Chapter 365: A Painful Nightmare (I)
Evaline:
The dream started quietly. Too quietly.
It was the kind of silence that presses on your chest, that makes you want to run but leaves your feet rooted to the ground.
I knew, even before the shadows crept in, that this wasn’t an ordinary dream. No, this was him. This was my mind dragging me back into memories I had buried, locked, and tried to pretend never existed.
I wanted to wake up. I begged my body to wake up. But I couldn’t. My mind wanted me to relive it. Every sick, twisted piece of it.
And so it began again.
The nightmares I hadn’t relieved since I found my mates, returned with full force tonight.
- - -
I was twelve.
The front gates of the pack house groaned open, the iron heavy with the weight of generations. My father walked inside with a proud smile, his arm linked with a woman whose beauty was sharp enough to cut glass. Beside her walked her two children - Damian and Lillian.
Her hand rested lightly on my father’s arm, but her eyes - those cold, glittering eyes - rested on me. Evaluating. Measuring. Disliking.
"This is Evaline," my father said, as if he were presenting me to them like a piece of furniture. "My daughter."
Then he turned to me. "Eva, meet your mother. And here are Damian and Lillian. You’ll be siblings now. A family."
I didn’t react, but I watched as the woman smiled, sickly sweet. "Of course. We’ll take good care of her."
But even then, even at twelve, I felt it. The venom under her words. The way her lips curved without warmth, the way her children mimicked her expression - Damian with a glare that was too dark for a boy of thirteen, and Lillian with a tilt of her chin that screamed superiority.
From that day, everything changed.
At first, it was small. Snide comments when my father’s back was turned. A missing ribbon from my hair. A book ruined with spilled ink.
The "accidents" multiplied, and so did their sharp whispers.
"Why does she always get Father’s attention?"
"I absolutely hate her."
"She’s just a burden."
And their mother, my stepmother, watched with satisfaction glittering in her eyes. She despised me, but oh, how beautifully she acted in front of Father. Sweet, doting, pretending to care for me as though I were her own child.
It didn’t take long before my father drifted. His hand no longer lingered on my shoulder. His voice no longer called for me in the gardens. His gaze slid right past me at dinner.
That was all they were waiting for.
Once his attention disappeared, so did their masks.
They stopped pretending.
-
And then there was Damian.
At first, he was just cruel in the way boys can be - mocking my clumsy steps, pulling my braid, stealing things from my room, calling me names that made Lillian giggle.
But something changed once I turned fifteen.
My body grew, curves softening my childish figure, and I started noticing how his gaze followed me. It was no longer the disdain of a boy mocking his unwanted stepsister. It was darker. Heavier.
His remarks shifted too.
"You shouldn’t wear dresses that tight."
"Do you even know what kind of attention you are drawing?"
"Careful, Eva... not everyone’s as nice as me."
At first, I didn’t understand. But soon, the way his eyes lingered on me left no room for confusion.
-
The nightmare shoved me forward, pulling me into that day. The day that changed everything.
It was late afternoon. I had gone into town to buy stuff I needed for a project work from the stationary shop. That’s where I met Tomas, a boy from my class. He was kind, polite, with a shy smile.
We were laughing softly over some silly mistake he had made in his homework when Damian appeared at the door, flanked by his friends.
The moment his gaze landed on me, I felt it. The shift.
Sharp. Lethal.
His eyes didn’t just glare. They burned.
I fled. I didn’t wait for Tomas’s goodbye, didn’t even finish paying properly before running out into the street. Because I knew. I just knew it in my very bones.
But I wasn’t prepared for what came next.
That very night, the pack house was filled with silence as everyone had gone to Beta Helric’s son’s sixteenth birthday party, the grand event that had the entire pack celebrating. I was excused from attending, feigning a headache to escape the gathering.
I should have felt safe. Alone in the house.
But I wasn’t.
Because the door to my room creaked open.
And there he was.
Damian.
The moonlight spilled through the window, cutting across his face. His hair cast shadows over his eyes, but I could still see the hunger there.
"You think you can talk to other boys?" His voice was low, dangerous. "You think you can smile at them?"
I froze on my bed, my heart pounding so hard it hurt.
"Damian... get out." My voice shook. I hated that it shook.
He stepped closer.
"You don’t understand, do you?" His hand lifted, brushing my hair back from my face. I flinched so hard I nearly fell off the bed. His lips curled into something that wasn’t a smile. "You belong to me."
I tried to run past him, but his hand grabbed the back of my neck and shoved me against the nearest wall while he caged me there with his body.
I tried to push him away. I tried to scream.
But no sound came out.
The walls of my room bent, warped, the memory twisting into something monstrous. His shadow loomed larger and larger, his voice echoing, whispering, mine... mine... mine.
I curled into myself, clawing at my ears to block him out.
The nightmare dragged me through flashes - his hands shoving me into corners, his mocking laughter, his threats whispered in the dark.
"You’ll never escape me."
"You can’t run."
"I’ll always find you."
Again. Again. Again.
Until the words burned into my skin like brands, until I thought I would suffocate from the weight of them.