by A. K. Morgen
I trembled, cold from the inside out.
Ronan slipped back into my head as easily as before and began to prowl again. His presence scraped at my mind, seeming shrill and grating. Whatever he sought in there sent tremors of terror through me. I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to force him out to no avail. As he rifled through my memories, something turned on like a flipped switch. Something truly was coming, something bad.
Dread bubbled through me like hot water all over again.
Dace launched himself into my thoughts. I could no longer tell him from the wolf I’d imagined earlier or the wolf from him. They were one and the same. Part of me felt like I’d always known that.
The wolf had Dace’s eyes and his energy, but his snowy white, gray streaked fur was as familiar to me, if not more so. I wasn’t sure what alarmed me more: the realization that Dace seemed more himself in that form than he had before, or the sudden certainty that I was just like him. Whatever lived in Dace, lived in me, too. With everyone else in my head, the thing in me seemed bigger than it had earlier, as if it really had woken and was as pissed off as I’d imagined.
My body quaked.
The Dace-wolf hybrid lunged for Ronan’s mind, responding to my fear.
A desperate, furious growl tore through my head, but the sound wasn’t coming from Dace or the wolf. The savage snarl came from me. I wanted Ronan’s blood pouring from his throat, and I wanted to be the one that caused him that wound.
I whimpered at the unfamiliar urge, trying to get away from it. Struggling didn’t do any good though. The murderous urge was inside, and I couldn’t get it out.
My head was going to explode from the flurry of emotions raging through it. Fear. Fury. More fear. I couldn’t tell which belonged to me and which belonged to Dace anymore. They were snarled as tightly as his emotions had been earlier, feeding off one another and stabbing into me like knives.
Arionna, calm down, Dace said. Please.
Ronan’s empty laugh seemed to echo in response, taunting Dace.
The Dace-wolf hybrid tore through my mind, trying to find Ronan wherever he hid in there and force him out.
I groaned and stumbled.
Arionna, you’ve got to calm down. Dace’s hand tightened on my arm. He fought to pull the animal back and contain it, but the wolf wasn’t cooperating. Whatever Ronan did, whatever he wanted, sent the animal in Dace into a rage.
I looked up at Dace. His brows were furrowed, and his pupils wide. He clenched his jaw so hard it looked like the bones would break under the strain. The tendons in his neck bulged. He breathed hard and fast as he tried to pull himself and the animal back and sever the link between us.
I can’t, I cried silently, another wave of emotion slamming into me.
Dace groaned aloud this time. His nostrils flared, and his step faltered.
Chelle touched my arm, and I bit my tongue to keep from screaming.
“Deep breaths, Arionna,” she murmured, eyeing us nervously. “Come on, you can do it. Slow, deep breaths.”
I took a deep, gasping breath. I held it.
The prying sensation started up again, sending the flood of emotion swirling higher. The Dace-wolf howled, and the unfamiliar part of me that had bubbled to the surface in response to Ronan’s invasion wanted to join Dace all over again.
My body shook hard, trembling like paper blowing around in a strong wind. I thought my legs were going to collapse. “Please,” I whimpered, wanting the constant build to stop. There was too much going on at once. I felt like I was being ripped apart from the inside out, and I couldn’t force any of my tormentors out, either. Not Dace and the wolf, not Ronan, not the fear, and not the thing in me fighting to respond. “Please, make it stop.”
My legs gave out.
“Hell,” Dace growled and swung me up into his arms. He was as angry as the animal in him, but he cradled me almost reverently in his arms, tucking me against his chest. “Chelle, you’ve got to … I can’t … .”
“I know,” she said, her voice soothing and worried all at once. “Go. I’ll take care of it.”
I didn’t hear how Dace responded. My head pounded, and I couldn’t catch a big enough breath.
Another wave of emotion slammed into me. I groaned into Dace’s shoulder, burying my face in his neck. “It won’t stop, Dace.”
“Shh,” he murmured, his breath coming in short pants. “Hold on, Arionna. Please, hold on.”
