Teeth sank into my arm.
The sharp pain jolted me awake, forcing my eyes open.
I was still underwater—but I wasn't alone.
A massive wolf swam beside me, its fur so dark it swallowed the moonlight, a shadow given form. Its eyes glowed faintly, like distant stars shimmering through the depths.
For a heartbeat, I forgot to struggle. The sight was too unreal, too impossible.
Then it tugged—hard—its fangs locked around my arm as it dragged me upward through the water.
The pressure in my chest built, my mind too dazed to understand what was happening. Was it saving me… or finishing what the attacker started?
The question never found an answer.
The world tilted, sound fading into a dull roar, and I let the darkness take me again.
"How could you save her?" someone shouted.
I lay on the grass, coughing water, half-awake and half-drowned. Every breath burned. The world tilted between sharp sound and muffled silence.
It was him.
The same face from the lake—handsome, terrible, impossible. The one who had been trying to drown me.
"I'm going to kill her," he bellowed again, voice raw with fury.
Panic slammed through me. I forced my limbs to move, to crawl away from him, but my body betrayed me. The grass slid under my palms; my vision blurred; the edges of everything darkened.
I tried to fight, to pull myself upright, to find a way away—but the lake's cold fingers still clung to me. Darkness rolled in like a tide.
I gasped once more and then sank back into black.