Chapter 11
Chapter
Eleven
It was night again. The only light shone down from the perfect full moon hanging high above the tree tops, reflecting a faint silvery blue glow on the forest. It would have been a beautiful sight if I could have stopped to admire it.
But I couldn’t.
I never could.
Not when I had to run for my life.
Twisted branches and pine needles whipped against my face, leaving scratches and cuts that I knew would never have the chance to heal. I’d be dead long before the skin could stitch itself back together.
Brought down by the beast behind me.
The one whose heavy feet shook the ground and whose growl made my soul quake in fear.
This was how I died.
It was how I always died.
Night after night. Just like this. For so long that it was hard to remember a time before my constant slaughter.
But wait…that was new.
In all the times I’d lived and relived this, I’d never once been aware that it had happened before.
The feeling was surreal. Unnerving. Like a dream within a dream.
Knowing what would happen next—every turn, every stumble—didn’t lessen my fear. The anticipation only fueled my panic as I desperately tried to run faster, but couldn’t.
I was already at my limit when I felt the ferus’ claws tear across my back.
Again, I grabbed at my shirt to keep it from flying away. Again, I started weaving through the trees, desperate to lose the beast. But this time, I already knew I couldn’t.
This was my destiny. There was no changing fate. That’s what the ferus said.
But I wasn’t a fucking ferus, I reminded myself as I dug my heels in for another turn.
I was a free woman, and no ancient gods were going to tell me how to die.
So this time, when I rounded the next tree trying to shake the beast, I wrapped my hands around the fallen tree limb that scratched at my side, and whirled around, swinging it like a baseball bat.
The weapon did its job, hitting the ferus behind me square across the face with a satisfying crack. Unfortunately, the beast’s skull proved stronger than wood, and the branch shattered into a thousand pieces on contact.
But still, the alpha reeled, taking a moment to shake off the blow, and giving me a few precious seconds to increase my lead.
He still caught up to me, of course, bringing me down the same way as always. But this time, I managed to make it all the way out of the clearing before I felt claws in my back again or fangs at my neck.
And for the first time, when I screamed out Tauren’s name, there was a sliver of hope in my voice that he might actually hear me.
“Hannah!”
My eyes flew open with a start, confused to be waking up to the sound of my own name instead of Tauren’s.
The room was darker than usual. My bedroom was never so pitch black, not even in the dead of night. There was always light emanating from somewhere—the screen of my phone, the glow of the TV, the streetlights outside the window.
But not now.
Even with my eyes wide open, I couldn’t see a thing.
All I knew was what I could feel—giant hands gripping my shoulders, rough and strong. For a second, I flailed in a mixture of panic and confusion, not sure what the hell was going on.
But then I saw his face.
A beam of moonlight flashed through the window, cutting across Tauren’s dark beard and sharp cheekbones.
Oh, yeah.
That’s why my room didn’t look right. Because I wasn’t at home. I wasn’t even in the human world anymore. I was in the Wilds.
In Tauren’s house.
In Tauren’s bed.
I must have fallen into a deeper sleep than I realized after eating and slept through the night. Well…most of the night.
My shoulders relaxed as my bearings straightened out.
“It’s okay,” I tried to tell him, but the alpha didn’t seem to be listening. After fully wrapping his arms around my back, he pulled me against his chest.
“You were screaming,” he said, gripping me even tighter. If I didn’t know better, I might have actually believed that the alpha was scared. “You called my name.”
“Yeah, sorry,” I apologized. “I should have warned you that happens all the time.”
He pulled back, and I fought against the urge to drag myself right back up against his comforting warmth.
“You had the dream again?” He sounded almost surprised.
I couldn’t imagine why. He’d said the same thing happened to him.
“Of course,” I said. “Every night like clockwork. Why? Didn’t you have yours?”
“No,” he said, pulling back even farther. The bed frame creaked as he pushed himself off it and away from me. “For the first time in seven years, I slept through the night…until I heard your cries.”
Lucky bastard.
A second later, there was a sharp metallic sound and the brilliant flash of a spark. The tiny ember caught against the wick of an oil lamp, and instantly the room was filled with a warm, glowing light.
“Then I’m extra sorry I woke you up.” It was an apology I was used to giving.
“Don’t be,” he said, leaving the lamp on the table and coming back to sit on the foot of the bed. “The only thing I care about is your safety.”
“That’s sweet.” There was a word I never thought I’d be using to describe a ferus. “But I’m fine. I promise.”
He didn’t look convinced. “Are you sure? I rushed back into the house when I first heard you start to whimper, but no matter how hard I tried, you wouldn’t wake up.”
“Don’t feel bad. No one is ever able to shake me out of it.” I let out an exhausted sigh. Over the years, more than a few friends had tried. “Every time, the nightmare refuses to let me go until the end.”
“When you die?”
I nodded. “Yep.”
“And it was the same tonight?”
I was just about to nod again when I stopped myself.
Actually, no. Tonight, things had been different. Very different. For the first time ever, the choreography of the dream had changed.
Because I had changed it.
I didn’t know what that meant…or if it meant anything at all.
For all I knew, it could have just been a meaningless glitch caused by the stress of my abduction or my injuries.
Or another bizarre side effect of Calindra’s medicine.
Or maybe it was because there had been a giant ferus shaking the living crap out of me while I was dreaming.
