Chapter 7: Night Terrors and Secret Fears
The nightmare didn't start with images. It was a sound, seeping through the wall like a poison gas. A low, anguished moan, followed by the distinct, frantic rustle of sheets.
Aria was awake instantly. The luminescent numbers on her clock read 3:47 a.m. She lay in the dark, listening.
Another sound, sharper. A choked gasp. Words, slurred and desperate: "No… not there… don’t go…"
Connor.
She was out of her bed and across the hall before she could think, her bare feet silent on the polished wood floor. She didn’t knock. Ithan’s door was always unlocked, a habit from when they were kids and needed each other after storms. She pushed it open.
The room smelled of clean cotton and male sweat, underscored by the sharp, coppery scent of pure fear. Moonlight filtered through the window, painting silver stripes across the large bed. Ithan was trapped in the middle of it. His body was rigid, muscles corded, the sheets tangled around his legs like vines. His head thrashed on the pillow. A fine tremble ran through him, from his clenched jaw down to his bare feet.
“The smoke… can’t see…” he gritted out, the words fragments of a private horror. “Con… wait!”
Aria’s heart squeezed. This wasn't the controlled Prime. This was the raw, broken boy who’d lost his guiding star. She approached the bed slowly.
“Ithan.” She said his name softly, but he was deep in the undertow.
He let out a sharp cry, a sound of pure loss, and his fist slammed into the mattress beside him. The whole frame shuddered.
She reached out, careful, and touched his shoulder. The heat of his skin through the thin cotton of his shirt was startling. “Ithan. Wake up.”
Her touch was a trigger. His eyes flew open, but they didn’t see her. They were wide, unfocused, pupils swallowing the green. A trapped animal. He reacted on instinct. One of his hands shot out, a blur in the dark, and grabbed the front of her oversized sleep t-shirt—one of his own, soft from a hundred washes. He yanked her forward with terrifying strength.
She stumbled, half-falling onto the bed, her knees hitting the edge of the mattress. His other arm locked around her back, crushing her against his chest. The move wasn’t protective. It was possessive, panicked, a drowning man grabbing onto driftwood.
“Don’t,” he rasped, his voice shredded from screaming in his sleep. His face was buried in her hair, his breath hot and ragged against her scalp. His entire body was shaking. “Don’t go. Please. Don’t choose him. Don’t leave me here alone.”
The words were wet. She felt the damp heat of tears soaking through her hair, onto her scalp. He wasn’t awake, not fully. He was caught in the liminal space between the nightmare and the world, and she was the only solid thing in it.
She didn’t struggle. Struggling would frighten him more. She forced her own breathing to calm, to become something steady he could follow. She brought her arms up, not to push him away, but to wrap around his trembling back. She held on.
“I’m here,” she whispered into the dark hollow between his neck and shoulder. His skin tasted of salt. “You’re awake. It’s me. It’s Aria.”
He shuddered, a full-body convulsion. His grip tightened for a second, so hard her ribs ached, and then it began to loosen, increment by increment. The rigid terror bled out of his muscles, leaving a terrible, limp exhaustion in its wake. The ragged gasps slowed, deepened.
He was coming back. Awareness washed over him like a cold tide. He realized who he was holding. How he was holding her. His arms didn’t let go, but his embrace changed. The desperate clutch became a quieter, more profound clinging. The tears didn’t stop. They were silent now, a steady leak of pain she could feel tracking down her neck.
“Ari,” he choked out, her childhood name. “I saw… the warehouse. The smoke. He was calling for me and I couldn’t… I couldn’t get to him. And then… then it was you. You were walking into the smoke with Donnall. And you wouldn’t look back.”
It was always a variation of the same theme. Conner’s death, mingled with the fear of losing her. She’d known he had nightmares. She’d heard the muffled sounds through the wall for years. But she’d never breached the space, and he’d never let her see the aftermath. The truce last night had changed that. It had stripped a layer of pretense away.
She kept holding him. “I’m not in the smoke. I’m right here.”
“He’ll take you into it,” Ithan whispered, the conviction bleak and absolute. “The Avallen… it’s all smoke and mirrors. Pretty traps. He doesn’t know what it’s like to lose something real. He can’t keep you safe.”
