Only one truth in the darkness, one sound that said it all in a litany of voices intertwining together... What was it? Was it a song or was it a plea?

No, it was a cry for help that would never come because that same hope had already left.

'Watch me,' he had said not even a few seconds ago. 'Watch me,' he had said before he disappeared back into his world, a world where what was gone was not allowed to return.

None of us were allowed to go there yet, desperately, reaching for the remains of that light of his, the residue of it left on my cold skin, I could feel their hands holding me in place as if I was their island in the sea of darkness. Was this how it should be? Was I the one who had to break their madness and guide them where they no longer belonged?

How do I accomplish the impossible?

These last moments before all of it went dark kept replaying inside my head, nightmares I could see even in the black that came with death.

This was it. This was what it was after all. 

Nothing but darkness.

I had to take us back just like the man told me.

Holding that thread of life he showed to me, my eyes opened, looking at the silver cord my fingers were holding, I couldn't even see my own body when I looked down, just those shaking fingers that were illuminated by the light. 

I couldn't see the people who were here with me, walking by my side. I only heard the voices.

They followed my every step. Not making any sense, shouting words that were not really words, sounds of the dead... why were they like this? Why were they lost? Shouldn't they be coming back to themselves now that we were all going back?

I am the only sane in this world of insanity.

I wanted to shout his name, call him back to me where he belonged. I couldn't. My lips felt like they had turned into stone - still, cold, frozen. 

Where was Regan now that I needed him? Why couldn't I feel him amongst the others? Where was the bond that connected us to each other while we were still breathing, or was it gone now when we no longer did?

The thought that I might never see him again, not the person I knew him to be but one of the mindless seemed unbearable for my mind to keep it inside for more than a moment. 

I couldn't let myself think about it and fall under the same madness. 

I can't be consumed by it.

Praying. This was what I found myself doing. Never speaking the words, I could hear them inside my head just like I could hear the voices, like I could feel the cold hands that were snaking around me like tentacles made of ice.

Suffocating.

'Come back... Come back... Come back...' Like the whisper echoing after the thunder, it echoed from every side. A voice that I did not recognise.

He had to be calling out for me from the other side, he had to be praying that I listen but that voice didn't sound like his. It was not the stranger's voice but a woman's, one I did not know but made me wonder.

Is she the one calling out for me? Is the Moon finally seeing her child?

Wary of that sound, I tried to look for its source with my eyes. Blind. I couldn't see it... until I did.

A whirlwind of light like the flash of a bulb being lit in a pit to illuminate the place. They looked like figures of glass struggling to come closer and closer to that light, grasping every ray of it.

It was coming from me, lighting me up from the inside, circulating through from deep underneath the cold flesh. My lips were moving now, that voice I heard - it was my own voice calling out for them to...

"Come back with me!" Screaming out, the panic beating against my chest, I saw what laid on the other side.

"Come back! Hurry!" My panic rose the same my voice did. An octave higher, a note closer than the screaming of the madness that, once having taken hold of you, would never let go.

The field in front of my sight filled with remains of what has been alive, the ghosts who left their bodies inched closer to me, sticking to a light that only a living person had but somehow it was me illuminated our path.

A source of life.

The silver cord glowed in front of me like the Moon on a winter's night. Warmth that couldn't be felt - only imagined. I saw it.

Melting the barrier that separated us from what was on the other side, from that same thing that should have never been taken away from us. 

Life taken unfairly. Blood stolen with no reason.

Like diving into the ocean, I sunk into that world. A kaleidoscope of light and colors merged and flowed before my eyes, each one of them bringing a new sensation, a different note of pain that, perhaps, all of us - the one who preserved her reason and the rest who lost it all, could feel. Every fiber screamed as the motion took us towards where we didn't belong.

A miracle and a perversity both.

What other choice did I have but to do the wrong thing?

My last breath had meant nothing. Nor did theirs. We had sunken into the darkness. They had sunken into oblivion.

I'd rather slay than be slayed. 

I'd rather take away from others than let others take away from me. 

I won't go gently into the night. 

Hotter than the sun in the desert, it was that rage, that life I could finally feel. Slowly, it was returning to me the closer I got to my shell. 

My name was painted all over that field planted with dead bodies.

Pain. Scarlet pain.

Wishing to scream through it, wishing to come back, the only one way out of the darkness blinded my eyes.

This was it. I felt them. Following me, I guided them back. I dragged them back like I had the right to do it.

