REKINDLED || Completed

24

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Twenty Four
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A PAIR OF HAIRY HANDS STRANGLED HER.

She jerked awake, her breath slicing through the silence as her own small hands flew to wrench the fingers apart.

Vanity.

The grip only tightened.

Asher choked.

Her legs flailed in the darkness, useless against the force crushing her throat. Her voice abandoned her. Hope flickered like a dying ember, snuffed out by the suffocating weight of the hands wrapped around her neck.

She clawed at them, nails digging into flesh, but the hands did not waver. They did not loosen. They were determined—unyielding.

Her vision blurred as hot tears welled up, rolling down the curve of her cheek like molten fire.

This was it.

She had always envisioned her death to be painless, swift—merciful.

But here, in this moment, all those imaginings crumbled into dust.

"This is your end, Olivia."

Her breath hitched, her body stiffening.

That voice.

Her eyes widened in sheer recognition.

"No!" The word exploded from her lips, raw and desperate, but the hands did not falter.

Laughter—low, guttural—sent ice down her spine.

"This is your end, Olivia."

"No! No!" she cried, twisting, writhing, gasping, until her screams faded into pitiful whimpers, until her consciousness surrendered—

Until she jolted up, her lungs sucking in a frantic gulp of air.

Darkness.

A dream.

Her fingers flew to her throat, the phantom pressure lingering. It burned.

Tears fell, unchecked, from her exhausted eyes. She swallowed, wincing at the tenderness left behind by something that had never been there.

But it felt real. Every inch of it.

This had been her reality for days now. Night after night, the same torment, the same suffocating terror.

And it was no longer the faceless men who haunted her.

It was him.

Rick Sherwood.

Coming for her. Hunting her. Killing her, over and over again in her dreams.

The gruesome certainty of it made her stomach twist. It was horrifying enough to endure, but the worst part?

She had no control.