The darkness was not empty. It breathed.
I woke lying on something that felt like thin stone stretched over nothingness, a surface that shifted beneath me with each breath. Cold air brushed my skin, and when I opened my eyes, there was no horizon, no sky, no ground. Only a dark world made of blurred shapes and rolling shadows. Everything shimmered faintly as if dipped in fog.
My pulse thudded against my ribs. My wolf pressed uneasily against my thoughts, her growl low and restless.
“Jax,” I whispered.
The name echoed.
But the echo was wrong.
It came back fractured, stretched, replayed in a voice that did not sound like mine. It repeated again, softer, as if someone else whispered it from behind me.
Jax.
I jerked upright, heart hammering. “Who is there? Show yourself.”
Nothing answ
