Knot in This Lifetime

Chapter 3

The first thing Sage noticed was the flames — luminescent, alive, swirling in vivid shades of orange and red. Everywhere she looked, they danced, chaotic, mesmerizing in their kaleidoscopic hues.

The second thing she noticed was that she was on fire. Her skin shimmered under bursts of flame, trails of flame dancing over her hands, ends of her hair alight, flickering like a comet's tail.

She panicked.

She stumbled forward instinctively, only to pass through some kind of glowing, ethereal veil. It rippled as she moved through it, and suddenly, the fire wasn't just on her — it was a part of her.

Curls of smoke and embers trailed behind her with every step, flickering into the air like lazy fireflies. For a brief moment, she caught sight of a dragon-shaped tendril of smoke curling playfully around the hem of her gown before dissolving into nothingness.

Dazed, Sage stopped in her tracks, breath shallow, heart pounding in her ears. She looked down, expecting charred skin or blisters — something — anything to suggest she had been set ablaze. But there was nothing. Her skin was unscathed, flawless as ever. It was as if the flames had never touched her.

Slowly, she stole a glance behind her and saw it — fire bellowing high in the marbled chimney. Her landing point had been in the fireplace for some godforsaken reason. The absurdity.

But the third thing she noticed sent a chill down her spine — the eerie, suffocating silence. Too quiet. Too still. She raised her eyes to the room, and her heart nearly stopped.

To her horror, the room stretched out in an endless sea of white and black — walls, pillars, floors, even the drapes were devoid of any color. Monochrome, archaic, everything, right down to the food on silver platters, appeared drained of life and vibrancy, as though ripped straight from an ancient two-dimensional illustration.

And every single Alpha — tall, sharp, commanding, impeccably dressed in sharp black and white suits — was staring at her.

Her stomach flipped, acid creeping up her throat.

Fuck.

Sage smiled reflexively, her autopilot defense mechanism kicking in, masking her internal screams, wild panic surging through her veins.

But she could feel their eyes. Every. Single. One.

Each gaze lingered a beat too long, scorching, searing, over the deep valley of her cleavage, half-spilling from the dangerously low neckline, and then trailing lower, down the silken expanse of her thighs, exposed by the traitorous slit that ran almost to her hip, ravenous, devouring, burning.

Instinctively, she tugged at the fabric, fingers trembling, grasping for some semblance of modesty, in a futile attempt to cover something, cheeks burning with the embarrassment of it all. The dress felt too small, too thin, too tight, too flimsy a barrier, the stares stripping the little she had on.

But there was no hiding.

Her gown, blood-red, fiery, sparkling brightly like a thousand embers under the chandelier's glare, lit her as the brightest star in the room, admist the cold, lifeless, monochrome. She was the burning heart, the forbidden inferno, in a place where colour had been stripped, outlawed, impossible to look away from.

And they didn't.

Her skin crawled, prickling with awareness, achingly exposed at the weight of all the attention. She had mentally prepared herself for the stares but she'd never expected it to feel this heavy.

She must have missed the memo. Though she could swear up and down that there was not a single mention of a black and white theme.

In fact, day and night, she had hugged the invitation to her chest, re-read it so many times that she could recite the lines, word for word, punctuation and all. But there was no mention of a theme at all.