Smoke and fire surrounded her. The stench of blood made her want to vomit, but she resisted. The werewolf in front of her needed her, and she had to act.

She placed her hands over his wound and willed her magic to make the skin knit back together. But it was no good; the damage was too great and instead she watched as his eyes glazed over and his body lost its fight.

'No. No. No! I don't want to live through this again. I can't,' she cried, pushing herself away from the body.

She knew it was just a dream, but that didn't stop her terror.

'Akari, you need to keep going.'

She looked up and saw Ajax kneeling next to another wolf, binding his wounds. He looked up and scowled at her. 'Do your duty and heal them,' he commanded with a tone he would never have used on her in real life.

'I can't,' she whimpered. 'There's too much, too much death.'

She could see them, whispers of death just out of the corner of her eye. Reapers. She couldn't see them like her sister, but she knew they were there, waiting, watching, ready to do their job. The demon blood in her veins, although recessive, was reacting to their vast numbers. Absentmindedly, she wondered how many reapers were around her right at that moment. She couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to die, surrounded by so much destruction and hate.

The thoughts were like poison, sapping her of her fight, eating away at her energy.

She watched as Nico's brother, Oliver, ran forward with Garth in his arms.

'Akari!' he shouted, putting a bleeding Garth down at her feet. 'He needs help. I can't stay. They need me.'

Akari wanted to beg him to stay, but she didn't have time before he had already flitted away.

'Please,' Garth begged, though no such words had ever passed his lips. A proud wolf like Garth would never have feared death, and he hadn't even when she had, but the dream version continued to beg her, crying as the blood spilled from his mouth.

'Akari!' Ajax screamed. 'You have the power. Use it,' he demanded.

She scrambled to her knees and knelt by Garth's side. He fumbled for her hands, pulling them closer to his wound. His cold skin made her flinch, but she drew upon her power, pushing it through his body. Seconds ticked by and nothing happened, but then slowly, white runes leaked out of Garth's wounds, and wound around his body.

'It's working,' she said in relief.

She fell backwards as a piercing pain tore through her entire body. Her scream of agony split her lip and burst the blood vessels in her eyes.

This was the part of the dream she hated worst of all; the moment her sister died.

'Lenah,' she wailed, her heart beating frantically in her chest, though her sister's had stopped. 'Lenah.' She continued to call out, hoping she was wrong, because there was no way her sister could be dead. Not Lenah. Not her strong, beautiful little sister. The sister she had searched for years for.

It was her job to protect Lenah. That's what big sisters were supposed to do. But Akari had never protected her.

'Be strong, child. All is not lost.'

Even within the dream, Akari shivered at the hushed words as they seemed to come from deep inside her.

She had no time to prepare as a power she'd never felt before flooded out of her. Fire shot through her veins, choking her from the inside. It happened so quickly she thought she'd imagined it. As quickly as it exploded out of her, it disappeared.

She collapsed to the floor, her magic spent. Even in her dream state, she felt the fatigue, the feeling that her muscles were jelly.

'Akari, get up. You need to keep going,' Ajax commanded.

She looked towards him, but he paid her no attention. It was like he had no idea what she'd just done. Hadn't felt the power that her body had just released. A power that felt similar to her own, but infinitely different.

She jumped when the wounded sat up, looking around in confusion. Ajax swore when the dead rose as if they'd never died. Their eyes twinkled, full of relief and, most importantly, full of life as they checked for wounds that were no longer there.

She opened her mouth, but the sight of Ryan stumbling towards her silenced her. He was covered in blood and yet there was not a mark on his body. In his hands lay a limp Lenah, her black hair streaked through with soot and blood.

He collapsed near Akari, cradling Lenah's body in his hands. Her markings were barely moving and the skin around her eyes was cracked with black goo trickling down her face.

'Lenah?' Akari scrambled forward, pushing her tired body. She placed a hand on her sister's chest, relieved when she felt her chest rise and fall. But her heartbeat was too slow.

'Akari, please fix her. She won't wake. I've tried, but...' Ryan couldn't finish his sentence as another sob wracked his body.

She didn't have to be told twice. Akari placed her hands on her sister's shoulders and called upon her magic, but nothing happened, because there was nothing for her to fix. Physically, there was nothing wrong with her.

Akari began to freak out as her power remained useless.

'Lenah, you have to wake up. Lenah! Wake up,' she wept, when her sister remained motionless. Even with all her magic, she was powerless to help her. She cried next to Ryan, both of them heartbroken as the person they loved remained unconscious.

'Akari! Wake up. It's just a dream.'

A voice invaded her thoughts, and she sat up straight in bed and watched in confusion as Nico flew backwards, an invisible force pinning him to the wall. It took her several seconds to realise her hand was raised, and that she was the one that had forced him back.