“Maybe I don’t need him to keep me safe,” she said, the words so quiet they were almost just a thought given sound. “Maybe I need to find out what safe even means for me.”
He went very still. The last of his tears soaked into the fabric at her shoulder. The moonlight had shifted, now illuminating the side of his face. She could see the stark tracks on his skin, the utter devastation in his eyes. He was stripped bare. No Prime, no alpha, no angry older brother. Just Ithan, haunted and tired.
“Don’t choose him over us,” he breathed, the plea a final, broken thing.
She didn't answer immediately. She thought of Conner’s ghost, of his quiet, firm support. She thought of Dae’s calm negotiation, of the way he’d given her an out even on a first date. She thought of her room, her pack, the sprawling, stifling safety of this house. She thought of the ache in her chest that was Conner’s absence, and the different ache in her veins that was a forbidden bond.
Finally, she turned her head, her cheek resting against his chest where his heart beat a slow, heavy rhythm. “I’m not,” she whispered softly, her breath warm on his skin. “I’m choosing me.”
The words hung in the dark room. They weren’t defiant. They were just true.
He heard them. She felt the deep, shuddering inhale he took, as if the air itself was thick.He understood. She wasn't choosing the Fae over the pack. She was choosing a path that was hers, and for now, that path involved a dangerous prince. It was a distinction with a razor's edge, but it was everything.
His arms loosened completely. He didn't push her away, but the frantic need to hold on was gone. He shifted, moving back against the headboard, pulling her with him so they were sitting up, side by side, her still nestled within the circle of his arm. It was a familiar position from a hundred childhood thunderstorms, but the context was new, fragile.
He wiped his face roughly with the heel of his free hand. “I look that bad, huh?” he muttered, a pathetic attempt at a joke that died in the quiet.
“You look like you haven’t slept in three years,” she said, not looking at him. She picked at a loose thread on the duvet.
A faint, humorless sound escaped him. “Yeah.” He was silent for a long moment, watching the moonlight slide across the floor. “He’s picking you up here? At seven?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll have Thayer follow. He’s… discreet. He won’t interrupt.”
“Okay.”
Another stretch of silence, but this one was softer. The screaming tension from the yard had been transmuted into this exhausted, predawn intimacy.
“Ari?” His voice was hoarse.
“Hmm?”
“If it’s you you’re choosing…” He paused, gathering the words. “Then make sure he knows that, too.Every second. Don’t let him forget you’re a Holstrom. You have teeth.”
She finally looked up at him. The raw vulnerability was receding, replaced by a somber, brotherly intensity. The Prime wasn't back, but the protector was. “I know.”
He nodded, seemingly satisfied. He leaned his head back against the wall, his eyes closing. The residual tension in his body was finally unwinding, leaving genuine fatigue in its place. “Go back to bed. Big day.Museum. Culture.” He said the last word like it was a mild curse.
She didn't move. He was warm, and solid, and for the first time in so long, he felt like her brother again, not her warden. “You gonna sleep?”
“Eventually.”
“Stay on this side of the smoke,” she said, echoing his earlier words.
A real, faint smile touched his lips. It was tired and sad, but it was real. “I’ll try.”
She untangled herself from his arm, the cool air of the room rushing in where his heat had been. She slipped off the bed and padded to the door. She glanced back. He had slid down, pulling the crumpled sheet over himself, already facing the window, his back to her. He looked younger in the faint light. Unburdened, for a few hours at least.
Back in her own room, the dark felt different. Less confining. She slid into her cold bed, but the ghost of his warmth, the salt-stain of his tears on her skin, lingered. Her phone, on the nightstand, remained dark.No messages.
She stared at the ceiling. She’d chosen herself. The reality of it was a vast, open plain, terrifying in its emptiness. Tomorrow, she’d start walking across it, with a dangerous prince by her side and a wolf watching from the shadows.
She closed her eyes. This time, when she dreamed, there was no smoke. Only a long, moonlit road, and her own footsteps, sounding very small, and very alone, in the immense quiet.
