Chapter 1
She was drowning. Her fingers were numb with cold. An eerie green light surrounded her while her lungs burned in agony. Something dark and ominous swam toward her through the murky water. Mina kicked, swimming to the surface to evade the approaching being, but no matter how many times she tried, she never got any closer to the surface.
And she knew that tonight in this dream, like all the other nights before, she wouldn’t make it.
It was a memory being played out over and over in her head. A reenactment of her memory on the Fae plane fighting for her life against the sea witch. Every night it plagued her subconscious as she fought against the nightmare, but there was no eluding what was coming next.
She hated this part of the dream. The monster’s strong hand grasped her ankle. Inwardly, she screamed, using all of her strength to kick against the thing grabbing her leg. She kept her eyes pinched closed and refused to look at the beast. She could feel its strong hands pull her down as its touch moved up her legs, to her waist, and then to her shoulders. The sea witch stroked her cheek, trying to convince her to open her eyes and gaze upon its hideous form.
But Mina refused. One thing she had learned was that sometimes she could control things in a dream… like holding her breath for near eternity.
“Come to me, Mina,” the familiar dream voice coaxed as slithery hands reached under her chin and pulled her face to mere inches from the monster’s. Mina shivered in revulsion and fear.
“Why do you fight me when you can join me?” The male voice, though underwater, rang clear as day in her mind. “Accept me.”
She couldn’t help it. Her eyes started to open and she met the gray eyes of Jared. Her heart soared for a split second before she realized her mistake once again. The eyes weren’t gray—they never stayed gray for long. Just a trick of her imagination before they shifted and changed into the deep blue eyes of… Teague.
“Never.”
“Have it your way,” Teague sneered. Then he dragged her down into the never-ending depths of her dream, to her death. As always.
Every scenario and every sequence Mina tried to play out always ended with this scene, and just when she couldn’t hold her breath any longer, she would wake gasping for breath and crying.
She had fallen for Jared, and—because of her stupidity—he was gone. Or the Jared she knew was gone. He was now her mortal enemy, and these dreams were just a reminder of what she had done and what she would have to face.
Tears trickled down Mina’s cheeks like rain, and she wiped her face on her blue sleep shirt, letting herself mourn her loss. She spent many hours crying in the night, scared to fall back to sleep only to return to the same dream. Instead, she would lie in bed, stare out the window, and wait for the sun to rise signaling a new day.
Her seventeenth birthday came and went with nothing more than a cake and a present from her mom and brother. They tried to cheer her up, but they knew what she was going through. For her mom had gone through the same thing when her father died. She was mourning the loss of someone she loved. That pain took time to heal. And it couldn’t be rushed.
Each day, it became harder to drag herself out of bed. The alarm clock would go off at seven o’clock on the dot, and she’d listen to the weather and traffic report on some nameless AM channel. She’d stare at the ceiling and wish for her limbs to move, but wishing on anything other than a falling star, was merely that—wishing.
Her mourning turned to terror as the dreams persisted week after week. She knew it was better to pretend they didn’t occur each night, so she wouldn’t worry her mom.