Ronan’s laughter echoed again, and the invasive feeling swelled beyond what I could handle. All of the emotions and sensations split my head open with a violent, tearing pain. I think I screamed.
Darkness swam up and plucked me from the world in an instant.
Chapter Nine
The world returned in little snatches. I held my breath, waiting for the pain to hit again. When it didn’t, I opened my eyes to soft, fluorescent light. I was no longer outside. Knowing that didn’t help much. The room around me was as unfamiliar as the black chaise I lay on.
Floor to ceiling windows, covered in dark curtains, took up one entire wall. A desk sat beneath the windows, a powered down PC sitting atop. The rest of the wall space was given over to built-in shelves, row after row of neatly ordered books marching across them in descending size. A lamp sat on a table beside the chaise.
The afghan tossed over my lap kept me warm. Warmer than I remember being when I fainted, if fainting is what I’d done. I wasn’t so sure about that. I wasn’t sure about much of anything, and I didn’t want to think about any of it right then either. I rolled onto my back to find Chelle standing over me, her eyes as worried as they had been the last time I saw her.
“Oh, thank god,” she said, her shoulders slumping as if a great weight lifted from them. Her hands shook. “I’ve been so worried about you.”
I looked up at her, blinking. “Where’s Dace?”
She grimaced. “He’ll be here soon.”
“Where am I?”
“His house.” Chelle perched on the end of the chaise, watching me warily. “The study. Are you okay?”
Was I okay? I wanted to laugh. I didn’t know the answer to that question. Ronan no longer prowled through my head, and Dace wasn’t raging in there. I no longer felt the urge to rip out Ronan’s throat. I also didn’t feel like I was going to be ripped apart by everything tearing through me, but … “I don’t know.”
The last weeks had brought nothing but pain after pain. I’d been certain all the spaces in me were too full to hold any more, but I hurt in places I’d never thought it possible to hurt. My entire body felt scraped raw, like I’d been battered from the inside out, and I wasn’t quite sure how.
I couldn’t seem to string thought together well enough to figure out the problem, but as pathetic as my inability to think straight felt, that relieved me. If I started thinking, I knew I’d start panicking, and I didn’t want to panic. I wanted not to feel anything at all.
But when do we ever get what we want?
The animal that launched himself into my head at the rave swam to the surface, behind my eyes. He stood there, watching me with sad, knowing eyes, half wolf, half Dace.
He looked more lost than I felt.
I wanted to cry for me and for Dace. I still wasn’t afraid of him, but I was afraid. I would’ve been a fool not to be. That realization hurt both of us, I think.
“What happened?” I asked Chelle, dragging my attention away from Dace’s wolf. He stayed in my head though, sitting quietly in a corner that seemed reserved solely for him.
“Um … .” Chelle’s gaze darted away from me and focused on the floor.
“Don’t.” I reached out and put my hand on her arm, forcing her to look at me. “I could feel them in my head, Chelle. Dace. A wolf. Ronan. Something in me. They were tearing me apart. And you know how. Tell me.”
“I … .” Chelle looked up at me, pleading with her eyes for me not to put her in that position. Not to make her tell secrets that weren’t hers to tell. Not to make her choose, I guess
, between her loyalty to Dace and her newfound friendship with me.
I wanted to give in, but I couldn’t. She had answers, and I needed them. If she never opened her mouth and told me about Dace, I could forgive her that, but the things happening to me were a different matter altogether. If she knew, she had to tell me. That might not have been fair to her, but fair didn’t matter anymore. Something was happening to me, and I had to know what.
She’s not the one you want to ask, Arionna.
I jumped at the unexpected sound of Dace’s voice echoing in my skull. He wasn’t loud, but the words reverberated powerfully all the same. They commanded my attention, compelling me to close my mouth and listen.
I held my breath, waiting for his emotions to feed mine and start the painful cycle all over again. The wrenching sensation didn’t come, and I relaxed. Slightly.
Why?
He ignored the question, or maybe answered it in his own way. Don’t put her in the middle. Please.