The dream-road vanished with the buzz of her alarm. She dressed in dark leggings, a soft grey sweatshirt, and sturdy trainers. Clothes you could run in. He’d meant it literally, and she took it seriously, a secret thrill in the practicality of it. At 6:55 a.m., she descended the stairs.
Ithan was in the kitchen, already dressed in his own running gear. He leaned against the counter, a mug of black coffee steaming in his hand. Thayer, a broad-shouldered wolf with a perpetual calm expression, stood silently by the back door. The tension was different this morning. Subdued, but wire-taut.
“You look like you’re going to war,” Ithan said, his eyes scanning her from head to toe.
“It’s a museum,” she replied, taking a banana from the fruit bowl. She would not let him rattle her.
“With a Donnall.” He sipped his coffee. “Same thing.”
Before she could retort, a low, purring engine sounded outside. It wasn’t the roar of a pack SUV. It was smoother, predatory. She glanced out the window. A sleek, gunmetal-grey sports car sat idling at the curb, looking profoundly alien on their leafy, pack-owned street. Daemian was leaning against the driver’s side door, hands in the pockets of dark, tailored trousers, a simple black Henley stretching across his shoulders. He looked up at the house, his hazel eyes finding the window, finding her.
Her stomach flipped.
“Showtime,” Ithan muttered, setting his mug down with a definitive click. He followed her to the front door. “Thayer will be in the black SUV two cars back. He’ll text me your location every thirty minutes.”
“Ithan.”
“Every thirty minutes, Aria. That’s the rule. My rule.”
She nodded, swallowing her irritation. It was the price. Daemian had known there would be one. She pulled the door open and stepped out into the crisp morning air.
Daemian straightened as she approached. His gaze went past her, over her shoulder, locking with Ithan’s from the doorway. A silent communication passed between them, all sharp edges and cold assessment. Then Dae’s eyes dropped to her, and his expression changed. The princely mask softened into something more genuine, touched with curiosity and what might have been relief.
“You came,” he said, as if he’d half-expected her to be barred from leaving.
“I said I would.” She stopped a few feet from the car, acutely aware of Thayer slipping out the side door and into the waiting SUV. “Nice car.”
“It’s conspicuous,” he admitted, a faint smirk on his lips. “Makes his job easier.” He opened the passenger door for her. “Shall we?”
The interior smelled of clean leather and something uniquely his—cold stone and crisp autumn air. The engine purred to life as he slid in, a vibration she felt in her bones. He didn’t pull away immediately. He looked at her, really looked, his hazel eyes taking in the careful neutrality of her expression. “How was the rest of your night?”
She thought of Ithan’s tears soaking her hair, the raw plea in the dark. “Fine.” She glanced at him. “You?”
“I re-read the museum’s exhibit notes. I’m now an expert on twentieth-century Meridian street photography.” He put the car in gear, the movement fluid. “Also, I drafted five different versions of how this morning’s small-talk might go. They were all terrible.”
A surprised, small laugh escaped her. The tension in her shoulders loosened a fraction. He didn’t ask about Ithan. He didn’t comment on the shadow following them. He just drove, weaving the powerful car through the waking city with an effortless grace.
Lunathion sprawled around them, a glittering beast of glass and steel and ancient magic. The Photographic Arts Museum was a low, modernist building of glass and pale stone, nestled between taller structures. Dae parallel parked the car with impossible ease. Thayer’s SUV slid into a space half a block down.
Inside, the museum was cool, quiet, a sanctuary of polished concrete and diffused light. The exhibit, “Grit and Glamour: The Crescent City’s Dual Soul,” was a series of stark black-and-white images. They showed crowded, smoky jazz clubs and desolate, rain-slicked alleyways; glittering society galas and the weary faces of dockworkers at dawn. Dae, true to his word, had a quiet, insightful comment about composition or historical context for nearly every one. He didn’t try to hold her hand. He walked beside her, a respectful distance between them, his hands tucked into his pockets. It was civilized. It was, against all odds, normal.