I decided not to say anything about it until I knew more.
“Yeah,” I said. “Pretty much the same.”
It wasn’t a total lie. After all, I still ended up just as dead as always—just a few feet away from where it usually happened.
“Do you always call out for me?” Tauren asked, his voice low enough to make the wooden supports of the bed tremble.
Shit. Heat lit up my cheeks. I really did not want to answer that, but I couldn’t see any way to tiptoe around the truth.
“It’s the last thing I do before I die.”
I watched Tauren’s jaw grind and twitch in the golden light.
“That’s not going to happen,” he said for what felt like the hundredth time. At this point, I didn’t know if he was repeating the vow for my benefit or his own. “There isn’t a world where you would call out my name, and I wouldn’t come for you.”
And the weird thing was, after spending some time by his side, I was actually starting to believe it. Every time I looked at him, I was struck by the undeniable sincerity in his eyes. I could practically feel the intensity of emotion pouring off his body.
This was the kind of guy who had no use for bullshit. He said what he meant, or he kept his mouth shut.
“Don’t blame yourself,” I told him. “It’s my fault, not yours. I only call your name out when I’m already dying. Not before.”
Tauren’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “Why not?”
“I have no idea,” I answered honestly. “When the nightmare starts, I’m already running like hell through the forest. I don’t know where I’m going or what prompted the chase. I don’t even know who’s chasing me.”
Up until this morning, I’d thought it was him.
“Do you see the ferus’ face?” he asked.
I hadn’t. Not until tonight.
But even then, I’d only caught the briefest glimpse before I struck the bastard across the side of the head. The features had flashed by my eyes so quickly that I was only able to get a vague impression of the beast.
Just enough to know that it wasn’t Tauren.
“Not really.” I shook my head. “Just flashes of claws and fangs. I’m sorry, I can’t give you more.”
“And I’m sorry the nightmare is still plaguing you.”
I pushed myself up higher on the bed, pulling my legs underneath me and straightening my spine. “I wonder why your dream stopped, but mine is still going strong.”
“I don’t know, but Calindra might,” he said. “We’ll ask her when she returns. Until then, I’ll leave you to go back to sleep.”
My brows pulled down as he rose from the edge of the bed. “Where are you going?”
“Outside again.”
Again? I could feel another wave of guilt sweeping in.
“Please tell me you haven’t been out there all night.”
“Of course, I have,” he said. “Where else would I be?”
As if the answer wasn’t obvious! “Here, sleeping in your own damn bed.”
Tauren’s shoulders and spine straightened at the suggestion.
“I can’t do that. Not until you’re fully healed.”
“Oh my God, Tauren! I’m not asking you to pound me like a railroad stake.” I rolled my eyes. “I’m saying this bed is big enough to take up two time zones. You’d have plenty of room to spread out on that side without getting close to mine.”
He looked skeptical. Very skeptical.
“Minimizing my desire for you would be a mistake, Hannah.”
Oh. No one had ever said anything like that to me before, and I didn’t know how to deal with the heated emotions Tauren’s words caused.
Sure, I’d had a few guys flirt with me over the years, but no one had ever come right out and said that they wanted to screw my brains out.
And they’d sure as hell never intimated that they wouldn’t be able to stop themselves if given half a chance.
My fingers curled into the blankets around me, gripping them tight, as I tried to tamp down the undeniable carnal reaction to being lusted after by someone so hot.
Maybe I should have taken him at his word and let him walk out the door, but the only thing stronger than my physical attraction to Tauren at that moment was my guilt. What kind of asshole would I be if I let a little thing like desire keep a man from sleeping in his own bed?
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I told him. “It’s only a few hours until dawn. I’m sure we can manage to keep it in our pants until then.”
Tauren gave a low growl, making me think he didn’t share my confidence.
“Besides,” I continued. “There’s no way I’ll be able to fall back asleep knowing you’re out there in the cold.”
“It’s not cold,” he argued.
“But I’m guessing it’s not as warm as your bed either,” I countered, refusing to stop and really think about why I was pressing so hard for this. “Or as soft.”
“Hannah…” He was using his warning voice again—the one that never failed to send electric tingles of awareness straight through me for some reason.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Tauren,” I said, stretching myself clear across the wide expanse of the mattress just to grab the far corner of the covers and pull them back. “Just make me happy and get in the goddamn bed.”
And to my surprise, he did.
After another long second of staring me down with those bottomless dark eyes, he blew out the lamp.
With the room plunged back into total darkness, I could only listen to the floorboards creak as he made his way to the far side of the bed.
The mattress bowed under his weight as he slid into the spot next to me.
It wasn’t until he was flat on his back that I realized my mistake.
Sure, when I was alone in bed, the mattress felt like a sprawling, never-ending plain, but the second Tauren stretched out beneath the covers, it magically shrank.
And it wasn’t just the physical space his massive body took up. There was a size to his presence as well. An energy of awareness that spread across the bed and wrapped itself around me, causing me to shift against the sheets.
“Will you be able to sleep now?” he asked, after a few strained seconds had passed.
“Yeah, totally,” I lied, absolutely unwilling to admit my miscalculation.
But strangely, within just a few minutes, I caught myself drifting off, and before I knew it, I was lost in far more pleasant dreams.
Ones where I still ended up crying out Tauren’s name, but under very different circumstances.