Chapter 4 Continued

The green eyes that had only moments ago belonged to a beast now gaze back at me from a human face – one that resembles Billy, yet somehow isn't quite right.

What fuck is going on? 

It can’t be. No, no, no. 

I step back and look into the face of a man I know to be dead—a man who is lying on the ground not ten feet from me. 

"Billy?" I stutter. 

"Ava," The man breathes, his voice deep and commanding even though he’s saying my name like it’s a prayer. He begins to move towards me. 

"Who are you?" I stutter. 

“It’s me,” he tells me. 

“Don’t come near me,” I gasp, but he keeps coming, slow and steady. 

I freeze, and then he wraps his arms around me and embraces me. 

"Let go of me! Who are you? What do you want with me?" I cry out, barely able to breathe.  The deep scent of wood and musk surrounds me, and the dark warmth of his body enters mine. That strange sensation swells again in the back of my mind, a wave coming to crest, but it dissipates just as quickly as it begins.

"Please, Ava," he murmurs into my ear. "I mean you no harm."

His words are gentle, but the sound of my name on his lips sends a shiver down my spine. It's then that I realize this man knows me. Not just my name, but that somehow, he knows who I am. And in that moment, I can't help but believe that he truly doesn’t want to hurt me.

"Wh-what do you want?" I beg. 

My vision blurs as I focus on the man's jaw, my eyes locking onto a thin, white scar that traces over the right side of his jaw, narrowly missing his jugular. Something about it feels… familiar. Right, somehow. While this shifter shares nearly every feature with Billy, this scar is distinctly his, separate somehow from the corpse laying on the street behind us. The realization hits me like a ton of bricks, and confusion swirls within me.

"Your... your scar," I stammer, my voice barely a whisper. "It's not the same..." I trail off, unable to finish my sentence.

Suddenly, I feel my legs buckle. The world starts to spin, and the figure before me. Whatever and whoever it is starts to fade from my vision as I feel a blackness envelop me.