Chapter 7
Saskia’s even breathing fills my bedroom, and I feel like my chest fully expands for the first time in more than two hundred years as I gaze down at her, her hair already splayed across my pillow.
Some deep, primal part of me swells with satisfaction at the fact that her scent is already infusing my room, mingling with mine. Marking us as each other’s.
Something else lingers beneath her strawberries and roses smell, though, something I can’t put my finger on. My lips curl down in a frown as I inhale, trying to pinpoint what it is, exactly.
She survived the fall off the Wall. She’s unharmed. Breathing with a relatively normal beating heart. Safe in my bed, in my arms.
Yet the hint of something foreign lurks in her veins, right beneath her own scent.
A smell of putrid, rotten decay. Like impending death, but—no.
That doesn’t make sense, dammit. She’s got ten more years before she fully turns to stone.
Ten more years to share my bed. Ten more years to explore and learn and experience and live.
And yet…
I glance out my window, where I’m sure my packmates are lying awake in bed, waiting for me to explain what the hell is going on, just as Taika said.
But I meant it when I said they could wait.
For now, I’m not going to let myself slip into dreams when my dream come true is right here, right now, sleeping peacefully under my gaze. What if she has another nightmare?
Or what if, a less rational part of my brain demands, Arad comes to steal her in the night?
It must be his venom that I’m smelling. A part of him inside her. My veins pop, my jaw ticking, and my hands close into clawed fists. The thought of that alone fuels me with enough anger to tear down my own house brick by brick… but I hold myself back, just so I don’t wake her.
No. She’s mine, and I won’t let his lingering presence taint that.
But still, I stare down at her, watching her eyelashes flutter as she dreams, and I do not sleep.
All night.