Chapter Five: The Dream

Later that night, in her bedroom with only the hearth flickering low, Isabelle unpinned her hair and watched the embers crackle.

The window was open.

A chill slipped in—though summer still held the land.

She didn’t remember falling asleep.

But she dreamed.

She stood in a forest—not the English woods she knew, but somewhere wilder, untouched. Stars wheeled overhead, and in the clearing stood a man cloaked in wolf fur.

Lucien.

But younger, dressed in armor that shimmered with silver runes.

He knelt before her, and she reached for him—her hand bearing a ring carved with ancient script.

“I found you,” he whispered. “Across centuries. Across death.”

A voice echoed in the dream—not hers, yes hers: “The blood remembers what the mind forgets.”

The dream unraveled like smoke.

Isabelle woke with a jolt.

The ring. The clearing. The vow.

And the name on her lips—

“Lucien.”

Morning had not yet broken.

She stirred beneath the coverlet, breath shallow, heart racing as if she’d been running through fields. Her bedchamber was still cloaked in shadows, the fire long extinguished. But the echo of the dream clung to her like mist.

She had been someone else.

And yet—herself.

In the dream, she wore a gown of velvet red, centuries out of fashion, her hair loose about her shoulders. She stood on the edge of a cliff, waves crashing far below, and across from her stood him.

Lucien.

But not the Lucien of Mayfair and moonlit gardens. This version wore a wolf’s talisman at his throat. His eyes—those storm-silver eyes—looked at her as if she were both salvation and sorrow.

“You know what I am,” he said, voice low with pain. “And still, you came.”

“I don’t care,” she whispered. “Not then. Not now. Not ever.”

They stood inches apart, hands brushing, the wind tearing through his cloak. The world behind him burned—torches, steel, war. But his focus was only her.

“Swear it to me,” she said.

He took her hand and pressed it to his chest. “In every life, in every age. I’ll find you.”

Then came the howl—a single cry that split the night sky, and as the dream faded, she felt a kiss like fire and ash, like memory reborn.