Wren
Waking up feels wrong.
Too heavy. Too deep. Like I’ve been dragged up from the bottom of a lake with stones tied to my limbs. My body doesn’t belong to me at first. My thoughts don’t either. They drift in slowly each one struggling to catch hold of the next.
Warmth presses against my back. A steady weight curls around my waist. There’s a hand in mine. I jerk hard enough that the room tilts. My eyes snap open to dim golden light and the familiar shape of my apartment.
My body reacts before my mind catches up. I lurch upright, ripping myself out of the warm cocoon of sleep and nearly toppling off the side of the bed in the process.
“Whoa, hey.” Talon’s hand catches my arm before I fall to the floor. “Easy.”
I blink at him. Talon sits half propped against the headboard, his hair rumpled from sleep or stress or both.
His blue eyes are wide and fixed on me with so much concern it makes my stomach drop.
One of his hands is still wrapped around my wrist. The other braces against the mattress, ready to steady me if I start swaying again.
The last thing I remember is being at Wick’s.
Beau. Wick. A paper bag in my hand. Sleep powder. Oh no.
The memory slams into me. Wick telling me to go to bed. Beau hovering at my elbow. Me insisting I was fine. The floor pitching under my feet. Falling into Beau. The bag bursting.
My face burns. I passed out at work.
I close my eyes and contemplate simply evaporating where I sit. Maybe turning into mist. A decorative lamp. Anything but a Fae who apparently collapsed in front of a full bakery because he was too stubborn to admit he had a problem.
When I open my eyes again, Talon still watches me.
“I’m fine,” I say.
Talon’s eyebrows lift.
“I am,” I insist.
“Wren.” The way he says my name stops me cold.
I drag a hand through my hair and find it full of knots. “Everyone needs to calm down. I’m awake now.”
“Yeah,” Talon says. “After you collapsed because you were so exhausted, you could barely stand.”
I flinch. It’s tiny, involuntary, but I know he sees it.
He sits up a little straighter beside me, giving me space without moving away entirely. “You’ve barely slept in days.”
I stare at a loose thread in the blanket rather than look at him.
“Maybe longer,” he adds.
Still, I say nothing. What am I supposed to say to that? Shame crawls hot under my skin.
“You didn’t tell me,” he says.
I look up at him before I can stop myself. “I didn’t realize I was required to submit a report every time I had a bad night.”
Talon’s mouth tightens. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
“What are you saying?”
“That I’m your partner, Wren. I want to help.”
The words hit harder than they should. I look away again.
“I know that,” I mutter.
“Do you?”
Something sharp twists in my chest. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’m not some stranger you have to smile for and lie to when things get tough.
” His voice is still gentle, but there’s a thread of steel in it now, enough to make me finally meet his eyes.
“It means I care when you’re hurting. I want to know if you haven’t slept in over a week because you’re having nightmares so bad you’d rather collapse than close your eyes. ”
My breath catches.
“Wren.” I hate how gently he says my name. He’s too good for me.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed and immediately regret it. My head swims. My stomach lurches. Talon’s hand lands between my shoulder blades before I can pitch forward.
“Don’t,” he says.
“I’m getting water.”
“You’re barely awake.”
“I’m not helpless.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“Everyone keeps acting like I’m made of glass.”
Talon goes very still behind me. The hand on my back doesn’t move. I push to my feet anyway, mostly because sitting still means staying inside this conversation, and I’m not sure I can stand that for another minute. But the room tips. I catch the bedpost with one hand and hiss through my teeth.
Talon is in front of me instantly, hands hovering near my arms without quite touching. “Wren.”
“I’m fine.”
He just looks at me.
That’s it. That’s all he does. He looks at me with those eyes full of worry and hurt and patience I absolutely do not deserve, and something in me snaps.
“Stop that.”
His brow furrows. “Stop what?”
“Looking at me like I’m some tragic little thing you have to handle carefully.”
His mouth opens, then closes again.
“Just say it,” I bite out. “Go ahead and say I should’ve told you. Say I’m being dramatic and ridiculous and making a mess of everything.”
He’s never been on for words and just stares at me for one long second. Then, very carefully, he says, “I’m scared.”
The anger drains out of me so fast I nearly sway with it.
“What?”
“I’m scared,” he repeats, softer this time.
“Seeing you passed out on the floor scared the hell out of me. Realizing you’ve been dealing with this by yourself while I stood there thinking you were just being stubborn scared me.
” His jaw tightens. “I’m not looking at you like you’re fragile, Wren.
I’m in awe of your strength and frustrated as all hell. ”
I open my mouth. Close it. I don’t know what to do with that kind of honesty.
Talon’s voice gentles even more. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want you worrying.”
Talon exhales, and the sound is so fond and frustrated at the same time that my face heats all over again.
“My stubborn Wren,” he murmurs.
That should not make my chest ache the way it does.