I hated how he said that single word, as if all of existence hinged upon my answer. Part of me thought that maybe it did. Another part didn’t think it mattered either way.
How crazy was that?
I’ll answer your questions.
All of my questions? I asked, not even caring that he was still in there, too relieved to feel him in there to care. Despite the trauma of the night, I still felt more right with him nestled in my mind than I did without him. I wanted that to matter. I wanted his intimate, unrequested presence to make me angry. It didn’t.
He thought about his response, trying to decide if he had another option. Yes, he answered after a lengthy pause, all of them.
I won’t wait forever, I warned him, knowing he would take his time otherwise. He didn’t want to answer my questions. Despite the fact that my heart trembled at the thought of his answers, his fear of my response was greater. That comforted me in a demented sort of way. I didn’t want him afraid, but the realization that he was made me feel less alone.
Ten minutes.
Five, I countered.
He sighed internally, but didn’t reply. I didn’t need his answer anyway. I felt him moving toward me, where moments before, he’d been absolutely still.
How could I be so certain of something I could neither see nor explain? The fact that I could was disconcerting. Wasn’t that the story of my life lately, though? My mind didn’t belong to me alone anymore, not since the moment I’d seen Dace … if it ever had at all. And that didn’t matter as much as it should, because as much as tonight had scared me, the thing coming for us scared me more.
I shivered and released Chelle’s arm, flopping back in the chaise. “You’re off the hook.”
She exhaled, her eyes falling half closed. “Thank you.” Relief echoed in her words.
“Don’t thank me. Thank Dace,” I muttered, not feeling any better. I was hurt, angry, scared, and confused all at the same time. With her, with him, and with myself.
Dace and the wolf had intimate access to my mind for reasons I couldn’t even begin to understand, let alone change. Given everything I’d felt tonight, I half suspected what that meant for me. It seemed impossible, but if I’d learned anything lately, I’d learned that the lines between possible and impossible were no longer static. Somewhere over the last weeks, they had blurred and shifted, and Chelle knew what I had only begun to guess.
Where I had questions, she had answers or guesses close enough to answers not to make any real difference. She knew what I’d experienced at the rave tonight. She knew exactly what Dace was and maybe even what I was. Maybe she even knew why Ronan prowled through my head like he had. Every single thing I questioned, she held the answers to, and she hadn’t said a word when she’d had the chance.
Worse, Dace had lied to me, diverted my attention … a million little things to keep me from looking too deeply, from questioning too far. I wasn’t sure if I was more disappointed with him for keeping those cards close or with myself for not guessing what my heart had known from day one.
Dace wasn’t human, and maybe I wasn’t either.
The urge to scream hit me as I sat there, but I did the smart thing instead. I closed my eyes and waited.
I knew the exact moment Dace stepped into the room. He made no sound at all, but the faintest breath of energy brushed across my skin and settled in the pit of my stomach, soothing the raw feeling poking at me with every breath. My senses focused on him, humming as if they’d only just come alive. Maybe they had. I certainly felt more alive when he was around.
I cracked open an eye, my gaze moving in his direction on instinct.
He stood right inside the door, looking at me with an expression I couldn’t even begin to unravel. Possession and protection, relief and reverence all shone in his eyes at once. His golden hair was windblown, strands sweeping down across his forehead and making my fingers itch to right them. He smelled of grass and pine and home.
A tremor ran through me.
His eyes were so bright; I started drowning all over again. I was always drowning with Dace, and I never seemed to care enough to make myself stop. Whether it saved me, killed me, or tore me to pieces, I wanted to keep drowning.
I jerked my eyes down and instantly regretted the action.
Dace wore nothing from the waist up, and he looked absolutely perfect, all hard planes and smooth, contoured muscle. He wasn’t thick like a bodybuilder, but lean like a runner. I wanted to reach out and run my hands over his chest and stomach to feel those muscles ripple beneath my palms. I wanted to touch him and know I affected him as easily as he did me.
