Chapter 6 #2
A solid swing ended her attacker. She sent Dom a smug smile, but he didn’t look impressed.
He pointed. “Behind you.”
Swinging the sword while turning put her off balance. She stumbled. A rusty scythe swung in an arc for her head. She put up her arm to block. Then her attacker was gone. He lay on the ground, a dagger in his forehead.
Dom’s flattened lips and low eyebrows screamed criticism of her skill.
“I thought you weren’t helping,” she yelled.
“On your left.” And so it went for countless attackers whom she wished would give up and leave. The mage never moved to help again. All he did was unleash an onslaught of critical comments.
Her breaths came out in pants of steam. No one else rushed her. A slow turn found nothing stirred around her, the only noise her heartbeat, loud and fast in her ears. As the adrenaline wore off, numerous areas she’d been hit—by weapons ranging from knives to swords to an ax—all ached at once.
The field of dead littered the moonlit snow in a sea of red.
Her head felt light, almost giddy. Could be from blood loss. Could be from excitement. She’d won almost entirely by herself. She could save herself.
A rifle discharged. The impact of a projectile hitting her chest knocked her backward, but she stayed on her feet. The pain and exhaustion made maintaining herself in feral form impossible.
Can’t breathe. Hurts.
“Bloody hell,” Dom cursed.
My baby. Nothing hurt when she felt around her distended belly, but there was no stirring in her womb.
“Help me.” She gripped her shoulder and side where fiery pain spread. Blood. Too much blood. When had she fallen to her knees? She held her belly until she detected the baby’s movement.
He lifted her in his arms. “You missed a gunman. You also left a human on the ground alive. Next time, do better.”
“Why are you so unpleasant? I’m pregnant,” she whispered through the pain.
“Not an excuse.” His voice rubbed like silk across her skin, irritating her further. “They didn’t care.”
“I thought you weren’t helping me.”
He blew out a long exhale. “Fucking Fates.”
He’d haunted her dreams for years, but not like this.
He’d never done anything heroic. When she’d seen him in dreams most of the time, he seemed annoyed at her, with no suggestion he welcomed her presence.
Usually, he did mundane tasks such as brew tea or read while she watched. He never turned into a fantasy lover.
“Where are you taking me?” The world blurred around her before he set her down.
The place he’d taken her to was rustic, decorated in dull gray and brown colors.
Everything held an eeriness as if in a suspended state.
No wind. No flicker of the candle. Not cold, but also not warm. “What is this place?”
“It’s the in-between. It’s neither here nor there, but between places.
” He helped her sit on a bench. Then he removed her top and corset with an expertise she didn’t want to dwell on.
He left her breasts modestly covered, not that she cared as she struggled to breathe.
She screwed her eyes shut to ward off the pain when he pressed along the edges of the bullet wound. Her body bowed away from his probing.
“Where’s the newborn?”
“Safe.”
“What are you doing? It burns.” The areas torn from the gun pulled themselves together like…magic. “Are you healing me?”
“Quiet.”
“Haven’t…” She sucked in a breath against a wave of stinging. “Haven’t seen you since Paris.”
“Not true, miri thagarni. You roam into my dreams and sometimes real life. I told you you’d haunt me.”
Her gasp had nothing to do with pain. Had those dreams been real? They’d been odd, often boring, especially when she watched him do tedious exercises. “Impossible.”
“A pregnant lycan just killed twenty-three humans, some of them while carrying a baby and using a small blade. The realm of possibility is larger than you realize.”
“I meant the dreams. That’s unbelievable that I could visit you.”
“You’re a dream walker.”
Note to self: figure out what that means later. “Tell me how you found me today. Were you watching me?”
He released a sarcastic pfft sound. “I happened to be in the area.”
“You spy on me.” Her belly fluttered with warmth that had nothing to do with him healing her.
He didn’t meet her gaze. “Why aren’t you healing like you should? Your body should have spat out the bullet from the gun by now. You are pure lycan, right?”
