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The room felt like a furnace as we stepped through, the stares not stopping, nor the muttering ceasing. I caught snippets of their hushed conversationsāhybrid, luna, duel, beta. I could hear them.
My legs slowly turned to jelly but Vladimir's hold remained unrelenting. He drew closer each time my legs threatened to buckle, as though he could tell beforehand just when I was about to break.
The path through the crowd pulled me back to my walk down the aisle. I wondered what would block my path this time around.
Then I heard it. Laughter.
That familiar itch stirred awake under my skin, slithering around my neck and cutting off my air. The phantom sensation of hands around my throat returned like a dreaded acquaintance.
I had never heard her laugh, not once in the less than three days that we had lived together. I could read her glare through a mask, her presence branded into my psyche so deeply that I would catch her scent amongst many.