She lowered her hands and Nico landed crouched on the floor, his eyes wide.

'Nico, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean...' Tears slid down her cheeks and she buried her head in her hands.

Nico knew that if he'd been human, his heart would have been hammering in his chest as it was his heart only gave one quiver before falling silent again.

He'd heard Akari calling out in her sleep and came to investigate, finding her caught up in some type of nightmare. But she'd been almost impossible to wake until he'd touched her. In an instant her calling ceased and she sat up, though it had been her blank expression which told him she wasn't completely herself. That was only confirmed when she took him off guard and pinned him to the wall.

It had been a long time since he'd felt so defenceless. The feeling took him aback, and it took him another few seconds to straighten and edge towards her.

'What happened?' he asked, standing at the bottom of the bed, not willing to crowd her again.

Akari sniffed and performed a silencing spell. The last thing she needed was for someone to overhear their conversation and wonder what was wrong with her.

'It's just a nightmare, nothing to worry about.'

'Bullshit.' Her head snapped up to look at him. 'Your one eye is still black,' he pointed out.

He watched her spring from the bed and head towards the mirror, grimacing as she took in her one black eye and one white eye.

'So you still going to say that there's nothing to worry about?' he asked, making himself comfy in an armchair.

Akari concentrated with her eyes closed. When she opened them again, her eye was back to normal, or at least the white normal that all light walkers possessed.

'How long has it been like that?' Nico asked, gesturing towards her face, observing her reflection in case her eyes changed again.

Akari bit her lip. 'Since the Northridge pack took back their pack lands.'

Nico sat straighter. 'You were there?' he guessed.

She opened her mouth and then shut it, thinking better of it, and nodded her head.

Nico swore. His brother had told him the basics of what had happened at the Northridge pack. Details that he would never share with another soul, lest his brother disembowel him. The dead coming back to life was not a topic that should be talked about openly.

But the last person he would have expected to be there was the sweet light walker in front of him. Similarly, she was the last person he would have expected to incapacitate him.

'That's what your nightmare was about?'

'I felt my sister die.' Akari looked away as the emotions threatened to overpower her. 'And then I became a vessel for the God of death and the Goddess of life.'

'You were the reason the dead came back to life?' Nico's eyebrows disappeared into his curly hair.

'No. The gods decided that for whatever reason. I was just the right person to fulfil their wishes,' she clarified, not wanting him to think that she had that kind of power when she didn't.

'Is that what caused that?' He pointed to her eye, and she nodded.

'My family's blood is mixed. My sister has an active recessive gene. It's why she's a shadow walker. I have the gene, but it's inactive, or at least it was,' she mumbled. 'It's happened a few times since that day, but no one else knows about it.'

There was an unspoken question hanging in the air that Nico heard. 'You have my word, I won't tell anyone,' he reassured her. He had no idea why he so easily agreed to keeping her secret, but her nervous face was something he didn't want to see. He wanted to ease her fear.

When he'd walked into the room, her fear had been something he could taste. It had invaded his senses and stirred the worst of his instincts. Fear always made blood sweeter, and her scent was tempting. He didn't care what Andrés said, there would be plenty in the coven who could be tempted by her blood.

She watched him for an unmeasurable time before finally sitting in the other armchair, drawing her knees up to her chest, aware of how low cut her top was and how exposed her mate rune was, not that the vampire was likely to understand what it was. Between that and her confession, she was left feeling exposed.

'In my nightmare, I relive that day. Some things change, but the feeling of my sister dying and then knowing there is nothing I can do to wake her remains the same every time.'

'How often do you have this nightmare?'

'A couple times a week.' Akari hung her head, hating herself and her weakness.

She didn't hear Nico approach until he was already cradling her in his hands.

'What are you doing?' she asked breathlessly as he deposited her on the bed and tucked her in.

'I'm making sure you get a good night's sleep,' he responded simply.

She watched as he walked around the other side of the bed, kicking off his shoes as he went.

'And how are you going to do that?'

He smirked. 'By chasing the nightmares away, one monster to another.'

She pursed her lips. 'You're not a monster, Nico.'

'You don't know me, Akari,' he whispered, positioning himself so her head rested in his lap. He started humming the same lullaby his vampire mother sang to him when he was a newborn, still unsure of where he fit into this new world.

Akari's eyes drifted shut as he continued to hum a tune she'd never heard before.

'But I know you're not a monster.'

Nico's humming faltered as he heard Akari's voice sound in his head. He looked down at her sleeping, no hint of nightmares in the soft smile that curved her face. Shaking his head, he resumed his humming. He decided he needed to do some more research on light walkers if he was going to spend more time with one. It was tiring being surprised all the time.