Page 17 of Veradel
So when Lucan finally scoops me off the forest floor, my body spent and poorly fighting sleep, I manage to whisper, “We still need to save Xantera.”
I expect him to say we can’t. I failed to get the key from Arad, and our method of communicating to those within the Wall still hangs around my neck. There’s no way to know if Eleni and Claudia followed through with the plan.
Maybe seconds or minutes go by until I’m deposited onto his soft bed and tucked beneath the blankets. I squint up at Lucan, my vision hazy with exhaustion.
“I know,” he finally answers instead, dropping a kiss on my forehead. “And we will.”
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 inmybed, inmyarms.
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 andlive.
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 ofhiminsideher. 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’smine, 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.
The next morning, I wake up to a new sound.
Not the grating voice of the robotic female on the loudspeakers or the heavy press of silence in the palace, butmusic.
When I peel my eyes open, it’s to find a few bluebirds hopping on the sills outside Lucan’s window, twittering at us through the glass. Sunlight streams onto the bed, where Lucan and I lie intertwined, my head on his chest and legs wrapped around his.
And his amber eyes already open, staring down at me.
“Good morning, little nightmare,” he says in a rumbling voice that feels like it travels all the way down every point where our skin makes contact.
“Good morning,” I breathe back, instantly flushing with heat when I remember last night. I give a little laughing cough and add, “So much for you sleeping on the floor.”
“You want me on the floor,” he growls, nipping at my shoulder again, stroking his tongue along the marks his canines left last night, “then I’llget on the floor. You want me between your legs, I’ll get between your legs. You tell me where to go—either away from you or inside you—and I will obey. Whatever you want to do, I will oblige.”
I marvel at the ripple of his muscles as he lifts himself onto an elbow to look at me, at the way his bed frame groans every time his weight shifts even slightly. This behemoth of a male is saying he’ll obeyme. It inflates me with a sense of power I’ve never felt before, and I bite my bottom lip, thinking about all the things I could make him do.
“Hmmm. I think I want—”
A sharp rap against the door cuts me off.
“Hey, you two love kittens! We’re going to go hunt for some breakfast. Want to join?”
Lucan freezes, his entire countenance shifting from adoration to overflowing rage. I have a feeling the term “kitten” is even more offensive to him than all the other curse words combined.
“Why thefuckare you in my house right now, Soren?”
“Oh, it’s not just me,” Soren calls through the peeling wood of the door. “Vivian and Merrick are here with me.” After a stretch of silence, he hisses, “Say something, or it’ll seem like I’m lying, you fucking idiots. I swear they’re with me. They’re right here.”
Lucan bounds out of bed and nearly rips the door off its hinges, revealing the two males from last night and the female Vivian standing sheepishly between them.