“I never heal quickly anymore. Not since I mated Willem.”
“A proper union should make you more powerful. Nothing about that parasite you mated could be called proper.” He frowned. “Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. This might hurt. The bullet must come out.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m good at healing.”
She touched her rounded belly. “My baby… Is it okay?”
His eyes softened as he tenderly put a hand on her belly. “He’s fine.”
“Another boy.” She sighed. “I kind of wanted a girl. Four boys…now five with the new little one you have somewhere safe.” She coughed. Something came up, which she swiped off her lips. Blood? “That can’t be good.”
“I’m going to heal the inside.” He laced the fingers of his left hand with hers. “Hold onto me.”
His right hand hovered above her skin. The sharp pain ripping through her chest made breathing difficult.
At first, she bit her lip and squeezed his hand.
The pain worsened. She gripped him tighter.
I won’t make a noise. But a scream ripped out of her when it burned as if someone had set her chest on fire.
“Almost done,” he rasped out.
When it ended, she blinked through a wave of dizziness. She held herself upright when all she wanted to do was curl into a ball on the ground.
They stared at each other in silence.
He had done this for her without asking for anything in return. He saved her.
He grumbled, “Don’t look at me like I’m some sort of hero.”
“I’m no one’s heroine. Yet here we are. I saved you, and now you saved me.
Guess we’re even.” She untangled her fingers from his.
Quickly, she righted her dress top without the corset and buttoned it.
No way she could squeeze back into her corset, not with the residual ache in her chest that rattled with each breath.
“We were even after I got out of the Seine. I stabbed the demon.”
“You would’ve taken care of that anyway. You owed me.” There was blood on his hand. She grabbed it, seeing crescent-shaped marks from her fingernails before they rapid-healed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“It’s nothing.”
She gripped his hand and used the hem of her dress to wipe blood off his palm. “Sorry. So sorry.”
He stilled her hands. “Stop.”
“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
He lifted his hand to look at the now-healed damage.
She ducked in reflex and held up an elbow to block.
“You think I’d strike you? That lycan did this to you.
” His tone gentled. “Look at me.” When she did, he waited for her to take a few breaths.
She looked away again. “You’re not looking at me.
I’m not him. I don’t want you to apologize.
I asked you to hold onto me. So what if it hurt you so much that you accidentally hurt me? It’s already healed.”
“I…I don’t know…” She dropped her head. “If I fight back or do anything to hurt him or irritate him, he punishes me by hurting one of the boys. Or tosses me into the snow to be killed by hunters.”
He put a finger below her chin to raise it and swiped a thumb beneath her eye. His eyes turned dark with glowing copper flecks. “He deserves to be carved apart piece by piece for hurting you and trying to murder that infant. I promise he’ll pay one day.”
“If I fought, I wouldn’t have Roman, Jonas, Ky, and…” She put a hand on her belly. “They’re everything.”
“They were meant to be born even though the cost to you has been too high. Now that they are, you should…” He released a long breath. “What did I tell you in Paris?”
“Your heart is black?”
“Don’t let him cage you. You let him.”
“You have no right to judge me. Why are you here, anyway? I didn’t think you liked me.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
That explained nothing. She looked around the lifeless place where they sat. “Take me back. I have to stop Willem before he hurts Roman or takes him somewhere else. And Efrem…”
Dom didn’t move. He cocked his head. “What’s wrong with you?
You don’t heal. People don’t seem to see you, which makes no sense.
You’re not fighting the prison of that asshole’s abuse.
Your voice coercion didn’t work on the humans.
That’s a basic lycan ability that should be powerful by your age.
” He scanned what he could see of her skin.
“Do you have any unusual marks on your body? It might look like a tattoo or a red birthmark, but you wouldn’t have been born with it. ”
She shook her head.
“Do you mind if I look at your neck?” He moved in to do so before she replied. “I’ll be damned.” He dropped her hair.
“What’s there? What is it?”
He rocked back on his feet and scrunched up his lips. “Someone put a mhis on you.”
“What does that mean?”