Page 16 of His Human to Charm

I nod my head, wanting to follow what he says no matter what, especially right now when he looks so worried. He gives me a tender smile and then looks at Simone. “You keep her safe until I return.”

“Someone has to,” Simone tries to joke, but the words come out tense.

“Lock the door,” Toron says as he closes the door and disappears on the other side.

I fumble with the lock for a moment until it slides into place. I can feel panic starting to creep up on me, and it’s taking everything in me not to start freaking out and crying again. Really, the only thing keeping me from crying is that I know Simone is going to poke fun at me again if I do. She seems to sense the fine line I’m walking because she tries to get my mind off of my panic.

“You’re not getting off the hook on having a conversation with him just because there’s an emergency,” she says, pointing her finger at me like I’m about to argue with her. Not that she’d give me a moment to do it even if I wanted to. “Practice on me. Tell me exactly what you want to say to him so maybe we can get you comfortable talking in general before you see him again.”

So that’s what we do for the next few hours while we wait for Toron to come back and tell us that everything is fine and we’re safe. At first, I sound like an idiot, stumbling over words. Simone tells me that I need to stop overthinking what I’m saying and just say it, which leads to me frustratedly saying everything that pops up in my mind. She gets me upset, tells me to get mad at her and tell her, and then praises me when I do.

Over and over, we do this, and yes, at multiple points, I cry, and she makes fun of me. By the end, I’ve called her a bitch twice, and she’s called me a pathetic crybaby more times than I can count. I don’t know when or how it happens, but at some point, I stop caring about what she thinks about me and start speaking my mind.

“You’ve got this,” Simone says when there’s a soft knock on our door. “Everything we talked about, you go and talk about it with him.”

“Maybe not all of it,” I laugh, walking toward the door to open it. The small amount of joy we’ve found in this moment is gone as soon as I open the door and see a wide-eyed Deja. She’s shaking with tears falling down her cheeks. “What happened?”

“I need your help,” she says on a broken sob. “Something happened with Skylar, and I just can’t help her on my own. I know you haven’t mated your demon yet, but she’s our blood now, and I just need help, please.”

“Yes,” I answer, not even needing to think about it for a moment. “Of course, yes, where?”

Deja leads me down the hall and to another one where her room is. She hasn’t been staying with the rest of us since the demon she’s mated to has a workshop not far from the great hall where they’ve been staying since their mating is still so new. She knocks on her bedroom door but doesn’t go in until the hissing subsides on the other side.

“We want to help our sister,” Deja says as she presses her hand to the wooden door. “Let us help her.”

The door swings open, and a demon that looks a lot like Toron without the scars that adorn his chest is snarling on the other side. His fangs are fully extended, his claws heavy at the ends of his fingertips. He doesn’t say anything intelligible to us. He just snaps his teeth, hisses, and breathes heavily.

“Please,” Deja says the word so softly that I don’t think Yril can hear her, but his face softens slightly, and he steps away from the doorframe. “Thank you. We just want to help.”

Yril hisses as soon as we enter the room. He rushes to close the door behind us and then back over to the bed, where he kneels next to a small, bloody lump lying in the bed. It takes my mind a long moment to register that it’s Skylar lying on the bed, covered in blood and fast asleep. A loud gasp leaves me as I rush over to check to make sure she’s okay. Yril hisses again but doesn’t stop me when I move her hair from her face and check to make sure she’s still breathing.

“She is uninjured,” Yril’s voice is distorted, but it’s broken in sorrow now rather than the rage I expect. “It is not her blood.”

I take in a shaky breath, wipe away the tears starting to rim my eyes, and continue inspecting Skylar’s body just in case he missed something. It’s not that I don’t trust him, but he is sitting in here with a bloody human woman passed out in his bed, and I don’t know why.

“We need to get her cleaned up,” I say. I don’t know what about this situation has made me the rational one, but neither Deja nor the demon is moving to do anything other than look brokenhearted. “One of you go get water, and the other gets me some rags. I believe that you don’t think she’s hurt, but I want to make sure.”

“You think I cannot keep my mate safe?” Yril’s lips pull back to show off the fangs still dropped low.

“I think she’s covered in blood right now, and I care more about her well-being than if you kept her safe.” Who is this Alice, and where did she come from? I’m going to say this is the influence of being stuck with Simone for the last day, but I also know this is the first time I’ve ever been in a situation like this, and maybe, just maybe, I can be a take-charge kind of person. Not in everyday life, but maybe I’m not a lost cause when things go bad.

Yril stares at me for a long moment before casting his red eyes down to his mate. “I will not leave this room.”

“Deja, get some water, please.” I turn to make sure she’s heard me, and when she leaves the room, I turn back to Yril. “Do you have anything we can use to wipe off the blood? Tunics, extra sheets, anything?”

“Yes.” He stumbles as he gets to his feet and checks over his shoulder constantly as he walks over to one of the dressers. “My tunics, use them all if you need.” He drops a pile of clothing next to me and then falls back to his knees next to the bed so he can stroke Skylar’s face as he stares at it.

Deja returns quickly, and we begin washing the blood from Skylar’s body. There is so much of it, staining her skin and hair, but Yril’s right about it not coming from her. There’s not a single mark on her when we finish wiping all of the blood from her body. Once I’m sure we’ve cleaned her thoroughly, we dress her in one of Yril’s clean tunics and tuck her into bed. I want to comb through her hair to untangle the long locks, but we don’t have a brush, and I’m not sure where to get one since none of the demons have any hair.

“I will brush my claws through it,” Yril says when he notices me struggling with what to do with the tangles. “I have been doing it for many days now. I will make sure it is smooth when she wakes.”

My jaw ticks, not liking that there’s nothing else for Deja or me to do to make sure Skylar is okay. We can only wait for her to wake up so we can ask her if there’s anything else she needs. I doubt her mate is about to let us sit in their room. I’m proved right when he turns to us and begins to dismiss us.

“I will wait with my mate while she sleeps,” he says before screwing his eyes tight. “I have failed her once. I promise I will not do it again.”

“You didn’t fail her,” Deja murmurs. They’re the first words she’s said since we started cleaning Skylar. “She’s here, she’s unhurt, and she’s going to be okay.”

“I—“ Yril shakes his head, refusing to finish whatever he was going to say. He looks to Deja first, “Thank you. I appreciate your help and your words.”

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