“I mean it,” I say, but the fight has gone out of my voice. “You already do too much for me. I didn’t want this turning into another thing you felt like you had to fix.”
Something in Talon’s face softens.
He steps closer, slowly enough that I can move away if I want to. I don’t.
“I don’t need to fix you,” he says. “That’s not what this is.”
“Then what is it?”
He lifts one hand and cups my cheek. “If something’s hurting you, I want to know about it. I’m yours, and you’re mine, and that’s what this means.”
The words crack something open in me.
I look down because suddenly I can’t breathe right. My eyes sting. My throat feels too tight, my chest too full. Talon’s thumb brushes under my eye before the tears can even fall.
“What happens in the dreams?” he asks quietly.
I swallow hard. I don’t want to answer. I want to lie. I want to shrug it off and say it’s not that bad and make some joke until he laughs and this all disappears. I’m too tired to keep carrying it, and Talon is standing there looking at me like the truth won’t scare him away.
“It’s always him,” I whisper.
Talon doesn’t interrupt.
“Sometimes it’s memories. Sometimes it’s not.
” My fingers twist in the hem of my shirt.
“Sometimes I’m back in Fae lands. Sometimes I’m here and everything seems normal until I turn around and he’s there.
In the bakery. In the apartment. Outside the bedroom door.
” My voice starts shaking and I press my lips together hard enough to hurt.
“Sometimes I wake up before he can touch me.” Those are the good nights.
Silence. I stare at the floorboards, at the scuff mark by the dresser, at anything except Talon’s face.
“Sometimes I don’t,” I finish.
The words drop between us like stones.
Talon goes so still it scares me enough to look up. Rage burns in his expression. It’s there and gone in a flash, swallowed down so quickly I almost think I imagined it. Not pity, thank fuck. Not revulsion. Fury on my behalf.
I don’t know why that makes me want to cry harder, but it does.
“Okay,” he says, his voice so controlled.
A watery laugh slips out of me. “That’s all?”
“No.” His hand slides to the back of my neck. He’s grounding me and I lean in. “That’s just all I can say without promising several felonies.”
I laugh for real, but it lasts all of two seconds before my mouth starts trembling.
Talon sees it. Of course he sees it. His expression gentles immediately. “Hey.”
“I’m sorry,” I blurt, because apparently I’ve learned nothing. “I didn’t mean to make everyone panic. I thought if I just pushed through it, maybe it would stop.”
“Oh, sweetheart.”
That’s all it takes. Not the words, exactly. The way he says them. So soft. So heartbroken. Like the idea of me apologizing for this hurts him more than anything I’ve admitted so far.
My vision blurs with tears. Talon moves closer and I don’t even think before I fold into him.
There’s no Fae elegance to it. One second I’m standing, trying to hold myself together with sheer spite, and the next I’m clutching fistfuls of his shirt and pressing my face into his shoulder.
He wraps both arms around me immediately.
A sob tears out of me. Ugly. Humiliating and impossible to swallow back. Then another. My whole body shakes with it, all the fear and exhaustion and shame I’ve been choking down for days finally breaking loose at once. I cry into Talon’s shoulder and he just holds me tighter.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs into my hair. “I’ve got you.”
I’m wrecked and raw and exhausted all over again now that the sleep powder has worn off enough for the fear to come creeping back.
But Talon’s hand keeps moving over my back in slow, steady strokes, and his chest is warm under my cheek, and every time I try to apologize he shushes me like he’ll hear none of it.
Eventually the worst of it passes. My breathing still hiccups now and then, but the sobs taper off into embarrassing sniffles and damp, miserable little gasps. I pull back just enough to scrub at my face with the heel of my hand.
“I hate this,” I mutter.
Talon huffs a soft laugh. “I know.” He brushes the damp hair off my forehead and presses a kiss there, lingering for a moment. “I wish you told me how bad it was.”
I close my eyes. “I know.”
“I’m not saying that to make you feel bad.” His thumb strokes my cheek. “I’m saying it because I need you to understand that I want the ugly parts, too. You don’t have to hand me everything at once, but you don’t get to run yourself into the ground because you’re scared of burdening me.”
I nod because speaking feels impossible.
Talon studies my face for a moment, like he’s making sure I actually heard him, then asks, “Will you let me stay tonight?”
A fresh wave of fear curls through me at the thought of sleeping. Of closing my eyes. Of stepping back into that dark place with Lord Yelling waiting for me somewhere inside it.
Right now, the idea of sleep doesn’t feel like something I have to face entirely alone. “Yeah,” I whisper.
His hold tightens. “Good,” he murmurs into my hair. “Because I wasn’t really asking.”
That earns him the ghost of a smile.
I’m still exhausted. Still scared. The sleep powder helped, but Lord Yelling was still there, just not as prominent as before.
But Talon is here. He knows everything now. Maybe I can get through the night without fear.