I stand in an empty hotel room. The walls are pale blue, the ceiling white. Light streams in from a curtain on my left and I can hear the sound of a shower running. For some reason this place feels familiar, like the last moments of a dream I just woke up from.

"Haven?" I hear someone ask behind me. I turn around to see a woman in a white dress, her wet hair streaming down her back like a dark waterfall. It's my mom.

"What? Mom? I-I don't understand!" Suddenly the memories come back to me and I remember what happened in this hotel room. "Mom! You have to get out of here! They're coming! They'll kill you!"

"What?" She laughs. "I'm already dead."

Blood starts to pour out from the left side of her chest, the red color staining the fabric scarlet. Her face goes slack and her eyes close. As if in slow motion I watch her eyes roll back into her head as she collapses to the ground.

"Mom!" I scream, falling to my knees beside her. I press my hand over the wound, trying to stop the bleeding. "Mom, please!"

"Haven?" A man's voice asks from behind me. I whip around to see my dad standing there, his usually cheerful face grave.

"Dad! Please help me! Call an ambulance!"

"I can't do that."

"What do you mean you can't?" I ask. "She's dying, we have to help her!"

"They're coming for us, Haven. We'll join your mother soon enough."

I hear a click and a bang as the wall behind him is blown to pieces. The force of the explosion sends me flying into one wall, knocking all of the wind out of me as I slide to the floor. My ears ring and my head pounds. I fight to catch my breath, choking and gasping. Miraculously, I see that my father is still standing, his eyes downcast as he stares forlornly at my mother's body.

We only have a few seconds before they're upon us. Dozens of wolves burst through the hole in the wall, their jaws open wide and their eyes feral. I scream as five of them pounce on my dad, taking him to the ground in one collective leap.

I try to stand, but I am immediately pulled back to the ground. A great black wolf has it's jaws clenched on the cuff of my jeans, not letting me up. Three more join it and I know i am going to die when they bite into the skin of my leg, causing me to cry out. I struggle against them, but they're too strong. They start to pull me back towards the gap in the wall, their snarls causing me to shake in fear. I fight and kick, but I am no match for their powerful teeth.

"Dad!" I cry out, my fingernails scratching against the carpeted floor. For some awful reason I can bring myself to look away at the wolves attacking him. They rip and tear, gathered around him so thick I can no longer see his body. Their claws tear into him and their jaws rip his flesh. His yells fade into nothingness, replaced by the predators' howls and grunts. The sounds of his body being torn limb from limb echo in the small room, along with the sounds of my screams.

My eyes fill up with tears and spill over as I try to kick away my attackers to no avail. They only dig into my legs harder and harder until I leave a trail of blood in my wake. As I watch them devour my father, I open my mouth to scream. . .

My yells cut through the still air as I fight against my enemie, smothering me mercilessly and in tight bonds.

"Haven! Wake up! You're dreaming! Jeez, you're strong!" A female voice calls to me. Someone grabs my wrists and pins them roughly to my sides. I fight and shake, screaming all the while.

"Haven! Get ahold of yourself!" The voice orders me. It sounds so familiar.  Kara's voice.

Slowly I come to my senses, realizing that my attackers are just blankets, the wolves, just phantoms. I look around myself, seeing another hotel room. Briefly I remember getting off the plane, driving here, and checking in at the front desk.

I hate hotel rooms.

"Are you okay?" Kara asks me. Her face is full of concern.

"Yeah," I tell her. "I'm fine. It was just a dream."

"Good!" She says, immediately reverting back to her usual cheerful self. "'Sleep well." And with that she marches off to get make shift bed on the couch.

I look over at Margot's sleeping form in the other bed. I'm glad that she didn't wake up. I hate people seeing me hurt or in pain. It makes me seem weak. I think back to my father and the other hotel room with a wince. Just a dream.

I curl up on my side, clutching the covers to my chest. Tears sting the backs of my eyes, but I hold them back. It is only when I hear Kara's soft snores that I let myself cry.

*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•

I am still awake when the sun rises. My eyes are wide open and my body feels heavy and spent. But I couldn't sleep. Believe me, I wanted to, but I knew that if I did, the nightmares would just come back again. I'm afraid of the ghosts in my own mind.

I pretend to be asleep until both Margot and Kara wake up and leave the room. It takes them a while, and every second I spend makes my fatigue grow, but I really don't want to be around people right now, so this is what I have to do.

As soon as they leave I swing out of bed and step into the bathroom, stripping down before turning the water on in the shower. When it warms up I hop in, hissing through my teeth at the heat. I reach out to grab one of those small hotel bottles of shampoo and lather it onto my hair. I tilt my face up to meet the water droplets, allowing them to wash the soap off my body. Slowly I slide to the floor of the tub, wrapping my hands around my knees and letting my wet hair fall around my face like a curtain. The water hits my skin harder from down here, making me wince. But I know that I'll take this pain any day over the emotional turmoil that's been swirling inside me for the past few days.

Knock knock knock. Someone wraps their knuckles against the bathroom door, startling me out of my stupor.

"Haven?" A male voice calls from outside. It's Chase.

"Yeah?" I croak, my voice hoarse from disuse. "What is it?"

"Garret wants everyone to meet in Morgan and his room to talk about the plan. You weren't coming, so I came up to get you."

"How long has it been?" I ask.

"About an hour."

