Chapter 307: Midnight Encounters

Vivian’s POV

The thought alone made my chest tighten up. How on earth was I supposed to look Zahliver in the eyes after something like that? What if he looked at me and saw a total stranger someone permanently tainted by violence? What if he decided... he couldn’t bring himself to be with me anymore?

I couldn’t stop picturing the scene in my head: standing across from him at the altar on our wedding day, my hand placed in his, staring into the deep blue eyes of the man I loved... all while knowing in my heart that I had taken the physical life of his only blood relative. Even if I didn’t regret making that choice to survive, how could a terrible act like that not ruin everything between us?

And then Aurora’s cryptic warning kept looping endlessly in my head, twisting my stomach into tight knots.

Wherever you go, you will carry light from now on, but you will be followed by night and night will take over to snuff your light out. Those who failed to see the connection will pay the price in blood, and those who do not play by the rules of their agreement shall face the fury of the heartbroken. There will be pain, no cure, and no salvation only death. If your light goes out... so will you.

What the hell did any of that dark gibberish even mean?

Why couldn’t she ever just say things directly like a normal person? I absolutely hated riddles. I hated the deep dread they left behind, hanging like a severe storm sitting just outside your bedroom window.

I really should tell Zahliver about what she said. He had known Aurora for much longer than I had maybe she had dropped one of her poetic horror messages on him in the past, and he had managed to figure it out back then. Maybe he would know how to make proper sense of her warning.

If your light goes out... so will you.

The eerie words clung stubbornly to the edges of my mind, dark and sticky like old spiderwebs. I shivered against the cool room and wrapped my fingers much tighter around my ceramic mug, letting the warm heat ground me for a brief second.

I brought the hot cup toward my lips when something in the air suddenly changed.

A sharp, sudden prickling sensation ran up both of my arms, lifting every single hair on my skin. I couldn’t explain why, but something deep inside me screamed to look to my right, down the dark hallway that led into the rest of the house. I turned my head very slowly.

At first, everything looked completely normal. Still. Dim. Quiet. But then I saw it.

A figure.

A dark shadow.

It was walking silently toward me.

Pure ice ran straight down my spine. My mind screamed absolute danger, and my inner instincts roared in agreement. My wolf stirred inside me tense, alert, deeply confused. I wanted to throw the steaming green tea sitting in my hand right at whoever was lurking in the shadows and go full feral on them if I had to. But then his distinct scent hit my nose.

"Joshula..." I whispered into the quiet room, barely able to get his name out of my tight throat.

I was still completely frozen in place my arm half-raised toward my face, my tea cup held inches from my lips just stuck in that terrible moment of utter disbelief.

He stepped out from the hallway’s dark shadows and walked directly into the soft silver moonlight filtering through the large kitchen windows. His smile sent cold chills crawling all over my skin it looked completely off, deeply unsettling, and far too calm for a male stepping up on someone at nearly three in the morning. His mismatched green and blue eyes looked unnaturally wide and glassy, almost... far too big in his pale face. And there was something hiding deep inside them. Something fundamentally wrong.

A murky yellow glimmer flashed at the edges of his irises his wolf. It looked like the beast was actively bleeding into his human eyes.

Dark, toxic smudges painted his pale face like heavy bruises, looking like the physical shadow of something corrupt pressing outward from within his body.

I blinked once, and just like that, the creepy sight vanished. He was simply standing there upright, his long hands clasped neatly behind his back, his face now displaying some twisted blend of subtle surprise and polite friendliness. A small bag hung loosely behind his shoulder.

Everything inside my chest screamed that this situation was not normal.

This was definitely not normal.

And this was not the usual kind of weird behavior I was accustomed to handling around wolves. This felt significantly darker, deeper, and completely wrong.

My heart pounded violently against my ribs, beating fast and loud, as if it were actively trying to warn my body to run.

"Vivian?" he asked in that quiet, curious tone of his, tilting his head just a little too far to the side as he looked at me. "What are you doing up at this hour?"

The creepy way he looked at me made my chest physically ache not with deep emotion, but with a sudden, suffocating pressure, like the air surrounding my body had grown thick and heavy.

I set my teabag cup down onto the counter, immensely glad my hand didn’t shake as I did it, because every single other part of me was visibly trembling on the inside.

Why did I always seem to attract the complete creeps of the world?

Zahliver’s earlier warning words came rushing right back to my mind, bright red flags flashing like neon signs across my brain.

"I couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d make myself some warm tea," I replied, doing my absolute best to sound relaxed and casual. "What about you?"

"I was just returning from somewhere," he said smoothly, stepping a bit closer.

Returning? From where? Something about his smooth tone made my skin crawl with discomfort.

"Oh." I said the word flatly, pretending like his mysterious absence didn’t bother me at all. I could feel his strange, glassy eyes lingering heavily on my body. I desperately needed to get out of this kitchen and leave right now.

"Well "

"You glow so brightly in the light of the moon," he said softly, his voice dropping into a low, husky register.

Nope. Absolutely no. Absolutely not doing this with him.

I quickly plastered a fake, shaky smile onto my face. "It’s my brand new night cream," I blurted out, talking over him. "I read online that it works total wonders for the skin. Do you want me to lend you some?"

I didn’t even own a single jar of night cream in my life. And even if I did, there was no way in hell I would ever let a jar of it anywhere near him.

I really did not like the unsettling way he was looking at me. I did not like the heavy way the air felt thick and electric with something completely unnatural. And most of all, I did not like the terrifying feeling that whatever was currently standing right in front of me was not entirely Joshua anymore.

Something was wrong.

Really, really wrong with him.