“That one’s my favorite,” he said, stopping before a large print. It was a shot of a young wolf shifter in patched jeans, leaning against a brick wall in what was clearly the Old Square. He was laughing at something off-camera, his face alight with a joy that seemed to erase the weariness in his clothes.
“He looks free,” Aria said quietly.
“He looks poor, and cold, and probably hungry,” Dae replied, just as quiet. He didn’t say it cruelly. It was an observation. “But you’re right. The freedom is there. In the laugh. The photographer caught the contradiction.”
She glanced at him, studying his profile as he studied the photo. He understood contradictions. He was one. The cruel Avallen prince who negotiated for her autonomy. The male who’d sent a ghost to advocate for her. “Why this?” she asked. “Why a museum?”
He looked away from the photo, meeting her eyes. The hazel in his seemed to shift in the gallery light. “Because it’s public. Because it’s quiet. Because I wanted to see what you looked at, what you lingered on. It tells me things screaming matches in front yards don’t.”
His honesty was disarming. It left no room for pretense. Before she could form a response, her phone buzzed in her pocket. Ithan’s thirty-minute check-in. She pulled it out, her thumbs tapping a quick, At museum. All good.
Dae watched the exchange, his expression unreadable. “Shall we move on? There’s a whole wing on post-CCG architectural decay that’s allegedly riveting.”
They walked. They looked. They didn’t touch. Thayer was a silent, ever-present shadow three rooms back. The tension she’d carried from the house gradually unspooled, replaced by a strange, tentative curiosity. This was the shape of the thing they’d built. This quiet, chaperoned stroll through art. It was absurd. It was also, somehow, working.
He bought them overpriced coffee from the museum café afterward. They sat on a bench in a small interior courtyard, a rectangle of sky visible high above. The silence between them was no longer strained. It was just silence, filled with the distant city sounds and the steam from their cups.
“So,” he said finally, turning the cardboard sleeve around his cup. “The rules. Are they… bearable?”
“They’re rules,” she said with a shrug. “Thayer’s fine. He’s not intrusive. The check-ins are annoying.”
“And the curfew?”
“We’ll see how the weekend one a.m. goes,” she said, then bit her lip. She hadn’t meant to give that up.
A slow smile spread across Dae’s face. It reached his eyes, crinkling the corners. “He negotiated the curfew. Good.”
“How is that good?”
“It means he’s capable of compromise. It means he’s thinking politically, not just emotionally. That’s a male I can work with.” He took a sip of his coffee. “It also means you stood your ground. I like that.”
The simple praise sent a warm flush through her. She looked down into her own cup. “He had a nightmare last night. About Conner. About me leaving with you.”
The casual atmosphere evaporated. Dae went very still beside her. “And?”
“And I stayed. We talked.” She didn’t elaborate on the tears, the clinging. That was for her and Ithan alone. “He’s just… scared.”
“I know,” Dae said, his voice low. He wasn’t looking at her anymore. He was staring at the distant patch of sky, his jaw tight. “Fear is the most toxic fuel. It makes good people do terrible things just to feel like they have control. My family wrote the book on it.”
The admission hung between them, heavy and real. He wasn’t defending Ithan. He was explaining him. Understanding him. It was the last thing she’d expected.
Her phone buzzed again. She ignored it. Let Ithan wait an extra minute. “What’s your fuel, then?”
He looked at her then, a long, considering look that seemed to strip away every layer she had. “Right now?” he said, his voice dropping to a rough whisper that was just for her. “You are. This. Trying to be something my brother wasn’t. Trying to not be the villain in your brother’s story. It’s exhausting and it’s the only thing that’s felt right in a long time.”
The world narrowed to the space between them on the bench. To the raw truth in his eyes. The bond in her veins gave a hard, resonant thrum, a physical echo of his words. She couldn’t look away.
Thayer cleared his throat softly from the museum doorway, a polite but firm reminder of reality. The moment shattered. Dae blinked, the intensity receding behind a more neutral expression. He stood, offering her his hand—not to pull her up, just to take her empty coffee cup.
“Time’s up,” he said, his tone returning to its earlier lightness, though it felt forced now. “I should get you back before your brother assumes I’ve spirited you away to Avallen.”
