. In through your nose."

She breathed in sharply, ragged and uneven.

"Out through your mouth. Slower."

She breathed out her shaking didn't stop but it slowed slightly, just enough.

"Good," I said. "Again keep breathing, the shift responds to your state. If you panic it comes faster. If you breathe you buy yourself time."

She did it again and again. Her jaw was clenched so hard I could see the muscle working in her cheek. Her eyes stayed on mine and I kept my hands on her shoulders and held her gaze and didn't look away.

Then her face crumpled.

"My parents," She said the words came out broken.

"Alex, my parents are in this house. My mum is right down the hall. She cannot see this. She cannot know about any of this, she would it would destroy her, she would be so scared-"

"She is not going to see anything," I said. "I promise you but we have to go right now."

She nodded fast, wiping her face with the back of her hand. "Okay. Okay, yes. Go."

I grabbed the blanket off her bed and tucked it under my arm. She pushed her feet into her trainers without tying them and I opened the bedroom door slowly, checked the hallway, and listened. The house was still. My parents' borrowed room was quiet. Her parents' room at the end of the hall, same.

I put one hand on the small of her back and we moved down the stairs together, slow and careful, avoiding the step near the bottom that I had already figured out creaked badly when I came up earlier. Caitlin knew which one it was without me telling her. She stepped over it automatically.

We got through the kitchen and out the back door and I pulled it shut behind us without a sound.

Outside the cold air hit us both. Caitlin sucked in a breath and grabbed my arm.

"It's getting worse," She said through her teeth. "Alex-"

"The car. Now."

We went around the side of the house fast. I unlocked the SUV and she got into the passenger seat and I was in and starting the engine within seconds. I pulled out onto the road as quietly as I could and drove.

She had both hands pressed flat against her thighs. Her breathing was audible, controlled but only just. The gold light in her eyes flickered every few seconds, surging when the pressure inside her built and settling slightly when she managed to breathe through it.

"How far?" She asked.

"Ten minutes there are woods east of here, outside the town boundary. Deep enough."

She nodded and stared straight ahead and kept breathing.

I drove fast.

The trees started about a mile past the last streetlight. I turned off the main road onto a dirt track I had clocked on the drive in earlier, the kind of habit that never fully switched off, and followed it until the headlights showed nothing but forest in every direction. I stopped the car and killed the engine.

Silence except for the wind in the branches and Caitlin's breathing beside me.

"We're here," I said.

She was out of the door before I finished the sentence.

I grabbed the blanket and followed her. She was standing a few feet from the car in the dark, her arms wrapped around herself, her whole body shaking. The glow in her eyes was constant now, not flickering, just steady gold cutting through the darkness of the trees.

I stopped in front of her.

"Okay," I said.

"Listen to me carefully when it comes, don't fight it. That is the most important thing. Every instinct you have right now is telling you to hold it back and lock it down. That is the wrong thing to do. Fighting the shift makes it slower and it makes it hurt more. You have to let it move through you."

She stared at me. "Let it move through me."

"Yes, don't brace against it. When you feel it coming up your spine, breathe out and let your body do what it needs to do."

"Easy for you to say," She said sharply. "You've been doing this your whole life."

"I know."

"No." Her voice rose.

"You don't know you don't know what it's like to have this happen to you without choosing it. You grew up with this. You were born into it. I didn't get a choice, Alex. I never got to decide if I wanted this life or not. You made that decision for me."

I didn't say anything.

"My whole life," She said, and her voice cracked.

"Everything I planned, everything I thought my future looked like. You changed all of it without asking me. Without even telling me what you were doing. I didn't get to say yes or no, I just woke up on fire on a cell floor and that was it that was my life now."

"Caitlin-"

"Don't." She held up one hand.