I swallowed hard and fisted my hands at my sides, watching the gentle play of light across his golden skin. Even knowing what he was, or maybe what he wasn’t, I still wanted him so much I hurt. That ache pushed away even the worst of my grief, making it seem smaller and somehow so much less consuming. When Dace wasn’t around, the missing piece of me felt so much larger. But with him near, it shrank to nothing. No matter how terrifying this situation was for me, he still made me feel better.
I squeezed my eyes closed and turned my head away, unable to trust myself to look at him and not touch, and knowing I had to find the will to do the former. If I touched him, we wouldn’t talk. Not tonight. And more than I needed anything else, I needed him to explain why nothing in my life made sense anymore. I needed him to tell me that this wasn’t as bad as it felt. That this thing between us wouldn’t hurt me. That, no matter what, I wouldn’t lose another part of me.
I couldn’t take any more loss. I couldn’t deal with any more fear. I wanted to curl up in a ball beneath the covers and stay there until the world righted itself and my life went back to normal, but I didn’t have that option. I hadn’t had that choice since I’d driven into Beebe. It wasn’t fair, and I didn’t hate the injustice as much as I wanted to.
Part of me, a big part, wanted to rage at Dace for becoming so important. I resented that I spent more time thinking about him than I did my mom now, but I couldn’t hate him for it. I couldn’t even blame him for it. I’d felt his fear out there with Ronan, and I’d seen the broken expression on his face. Our connection confused Dace as much as it did me. He’d asked for all of this as little as I had. And somehow, I think, he had more to lose in this messed up situation than I did.
That didn’t make me feel any better.
Chelle shifted on the chaise at my feet and then murmured something. I don’t know if she was talking to me, to Dace, or to the room in general. I couldn’t hear the words through the pounding of my heart.
Dace responded, and I felt her rise from her perch on the chaise. I wanted to tell her not to go, to stay with me and keep me sane. To please keep me from diving into Dace’s arms and demanding he kiss me and make this night all better.
He had power over me in ways I didn’t think he even realized, let alone understood. When he came anywhere near, I didn’t care if he was Dace, Dancer the reindeer, a demon, or the Devil. That wasn’t a good thing, not right t
hen anyway.
The door closed.
I refused to open my eyes.
“Arionna,” he said, my name nothing but a soft sigh on his lips.
I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t even acknowledge him.
He said it again, louder this time, and started toward me. I couldn’t hear his steps, but as he neared, energy crackled between us like it always did, dancing along my skin until I wanted to wrap myself in it like I always did.
Whatever happened to me tonight tied us more closely together. I couldn’t sense his thoughts anymore, but I couldn’t force him out of my head either. He’d found his own little corner in there, and I didn’t think he’d ever leave again.
“Don’t touch me, Dace.” My request was the barest of whispers, as fragile and vulnerable as I felt. I struggled into a sitting position, then huddled against the back of the chaise, the afghan that had been covering me wrapped around my shoulders. My heart pounded, fear coursing through me. Would he ignore my warning? Would everything I experienced tonight stop mattering to me if he did? Had it already stopped mattering? “Please, don’t touch me,” I begged, my eyes meeting his across the room to do a little begging of their own.
He opened his mouth to say something, reconsidered, and then nodded once. His eyes slid away from mine as if he knew I couldn’t look him in the eyes and think.
I drew a deep, grateful breath.
For a long time, he didn’t try to come any closer. He simply stood right where he was in the center of the room, staring at the wall with those sad, knowing eyes. Those half-human, half-wolf eyes. The same eyes I’d seen earlier tonight.
That reminder shocked my system like cold water being poured over me.
Every thought, every question, and every worry I’d had since meeting him, as well as those that came rearing their ugly heads at the rave, poured in one right after another. I didn’t know what to say, how to begin, or where to begin. There were so many things I needed to know, and so many things I couldn’t even put into words.
“Why?” Apparently the words weren’t necessary after all. Every question, every fear, and every ache I had burst out in that single word, sounding both hurt and angry at the same time.
