The return to consciousness was not an awakening. It was an assault.
First came the sound a ragged, desperate gasp that scraped my raw throat. My own. Then the pain a jackhammer beating a relentless rhythm against the inside of my skull. My lungs burned, seizing as they tried to expel the last phantom traces of chemical sweetness and replace it with clean air. I choked, coughed, my body convulsing.
Sensation flooded in, chaotic and wrong.
Warmth. Too much of it. A heavy, solid weight draped across my ribs, pinning me. An arm. The scent of clean linen, expensive sandalwood soap, and beneath it, the faint, unmistakable musk of male.
My brain, still swaddled in cotton wool, tried to process. I wasn't on the cold floor of the storage room. The surface beneath me was firm, yet yielding. It moved. A slow, steady rise and fall.
Breathing.
The realization detonated in the center of my being.
My eyes flew open.
The world was a blur of cream and gold and shadow. My face was pressed against something warm and solid. My leg was tangled with something else. My fingers… my splayed fingers were resting on bare, heated skin. I could feel the steady, powerful rhythm of a heartbeat against my palm.
Thu-thump. Thu-thump.
Ice water replaced the blood in my veins. Every muscle locked.
No. This isn't happening. This is a deeper layer of the dream. A worse one.
Slowly, with a dread that felt like a physical weight crushing my chest, I lifted my head.
And met a pair of silver-blue eyes.
They were inches from mine. Wide. Uncomprehending. Blinking slowly, as if surfacing from the same deep, poisoned well. Sleep-softened, shock-dilated, but unmistakable.
Alpha King Stellan Voss.
The world didn't just tilt; it upended and shattered. The jagged pieces rained down, each one a terrifying fact:
I was in a bed.
He was in the bed.
I was lying ON TOP of him.
A scream tore out of me. It was a raw, animal sound of pure, unadulterated terror. It ripped from a place deeper than logic, deeper than shame, a primal rejection of this impossible, horrifying reality.
I shoved away from him as if his skin were white-hot iron. My limbs, clumsy and weak, tangled in impossibly soft sheets. I scrambled backward, falling over the side of the absurdly high bed. The floor rushed up to meet me, the impact a bright, shocking pain in my hip and elbow that, for a blessed second, overshadowed the mental cataclysm.
I stared up from the sumptuous carpet, my heart a frantic, caged thing trying to beat its way out of my ribs. The room spun a vast, opulent chamber of dark wood, rich fabrics, and tasteful, terrifying luxury. The royal chambers.
Stellan surged upright in the bed, the sheets pooling around his waist. His hair was a wild, pale mess. His face, usually carved from marble, was pale with a confusion so deep it bordered on panic. He looked from me a crumpled, wide-eyed heap on his floor to the room, then back to me. The horror in his eyes mirrored my own, and that, somehow, was the most frightening thing of all.
"What." The word was a gravelly rasp, stripped of all authority. He cleared his throat, the sound harsh. "What is this? What are you doing here?"
The accusation in his tone, the sheer, bewildered fury, broke my paralysis. "I don't know!" My voice was a tremulous shriek. "I don't… the storage room… the cloth…" The dream-memories surged back the dragging, the candles, the chanting, his hand in mine. A fresh wave of nausea, acidic and sharp, rose in my throat. "Oh, gods. Oh, no."
My gaze dropped from his furious, confused face to myself. To what I was wearing.
The scream had died in my throat, but a new, silent one began.
The rough servant's uniform was gone. In its place was a gown. A confection of silver-white silk so fine it felt like cool water against my skin. It was embroidered with a delicate, swirling pattern of crescent moons and running wolves, the threads catching the morning light filtering through heavy curtains. The neckline was lower than anything I'd ever owned. The sleeves were long and fitted.
It was breathtakingly beautiful.
It was a Solstice wedding dress.
The reality of it hit me like a physical blow. I staggered to my feet, the dress whispering around my ankles, a sound both elegant and obscene. I held out my arms, staring at the sleeves as if they belonged to a stranger.
Across the room, Stellan's gaze followed mine. He took in the dress, his expression hardening from confusion into something darker. With a grimace that was all controlled violence, he threw back the sheets.
He was wearing dark, formal trousers of the finest wool. The kind worn only for holy ceremonies and state functions.
He didn't look at me. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, his movements stiff, charged with a lethal, suppressed energy. He stood, a tower of barely contained rage and confusion, and snatched a black silk robe from a nearby chair. He shrugged into it, tying the belt with a sharp, definitive yank.
"Explain." The single word was a glacier, cold and commanding. The Ice King was re-forming, but the cracks were visible. Beneath the frost, I could see the same tectonic plates of panic shifting that were tearing me apart.
"I can't," I whispered, my voice a broken thing. The word was true in a way he couldn't possibly understand. I couldn't explain because I didn't know. All I had were nightmares and this waking, living horror.
My left hand stung. A dull, persistent ache. I glanced down, a minor curiosity amid the catastrophe.
And the world stopped.