The drive back was quieter. The comfortable silence from the museum had been replaced by something charged, a live wire they’d both touched and were now pretending wasn’t there. He pulled up to the curb in front of the Pack House. Thayer’s SUV parked behind them.
Daemian turned off the engine. He didn’t open his door. He looked at the house, at the door where Ithan was undoubtedly waiting just inside. “Same time next week?” he asked, his voice carefully casual. “I was thinking the botanical gardens. Also public. Also lots of paths. Easy to keep track of.”
She nodded. “I’ll check my busy schedule of lying around my room.” She unbuckled her seatbelt.
“Aria.” His hand shot out, not to grab hers, but to hover near the center console, a request for her to pause. She did. He stared straight ahead. “What you said. About choosing you. I heard that. I… I like that.”
Then he got out, coming around to open her door like this was any normal date. He walked her to the front steps, a gentlemanly gesture for Thayer’s watchful eyes. Ithan opened the front door as they approached, his expression unreadable.
“Holstrom,” Dae said with a slight nod.
“Donnall.” Ithan’s gaze swept over Aria, a quick, assessing look for damage. He found none. “Thanks for returning her.”
“My pleasure.” Dae’s eyes flicked to Aria one last time. “Until next time.” He turned and walked back to his car, a solitary figure in the quiet street.
Aria stepped inside. The door closed, sealing her back into the world of pack and memory. Ithan leaned against it, watching the grey car disappear.
“Well?” he asked.
“It was fine,” she said, heading for the stairs, her heart still beating that strange, uneven rhythm from the courtyard. “We looked at pictures. We drank coffee.”
She didn’t tell him about the contradictions in the photographs. She didn’t tell him about the quiet admission on the bench. Some things were hers. That was the point of choosing. She climbed the stairs to her room, the ghost of Dae’s final words echoing alongside the memory of Ithan’s tears. The road in her mind wasn’t empty anymore. It was lined with fraught, impossible choices, and she had just taken the first step down it.
A couple months later, the rhythm of it had become a strange kind of normal. The weekly outings. The silent Thayer, now a familiar fixture. The negotiated peace between her brother and the prince, held together by her deliberate choices and their mutual, grudging respect for the rules of engagement. Her world had expanded to include curated slices of the city and the confounding, consistent male who showed them to her.
This morning’s slice was a brutal five-mile jog along the Sidra, the river glittering under a hard, bright sun. Bryce Quinlan, a ball of relentless neon energy in ridiculous pink shorts, was holding court between her and Ithan, her words puffing out in time with her footfalls.
“—and then he had the audacity to say that tomatoes are quote, ‘an abomination of texture and taste,’ and I was like, do you hear yourself? We literally fought a fucking Archangel on the steps of the Crystal Palace last year, and you’re drawing a line in the sand at caprese salad?” Bryce’s ponytail swished with indignation. “I swear to Urd, Ithan, the male has the tactical awareness of a wet sock.”
Ithan, matching Bryce’s pace with an easy, loping stride, gave a grunt that might have been agreement or just exertion. Aria, lagging slightly behind, her lungs burning in a satisfying way, tuned most of it out. Bryce’s relationship dramatics were a spectacle, a brightly colored distraction from the heavier, quieter tensions in her own life.
They hit the turn at the Forbidden Nexus bridge, the broad span casting a cool shadow over the path. Aria was mentally drafting her response, something along the lines of We really do not care that Hunt thinks tomatoes are gross, when it hit her.
It wasn’t a thought. It was a cataclysm.
A violent, psychic fist slammed into her solar plexus, driving the air from her lungs in a sickening whoosh. She stumbled, her knees buckling, her hands slapping against the sun-warmed pavement to catch herself. White-hot agony spiderwebbed through her ribs, her skull. But worse than the pain was the emotion that rode shotgun on it—a pure, undiluted torrent of fear, of utter, mind-shattering terror.
“Aria!” Ithan’s voice sounded distant, warped.
Her vision spotted. She gagged, bile rising in her throat. The sensory onslaught was alien, overwhelming. It wasn’t hers.
It was Dae’s.