Page 101 of Marked By Moonlight
He loves me…
Chapter 42
Lumi
“Idon’t love you. I don’t love you. I don’t love you. I don’t love you. I don’t love you.”The words repeat over and over in my head, growing louder and louder and louder.“Please, please. I didn’t mean it. I don’t love you, Lumi.”
“I know you don’t. I’m alive,” I whisper with a smile on my lips. I expect to be lying on the ground in the forest, but when I open my eyes, I’m lying in Ambrose’s bed at his house. Rowena and Emeric are here, along with another woman I recognize but don’t know her name.
Before I can say anything else, Ambrose engulfs me in a bone-crushing hug. “You’re alive. Oh my gods, you’re alive!”
“It appears that way,” I laugh uneasily as Ambrose continues to hold onto me, as if he thinks I might slip away at any moment. My body feels like it’s been through hell and back. Everything is sore, and my head quickly begins to spin.
“How are you feeling?” the woman asks me.
“Lightheaded, dizzy, sore, tired.”
She nods. “That’s to be expected after everything you went through. I’m Serenai. Can I examine you?”
I nod, and Ambrose gently helps me lay back in bed while she does a quick examination. All the while, Ambrose never lets go of my hand.
She frowns a few minutes later.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Nothing. Within a couple of days of rest you’ll be back to yourself. Your body went through a lot. You lost almost every drop of blood in your body. Shifting into your wolf form saved your life, but it also took an incredible toll on you. We tried giving you a blood transfusion earlier, but your body rejected it. So, unfortunately, there isn’t much to do but wait for your body to heal itself.” She looks to Ambrose. “There is nothing more to do but wait.”
She squeezes his shoulder and then walks out of the room.
Silence stretches between the four of us remaining. There’s something I’m missing. None of them should be this quiet about taking a couple of days for me to heal.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I ask.
Rowena steps forward. “You’ve been out for almost a week.”
“What?”That can’t be possible.
She’s almost in tears, so is Emeric.
A week. I’ve been unconscious for a week.How did I not die? Does Ambrose really love me, and I’m never actually going to recover? Is my body going to continue to slowly decline until I finally die?
I turn to Ambrose, knowing if anyone is going to tell me the truth, it’s going to be him.
“Tell me,” I say.
He opens his mouth but then closes it.
“Tell me,”I demand into his mind.
“Tonight is the full moon,” he finally says.
It takes me a second to process what he’s saying. Tonight is the full moon. Tonight is the marking ceremony—our onlychance for another month to cement our bond as mates. To break the curse.
And I see it in all of their faces. They don’t think I’m strong enough.
“I can do it. I proved that I can shift. I—”
“We know that you can, but you don’t understand how close to death you were and still are. It’s suicide if you try to complete the marking ceremony in this state. You need to be at your strongest,” Ambrose says.
