Page 59 of Cursed Shadows 4

No trace of Daxeel.

He might be so far on the other side of the mountain that I cannot feel him. He might be dead. It might be the mountain distorting our bond.

I don’t let myself get carried away with the fear of it all, that his life might already be gone from his body, his soul waiting for mine in the afterlife.

Though I do let myself wonder, ask the question down the dormant bond;why did you forge the bond?

It made sense for me to seal our bond. But for Daxeel, all he’s done is create a second target—a second heart outside of his own body that, really, he can’t protect as well as he can protect his own.

Was it a moment of weakness that phase at the Gloaming and he simply couldn’t fight his beast anymore? That he finally cracked and risked his own life to mate with me?

He must be regretting that now.

Out there, somewhere, beneath the grey of the skies, he must be consumed with the regret of his choices. Never knowing when the strike to his life might come, or if Dare will reach me first.

Part of me hopes Dare finds me soon.

Even if it’s just so I can rest easy under the heavy blanket of fatigue. With Ridge knocked out by the white powder, and the soft quiet of the rockpool lulling me into slumber, I would sleep easier knowing I was guarded by Dare.

But as my lashes close on my vision and my mind falls away to sweet nevers and nothings, all that shields me is the pile of foliage I placed at the mouth of the hollow and the mud that’s caked all over my person.

I dream of all things awful.

17

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“Loo-ah.”

A sleepy frown turns down my mouth.

“Loo… no.”

Ill rest has my eyes puffy and slicked with gunk. They fight to keep shut, to lure me back into the deep sleep I’m stirred from.

I struggle against the weight of my lashes.

There’s a glaze to my sight, a murkiness that, even as I swat away the eye-sludge with my gloved fingertips, remains. I fix my weary, flickering stare on Ridge.

He’s a silhouette to me in the haze. A shadow.

Takes my mind some moments to wake a bit more, takes my eyes a moment longer to focus.

There he is, on his side. He must have rolled over at some point—and that means the white powder is working.

“Luna…” The faint pink smear that I assume to be his mouth, it moves with the word.

No, not a word. A name.

Luna.

His companion at the Gloaming. His friend, the one who flirted with Daxeel, the one I never saw again.

If I had a speck of energy to spare on Ridge, or any compassion to offer another, I would frown my mouth in a look of pity, maybe lean over him and brush a strand of his hair out of his face, whisper a soothing word or two.

I don’t, because sleep calls me back. It never lost its grip on me. Now, it’s dragging again.

“Luna, no—” Ridge’s raspy breath hitches.

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