Crap. So much for appearing okay. Quickly I scramble up off the shower floor, grabbing a towel to wrap around myself and another one for my shoulders. I turn off the water and open the door.

"Hey. Sorry. Um, Kara said she would lend me some clothes until I could get my own. Could you. . ?"

"Uhhhh yeah. Yeah, she left them out for you." He blushes and passes me a bundle of clothes from on top of Kara's bed. I take them from him and are about to turn around when he stops me. "Wait." I turn around, curious.

He blushes again. Maybe it wasn't the best idea to come out here in a towel. "You know, holding in your emotions really isn't good for you. If you act like everything's fine all the time, you're just going to crash when you're alone. Believe me, I know how it feels to not want to show emotion. Like I said, we've all felt loss before, and not the superficial kind. You don't need to feel like you have to hide it all the time. If you let it out, you can let it get better. And. . . Just know that there is a way past this. It will get better, even if it doesn't seem like it now. And you're not alone in this. " He keeps his eyes locked on mine the whole time he speaks. I am the first to look away.

"Thank you, I guess." My voice shakes a little.

"Anytime. I mean it." He nods once before walking out of the room and into the hallway.

I watch him leave, standing alone in the empty room for a second before heading back to the bathroom to change.

By the time I reach Garret and Morgan's room everyone else is already assembled there. The room is so full of people it almost makes me claustrophobic as Garret explains the plan, which isn't much of a plan at all. We're basically just going to meet my father in a nearby park and then he'll explain the clue. At this point we're in the dark about almost everything.

A few minutes later we file out of the hotel room and head out to the parking lot. I stick with Chase the whole time, making sure we get into the same car. We climb into the very back seat, Chase casting a fleeting glance at Matthew in the other car. I guess he's worried about his brother.

Annalise and Jonathan slide into the middle seats while Margot drives and Tyler sits on the passenger side. I am a little nervous, mainly because Matthew and Kara are the only clan members I've had any contact with besides Chase. Tyler and Margot seem very antisocial. Actually, I can't remember hearing either of them speak one word to me.

As soon as the car starts Jonathan turns around and starts talking to me animatedly. "Hi! I'm Jonathan, but you can call me Nate. Welcome to the clan."

"Hey. I'm Haven."

"Oh I know about you. You're all Garret and Morgan have been talking about. Well, you and the Blue Amulet that is. We're glad to have you here." I think he sees me glance in Annalise's direction, because he laughs and says, "don't worry, Anne will come round. She doesn't like new people."

"It's not that I don't like new people!" Anne snaps, not looking up from the window. "I just don't like people that drag my brother into reckless quests for imaginary fairytales."

"She doesn't believe in the Amulet. But as soon as I signed up for this mission, she came right along. Attachment issues!" He hisses in my ear. Anne doesn't react, continuing to stare intently out the window.

"Anyway, where did you live before we found you in Charleston?"

"Raleigh, North Carolina," I tell him, keeping the memories at bay.

"North Carolina? That's cool. Our parents took us to a breach house in the Outer Banks one time. It was awesome! Of course, this was before Garret warned us about Gabriel trying to recruit them and we joined the clan for protection. It was nice there. Our clan is centered in Pennsylvania, so we don't get to go to the beach much. Mr. Webber was one of the select few that didn't relocate there after joining."

"That reminds me, where are your parents? I mean, they wouldn't let you go in an expedition like this on your own, would they?"

Nate's face falls and the light drains out of his eyes. I immediately regret asking the question. "They died in the attack on New York two years ago."

Beside me, Chases hand clenches into a fist and he grimaces as if in pain.

"Attack?"

Nate's eyes widen. "You mean no one told you about it? It was-"

"Enough!" Annalise barks. "She doesn't need to know every detail of our history! This is only temporary."

This time Nate just turns around and doesn't look back. I try to ignore the burning curiosity, but it keeps coming back to my mind. I have to know what happened in New York.

"Chase?" I ask quietly. "What was the attack on New York? I mean, if you want. . . If you want to tell me."

He presses his lips together and runs his hands through his hair. A few seconds pass and I don't think he's going to answer me, but then he says, "two years ago the clan's numbers were up to 4,000, record high. So Garret organized an attack on New York, the state in which Gabriel's base of operations lies. We were confident, because our spies had given us detailed reports of Gabriel's manpower and overall troop numbers. But it turns out that our spies had been intercepted. We were receiving false information.

"So right before the attack, unbeknownst to us, our spies were systematically intercepted and taken down. Gabriel fed us false information and set up a trap that we walked right into. Of the 3,000 of us that fought, including Garret, Joshua, and Margot, 750 came back. That makes 2,250 casualties, among them Margot's husband, my mom, and both Anne and Nate's parents. That is why I told you to get in line for a swing at Gabriel. We all have a reason to hate him. And we've all felt loss. You're not alone in this." He looks up at me quickly. I can see the pain and anger in his eyes, a fiery hatred that seems to match my own, if not surpass it. Despite his generally kind tendencies, it looks like he would really tear Garret's brother limb from limb.

Anne still stares stoically out the window, but there is a change in the atmosphere around her. Out of the corner of my eye, I think I see a single tear slide down her cheek, but she wipes it away so quickly I can't even be sure it was ever there.

Sup guys! Surprise update! It would have been up yesterday, but Wattpad deleted all my work on this chapter, annoyingly, so I had to re type it quickly. Anyway, enjoy! More drama in the next chapter I swear!

-iambibliophilic