I took one last look at the pack that had come with me to the other side.

"Go, find your own. Live," I said, willing them to understand my words before I dived into my own shell.

Liquid heat started coursing through my body, pounding its force inside my head, chest that had been frozen with no motion to make it tremble from inside, once, twice...

Faint heartbeat filled up my ears. My own. 

Every fiber coming into life, the first breath of air rippled through my starved lungs.

With a tremendous effort, I pushed my lids open. 

A world that was bright, a man who was kneeling by my side. His face was enveloped in light with the sun that watched from the sky above and blinded me from seeing my savior.

'Thank you. Thank you for all you've done for me,' I wanted to say to him. I wanted to shout it out to him but then--

Trusting people. Never asking the right questions. Everything that had happened was my fault.

Looking at me, his eyes had the color of the sky today, that shade of blue you could see when there wasn't a single cloud on the horizon, nothing like mine. He wasn't anything like me.

Pure. Untainted.

His skin tanned like he had spent one too many hours under the sun, his face hardened yet barren from scars, sun-streaked light brown curls that were falling to his shoulders, he was beautiful in a kind of rough way. Beautiful like a blade ready to cut.

"W-here... where am I? What happened? Who are you?" I croaked.

Lifting his hand up, placing it on my forehead, the tips of his fingers playing with my hair as his palm caressed my skin, it made me shiver in a way I'd felt only once before.

Mirrored on his body, I could see the shocks of the same fever I felt under his touch. 

"It's alright. Breathe. I'm Lucas and I brought you back," he said, the words soft yet spoken with difficulty as if he was trying to hold back the rest of what he wanted to tell me.

Surprise, wonder, those feelings written on his face told me more than his words did.

"Brought me back? Brought me back from where?" Pretending that I didn't know, I didn't remember, I didn't feel it... 

"You were dead. I brought you back." Another stroke of his hand burning on my skin.

I melted underneath his touch.

It must be true. "It's true." What Sasha said. "All of it is true."

This man who had brought me back from the dead was the other side of the coin."Where is he? Where is Regan?"

Why now?

Rising from where I'd been laying with the soul back inside the body, moving limbs that were not meant to move again, I scrambled through the clearing in these woods.

Once a peaceful sanctuary, the wildlings had turned them into a cemetery. Every place my eyes would land, it made me feel like I was back. 

Right back into the darkness as I looked for him. I didn't even know why I was looking for him. It just felt... natural.

Just a few feet away, cold, dead, I saw him laying there. Drowned in his own blood, chest ripped from claws that had stuck deeper than they should have, what did the monster do to my male?

"Come back to me, Regan." My voice didn't sound like my own. My hands acted on their own accord.

Shaking him while they shook too. Blood that was cold touching the skin. My knees had sunk into the saturated grass.

So much blood. Everywhere. Blood and death.

"Come back! Live! Breathe! Breathe for me, Regan!" Desperate. Broken. Pleading.

Can he hear me from the other side?

It felt like eternity. Staying by his side, praying to whatever gods were out there listening to bring him back to me, silent tears ran out of my eyes. Streams of them landed on his cold flesh and then, maybe he heard me, maybe I drew him back from the dark, maybe the Moon decided to take pity on her child...

Life came back.

"Regan." I had him back with me. I felt like I didn't need anyone else.

Hands roaming all over his body, checking the multiple wounds on it, the sounds of pain that came out of his lips every time I touched him were breaking my heart. 

Will he heal back to the wolf he was? Will he stay with me?

Green eyes, the color of spring, slowly coming to focus, I saw the moment when he finally realized it was me, my hands on him that were trying to soothe his pain and failing.

Another cry of pain when my palm cupped his cheek. 

How bad is it really?

"We need to move him back inside the house and look at--"

A hand clasped over mine. 

Turning away from my male, I saw it was Lucas holding me back. The feeling of his hand against mine was good, made me shiver. "What are you doing?"

"Don't touch him. Can't you see you're hurting him?"

"I'm not. I'm his mate. My touch will never hurt him."

Shaking his head, Lucas wouldn't look at me when he let go of my hand. He came closer to Regan and just placed his own palm on my mate's bare skin.

A few moments later, he took it away and looked at me. "Now you do it," he said.

Holding my breath, my own hand shook as it closed the distance.

I have Regan and he has me. We don't need anyone else, I thought to myself. I knew it was lies. I had every memory to remember just how big of lies these words were.

The moment my skin connected with his, his lips parted, letting out a cry.