25 - Haze

Clarity gives way to an instinct that has me slashing my knife at Rowan. He rips away from me; I follow like the cold promise of death, tackling him until we land hard on the floor in a tangle of limbs.

I swipe and slash and grapple for the upper hand with the ferocity of a wild animal as he reaches up to stop me, calling my name, his eyes alight with terror. I can barely hear him over the piercing white noise drilling into my head.

Everywhere I look is sharp and electric. The symbols on my arms are a white fire scalding across my skin, tearing a strangled cry from my throat.

Awareness is shoved to the back of my mind and locked away— panicked thoughts claw to be free, throwing around words like ritual and Haze and oh fuck that won't quite penetrate the fog.

My body is not my own. My limbs settle into an archaic dance of fighting and slashing and I'm powerless to stop it. I'm a conduit for pure, charged lightning. I'm going to kill him, right here, and I can't stop myself.

He won't stop moving. Struggling and holding me back as best he can and shouting for someone. He's not hurting me, but still I throw everything I've got at him. I slash at his arms, at his chest, aiming for a more fatal blow. Every solid connection, every line of blood I see, sends a bone-deep exhilaration ripping the air from my lungs. My eyes are searing as though a white-hot poker has been shoved in them.

Frames go missing in my head, as though my mind is losing signal.

The door crashes open and Beau storms in— eyes ablaze. He sees us and falters as I lay the heat of my gaze on him. "What the fuck—?!"

"Don't hurt him!" Rowan exclaims. Desperate. His voice tugs at my focus and I slash and pin him down and raise my knife for a fatal blow.

Hands drag me up. Beau. The next instant, he's gone. Sprawled on the floor, clutching at his bloody side. Shouting for Lachlan.

Gone.

Focus rushes back right as my fist goes flying towards Rowan's jaw.

Gone again.

There's hands on me, dragging me away. I struggle with unnatural ferocity, forcing myself free with clinical precision and receiving grunts of pain for my efforts. There's nothing stopping me from rushing at Rowan. I descend on him in a blur, thinking of nothing but the satisfaction of shoving my knife through him.

I can't stop myself. But it's more than that. I don't want to stop. I want him dead. I need him dead.

He's a threat. He's going to bite me if I don't kill him first.

No. No—

"River, please! Come back to me!"

Rowan. His voice is strained and desperate, and it seems to cut right through the chaos and into the little corner of my mind still grasping for awareness. Instinct wars with reality. I don't know what's real.

I come to a gasping, shuddering mess. My limbs jerk and shake as though a lightning strike has shot through me and a headache pounds behind my temples.

Silver seeps from the world; a fog lifting. I find myself holding Rowan against the wall with my knife pushed firmly up against his neck. His skin sizzles beneath the burn of the blade and his eyes are hard and focused, trapping me in a haze of honey and terror. There's hands on my arms, on my wrist, trying fervently to keep me still. To keep the knife still.

"Come back to me, River," he breathes. He's not fighting me. He's frozen beneath my unyielding hold.

Rage blazes white-hot through my blood, but I rip the knife free of him and let it slip from my trembling hands and clatter harmlessly to the floor. "Fuck," I manage, stumbling back.

My efforts have me falling into Beau and Lachlan— who I realise are the ones that held me back from killing Rowan, just now. As they drag me further away from their alpha, and as I let them, one of them kicks my knife out of reach. They're breathing hard, their grips steely and their features stoic, and I know whatever fight I've just emerged from has caught them off-guard.

Fuck, it caught me off-guard.

Rowan follows in our wake, hands raised as though I'm a cornered wild animal. "It's alright, you're okay. I'm fine, I promise."

"Rowan—" Beau begins unsteadily.

"Leave us," Rowan says, going to great effort to keep his voice level even despite the fear lurking behind his golden eyes. Lines of crimson torment his form. I did that.

"Absolutely not," Lachlan argues at once, his hold on me tightening securely.

"Let him go, then."

