After the war, London is in chaos.
Packs are battling it out for dominance in the streets, lycans are killing each other in illegal fight dens. The Royals are being murdered.
All Juliet wants to do is forget - forget Sebastien, forget the wa...
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I was standing on the tracks of the old, underground station.
The platforms were empty; there were no wolves screaming out for blood, no emcee announcing each fight with breathless excitement. The stillness in the air seemed to stretch for an eternity, until Sebastien's voice cracked like a whip through the silence.
"Don't hesitate. If you hesitate, you show weakness. If you hesitate, you lose."
But he wasn't talking to me; the realisation dawned a microsecond after a foot connected with the small of my back. Pain lanced through me and I hissed, stumbling forward on shaky legs. My whole body felt wrong and when I glanced down, I realised why: I looked barely older than fifteen years old, my muscles non-existent.
I spun around in time to feel a fist slam into my stomach. I cried out as I fell to the ground, my hands scraping the concrete floor. I winced at the stinging sensation and tilted my head up to glare at my aggressor.
Shock coursed through me as I found myself staring into a pair of familiar, gold-flecked eyes.
"Michael," I breathed right before his booted foot came down on my ribcage.
The pain ripped me out of my dream and I woke to the sound of bones splitting. My whole body was feverishly hot and convulsing in agony, lifting me up off the mattress and forcing me through the change. I couldn't think — I could barely breathe — as my body tried to heal itself. My ribcage felt like it was being shredded into pieces and I wanted to scream. But when I opened my mouth, nothing came out.
A snapping sound echoed through the room and my spine jerked, pushing my hips up at an unnatural angle. I gripped the bed sheets with half-phased claws and whimpered, waiting for the pain to pass and somehow, mercifully, I passed out again.
I tumbled into another dream, onto another set of train tracks. This time I was outside, behind the Old Vinyl Factory and as my brain registered where I was, a figure shot by me.
Michael.
He was wearing a hoodie that was too sizes too big for his scrawny frame, his head bent low as he ran up the tracks. He skidded to a halt about a quarter of a mile up the tracks and turned to run back, his young face contorted in anger. He was Old Michael, the Michael I remembered from before, but the expression on his face was all new. It was enough to send a tremor of unease through me.
As he approached me, his feet pounding furiously, I noticed another figure standing on the edge of my vision. I froze, startled, realising it was me.
I was younger, lankier, and my hair swirled in the wind like strands of gold fire.
I hated my hair.
I watched as Michael noticed old-me and his scowl darkened. I frowned, expecting old-me to call out to him, to ask him if he was all right — I remembered those words coming from my mouth — but when she started to speak, the words that tumbled out were all wrong.
