Page 30 of Smoke

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Alina

It couldn’t be real.I was dreaming that I heard my sister’s voice outside. I had just taken a shower and drifted off while watching something stupid on TV for the sake of having background noise in the room when banging on the door slammed me back into consciousness. It even sounded like her. I couldn’t help but get up and see if she was real.

She was. And she threw herself at me. It was impossible, all of it, but it had to be true. I could feel her and smell her shampoo, and there was Smoke, standing in the doorway, watching the two of us.

I wanted to reach out for him, but he didn’t make a move in my direction. I held back and focused on Jasmine.

“How did you find me? How did you even know I ran away?”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when my sister almost tackled me to the floor. So, I did both—so did she.

“Didn’t you hear me?” She loosened her grip just enough to pull back and look at me. Tears flowed down her cheeks, matching mine.

“Just now? Yeah, you woke me up.”

“I don’t mean then. I mean early this morning, when you tried to…”

I did remember. That voice. It stopped me in my tracks and made me wonder who was watching from the woods. But I had never seen anybody out there, had I? Because there was nobody there.

“It was you. Your voice.”

“And it stopped you?” she whispered.

“You were the only thing that stopped me,” I wept. “I would’ve gone through with it if you hadn’t seen me. I was ready to go. I really was.” I closed my eyes and cried even harder, all the shame and pain coming back at once. Jasmine fell against me, and we held each other for a long time.

“Who did that to you?” Smoke’s voice was dangerously tight.

I opened my eyes to look at him through my tears.

“Who did what?”

It was the closest he had come to a greeting—granted, Jasmine jumped in before he could say or do anything, but he hadn’t so much as said hello. His question seemed out of place.

“Your face.” He touched his own jaw and cheeks to explain.

I blushed furiously in embarrassment before I asked myself just why I was blushing. Nothing that had happened to me was my fault. Even so, knowing that other people could see the results filled me with shame.

Jasmine looked to see what he was talking about. “Oh, Alina. How could anyone hurt you like this?”

She sat me on the bed. Smoke stood by the door, arms folded over his chest.

“It’s not worth talking about,” I said, wiping my tears away.

She was there. They both were. I was safe, finally. He wouldn’t let anything happen to me. I knew it without having to be told.

“I want to hear it,” he replied in a deep growl I had never heard from him before.

The dragon was closer to the surface than I had ever seen, I realized. I could practically feel its presence in the room with us—and it wasn’t happy. Smoke never took his eyes off my bruises.

“Bradley did it,” I admitted, looking down at my lap.

“Bradley?” Jasmine gasped. “I didn’t know him that well, but I never would’ve guessed he had it in him.”

“Trust me. He has a lot in him that none of us have ever seen. I shudder to think about anybody who’s seen his true nature. Any women. I’ve wondered a lot about him since I left home. He blends in so well with the human world—so many of us can’t, but he does. I can just imagine the number of women he’s hurt.”

“He hurt you. That’s reason enough for me to want to kill him.” Smoke was deadly serious, too. His eyes had gone dark with fury.

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