The beta and gamma do so hesitantly, their forms rippling with tension and their eyes scorching into me as they study my features for any sign of that madness. I'm caught in some form of shock, my focus flitting rapidly between Rowan's face and his scratched arms and the knife lying bloodied and glinting on the floor, fitting together all the puzzle pieces of the chaos I've just emerged from.

My mind is ablaze. Thoughts are burning leaves caught on a gale. My veins tingle with adrenaline and it leaves me shivering.

In the heavy silence, Rowan starts for me once more.

I flinch away from him. "Don't touch me!" I rush out, just in case the contact drags me right back down into that... that Haze. Fuck.

I'm expecting him to retreat, as he always does. I'm expecting his hands to raise and I'm expecting him to give me a little space.

He does not.

"Don't shut me out," he argues, throwing his arms around me. "Not this time."

I struggle, at first. But he holds me steadfast and I melt into a world of cinnamon and musk.

I almost killed him, just now.

The thought is a shard of ice in my chest. It's an explosion in the back of my mind that sends every wall crumbling, leaving nothing but ruin and terror in its wake. Shocks dance up and down my nerves; stabbing in fits and starts. I can't support my own weight and end up melting into Rowan's hold. He sinks to the floor with me.

His torn shirt is crumpled in my fists as I suck in lungfuls of air to try and clear my head. He's speaking softly — assurances and promises — in a way that seeps through all the cracks in my mind. In my skin.

I have nothing. My family have taken everything— and now not even my own mind is safe from their torment. My actions are not my own; I'm a puppet and a pawn and a mindless soldier. They've taken my sister and they've taken my control and they're going to make sure I destroy the one person that makes me feel safe.

"I'm sorry," I gasp out as sobs threaten to choke me. "I'm so, so sorry. They— they did something to me in the woods and I can't control it. I can't stop it."

"Shh, it's alright," he murmurs into my hair, holding me with a security I've never known before. Ever so carefully, he coaxes me towards his neck and waves of his calming scent wash over me with every breath, bringing some shade of peace to my frayed edges. His embrace is solid yet gentle — easily broken — but it's bringing me comfort and I don't want to move.

It's such a werewolf thing to do, I realise. In their wolf forms, when they believe they are safe, they're remarkably physical. Always sniffing each other and rolling about and napping in piles. Some of that desire for contact, for comfort, must linger even when they shift.

I've just tried to kill him without thought or remorse, and here he is holding me close and attentively, as though I'm the one in pain.

That thought, like an electric shock, startles me to awareness. I jolt out of his hold. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine," he assures me.

I study him closely, anyway. He's all tousled and wide-eyed, and there's lines of crimson marring his arms and chest. I cut his cheek and blood leaks like tears down his olive skin; tangled roots of a pain I caused.

Guilt grabs hold of my throat, choking me, and I reach up to swipe my thumb across his cheek. The cut is small and already healing, but knowing it was my blade that caused it feels as though I've taken the knife and plunged it into my own chest.

My defences are down and the words come spilling before I can stop them.

"I messed it all up," I mutter, self-pity warring with self-hatred. "I messed up the fucking trial and Esme's dead because I couldn't get to her in time. I messed up with my family and they've made me a monster. I messed up with you. You should've finished me off in that alley and saved yourself all the trouble."

A bleak understanding settles over his features, dark as rolling thunderclouds. "You haven't messed anything up, River, and you're not a monster. The monsters are the ones that chose to kill your sister and shoot you. No family does that to someone they care about. What did they do to you? Will you tell me what just happened?"

I sniff and break his gaze, staring down at my hands in my lap. His blood stains my skin. Beau and Lachlan are silent, but I can feel their attention burning holes in me. "It... it's called a Haze. When we reach twenty-five, we're given a trial. If we're deemed worthy, there's this... ritual that brings out our hunter nature. It takes our skills and makes them tenfold. An obligation to kill becomes a desire. A desperation. The ritual was supposed to happen on the night they killed Esme and I thought— I thought I got away, and then they finished it in the woods. I... I couldn't stop it."

