My Lycan Mate of Suicide Forest

Zoe opened her eyes with a gasp.

She was in a room she didn't recognize. Her face was burning and tight, and it seemed one of her eyes was swollen almost completely shut. And she felt it… she felt pain. There was pain registering in the awakened cells of her body like little explosions of sensation.

And she had slept. She had dreamed!

Lucas turned from where he was staring out the window watching the sun rise on this Samhain and saw her chest heaving and eyes darting around like she was remembering something.

"Zoe," he called to her, and she jolted in surprise, having not sensed him in the room.

Slowly she pushed herself up in bed, eyes watering as the stitches pulled. Then she noticed a discomfort in her wrist, and she raised it in front of her good eye to examine it.

"Are you okay?" Lucas approached the bed, studying her reactions.

"M-my…" she gulped, her non-swollen eye widening in horror at the catheter taped to her wrist. "My… my wrist," her mouth hung open looking at it.

There was something in her wrist. There was something in her wrist.

She had to keep repeating it in her mind, because it wasn't sinking in. She had tried so many times to puncture her wrist or slice it or… anything. Anything to bleed like a normal person, but it never worked longer than a split second before she healed. But now… but now there was a catheter in it with fluids running into her. She could feel the cool fluids running in her veins.

"Lucas?" she asked, eyes darting to him now as she continued to hold her wrist up. "My wrist. And my… my face," she reached her hand up to feel the spiky ends of the stitches running under her eye and on her cheek.

"Do you remember what happened?" he asked, hiding his hands in his pants pockets.

She looked rough this morning. Her face had significant swelling and bruising. It looked incredibly painful. He hadn't really been in a position to appreciate this kind of injury lingering the way hers was, and he was surprised to find that it made him a bit squeamish. Bite wounds were very common in the pack—either from play fights or real battles of aggression—but they always healed very quickly. But this was different.

"Yes, I remember what happened," she licked her lips and searched her memory.

The shock and horror of Andreas lunging for her, struggling to get a grasp on her face, biting down, shaking… the hatred that she felt clamping down on her and desiring to be rid of her for good. He not only wanted to silence her, he wanted to end her.

She whimpered. "I don't want to remember it."

Lucas stood there at a loss for what to say. There wasn't anything he could come up with to comfort her. That wasn't something he knew how to do.

"You slept," he finally said.

Her eyes slid to find his before looking back down at her wrist.

"Yes," she said softly. "And I had a dream. I met him. I remembered him… the one who made me. And before him… I had people like you. A pack like this. But I was locked away just the same."

"You remember all of that?" His eyebrows pinched together.

She seemed so different now, perhaps because she was hurt and in pain, but… she was more subdued. More thoughtful.

"I was different even then before all of this. And the ones who were supposed to actually… be my family," she scoffed and shook her head, wiping a tear away. "They feared me, too. Just like everyone here does. Back then I was actually good," she recalled with a small smile.

She had dreamt of another dungeon at another time in a pack similar to this. She basically grew up in a dungeon. She had always been trapped, it seemed, and it had only continued. At least when she came here with Andreas she was given a job and a task and an ability to see the sky.

"What is he like?" Lucas asked, interrupting her thoughts.

He was trying to be sensitive by not pushing too much, but if she remembered the creature that made her, that would be a big help. They could at least have an idea as to what was coming.

"Him?" her eyebrows threaded together, and she appeared to be truly lost as to who he was referring to.

"The vampire that made you."

Her one non-swollen eye went wide with realization, and she nodded.

"Right. Yes. Him."

She cleared her throat, testing if she was able to speak freely about what she did and did not remember.

"Vampire," she whispered the word. "Wow," she raised a hand to her neck and smiled.

She could be hurt, she could sleep and dream, and she could speak freely. All of this freedom at the expense of one horrific encounter. Andreas could have done this the whole time? He was aware of it? She clenched her hands into fists on the sheet. What a bastard.

"The, uh… vampire," she said again, equally as shocked the second time. "He was terrifying. He seemed to have no emotions… grey eyes. Long white hair that would turn black when he drank blood. He drank my blood…" she whispered, recalling it. "And his eyes would change."

"What else do you remember?" Lucas sat down on the edge of the bed now, riveted.

"Everyone here is so um… broad and rugged and burly," she squared her shoulders and put her arms out in imitation of the lycans she had seen. "But he wasn't. He had delicate features. Kind of feminine I guess. Beautiful."

Lucas was struck by how different it was to listen to Zoe now. She sounded so much more measured and mature. The creepy dual nature to her—the little girl and the highly intelligent female—seemed to be gone.

"He would just appear out of nowhere," she gulped. "I don't know how he did it. But it would be ice cold right before he did. Like the cold arrived first and then him."

She searched for more… all of these memories were blooming like flowers in what had been a barren desert of her mind. But she couldn't remember everything. There were still those that were hidden, but she could feel them nudging toward the surface, pushing to get through.

"Does he have a name?" Lucas asked.

"I don't know, um…" she kept running over the dark shadows of memories that were arriving. "Someone called him Zagan."

"Zagan?" Lucas repeated.

She nodded. "Yes, Zagan. I'm sure of it.. And he is the one who named me Zosime."