"Fuck," Beau mutters. I risk a glance. His arms are crossed, his features tugged into a frown, and I see a gash torn in his side, weeping blood. Next to him, Lachlan scrutinises me with narrowed, focused eyes. Shame has me dropping my gaze at once.

"Look at me," Rowan says, taking my head in his hands and, ever so gently, wiping away stray tears with the pads of his thumbs. "We'll fix this, alright? I promise."

I stare at him, lost in his dark gaze. The words rise unbidden. "You can't fix me."

"Let me try. Please, River— I have to try. You came back to me." He must see some stirring embers of defeat behind my eyes, because his features twist with something close to agony and he says, "I'm not like them. I'm not going to turn my back on you. We're going to face these hunters as one and we'll sort the Duskland mess and we'll find a cure. There has to be a cure."

"It's who I am. Is there a cure for a werewolf bite?" I cut back, pulling myself from his hold.

His patience does not waver. "It's what they made you, River. Their hatred does not define you." He stares at me for a long moment, pensive and uncertain. When he speaks, his tone is soft with a heavy note of understanding. "Was it because we were close, just now? Is that what triggered it?"

I shake my head and mumble, "I don't think so. I thought you were going to bite me. I saw Esme with the bite on her shoulder and something inside of me just... snapped."

"River, I vow on the lives of my whole pack— I will not bite you. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. I... I got a little carried away. It won't happen again."

Something behind his eyes goes dim and cold and he shuffles back a little. Giving me space or giving it to himself in case I go all... hazy again.

I wonder exactly how far he'll take his promise, and the mere thought of him retreating makes something inside of me fracture. I can't stand it.

I look towards the bed, thinking of those few moments of bliss before the spearing weight of my legacy ruined everything. I get up and approach but, instead of falling beneath the sheets and pretending nothing has just happened, I take a throwing blade from the nightstand and study it. The sleek beauty of the silver glints in the light.

From the corner of my eye, I see Rowan is still knelt on the floor, watching me. Lachlan and Beau regard me warily, arms crossed like a couple of stoic bouncers. Wondering if I'll snap again.

I release a sharp breath and turn to face Rowan, all business. "I need you to get rid of these," I tell him, tossing the knife onto the bed. "All of them. Right now."

He frowns, rising. "What?"

"My knives. I can't— if I Haze, I can't have them near me. I can't stop myself— I could hurt you. I could... I could kill you, Rowan."

"Are you sure?" he asks, picking up my silver knife from the floor with a care and attentiveness akin to someone either holding a bomb or a baby.

"You're all safer without them."

"River, don't think of us. Think of yourself. Are you okay with me taking these?"

I blow out a shuddering breath and nod. I've had these knives for years, and getting rid of them feels like ripping out my own heart, the very thing that makes me who I am. But I cannot keep them. Rowan and his pack are my allies and I cannot trust myself not to snap if one of them so much as wanders too close.

Until I can figure out how to stop myself from falling, the silver needs to be out of reach.

Besides, I muse, any weapon will work on my family. Not just silver.

It's a leap of faith from a burning building— I know I have no other choice, and I have to trust that Rowan will stick to his word and keep me safe.

He watches me closely. Whatever he sees has him frowning, but he nods and moves to collect the rest of my weapons.

Before he can cross the distance between us, there's a hard knock on the bedroom door that has me flinching. I'm on high alert and anything that catches me off-guard could haul me right back into a Haze.

Morgan peeks her head into the room. She looks from me to Rowan, scratches slicing his form, to Beau and Lachlan still wound tighter than coils against a threat. "What the...? You know what, we've got bigger problems."

"Please don't tell me that, love," Beau whines, closing his eyes and tilting his head back in exasperation. "I can't take any more drama."

"What is it?" Lachlan asks, already wincing preemptively.

"Duskland's on our doorstep. Quite literally."