Page 54 of The World Undone

“Maybe I’m not the only one who’s been sleepwalking.” I turned to Wade, my arms curling around my body as I fought to find heat. The sky was slowly turning to a gray haze around us, and I knew we didn’t have long before the day broke. “Do you think that habit is slipping through the connections too?”

The two of them stared each other down, Darius’s timidness solidifying back into his usual lazy confidence as he recalibrated to the situation.

“Maybe,” he said, though he didn’t sound entirely convinced.

I tried to read him, but all I could feel was Wade’s unsettled confusion, edging towards distrust. Darius was like a silent wall.

My connection to him didn’t feel quite as destabilized as it had, he was reachable now and I felt him—he was just silent, standoffish.

“What were you both doing out here?” Darius pulled his hoodie off and cocooned me in it. “Wake up in the water again? You look like you’re freezing.”

I was.

“Sleepwalking,” I muttered through the fabric. The material fell midway down my thigh, and I burrowed into the warmth. My stomach flipped as I took in the scent of him now surrounding me. “Nasty habit, sorry if it’s rubbing off on you too now.”

“She was further out this time,” Wade said, casting me a glance out of the side of his eyes, “deeper under the surface. I found her, but I don’t know how long she would have?—”

He let the sentence die off there, and both of them took an unconscious step closer to me.

“Let’s get home,” Wade’s hands ran up and down my arms in an attempt to warm me, completely ignoring the fact that he was also soaking wet and likely freezing just as much as I was, “get warmed up and then maybe steal another hour or two of sleep before the day starts and we begin tackling and testing the limits of these bond connections.”

I shook my head. I wasn’t tired. I had too much adrenaline from the day’s events coursing through my veins. Lately, I was pleased with just a few hours of sleep each night. Nobody talked about how difficult it was to find peace enough to sleep with an impending apocalypse hanging over your shoulders. “Actually, can we swing by the med center first? We can grab some dry clothes there. I want to check on Sarah and make sure that Greta’s okay. A few people went on a run and were supposed to bring in fresh supplies today, which means she probably hasn’t had much of a break distributing it all—she always immediately puts everything to use.”

If we were going to devote the morning to practicing power exchanges and siphoning, who knew when I’d get the chance to swing by otherwise. And while I’d joked about it earlier, I was starting to really worry about my favorite nurse. She was getting even less sleep than I was, and didn’t even bother leaving the medical building anymore. Instead, she’d sleep in whichever thin bed was momentarily vacant. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t even remember to eat if Charlie didn’t have meals brought in three times a day for her and the patients doing well enough to consume solid foods.

“You sure?” Wade asked.

Darius shrugged. “I’m not tired, I can go with her if you want to go back to the cabin and rest.”

Wade snorted, a gruff no way in hell I’m leaving her alone with you right now echoing in my mind.

A challenging smirk started to tug at Darius’s lips, and I looped one arm through each of theirs and began dragging them back towards the well-trodden path before one of their typical pissing contests had a chance to commence.

I ignored the slick lick of heat down my spine as the two of them pressed in close to me, silent and strong sentinels that had my body humming and my mouth practically watering just with their nearness. The savage hunger pulsing through the bonds was going to strangle me if we didn’t get a grip on them soon.

Eli was right, figuring out the limits of our connection needed to become top priority. Last thing we needed was me getting distracted by my own horniness during a mission.

A soft light lit the path, and we followed it in a heavy silence.

Even though Darius had awoken from whatever strange reverie he’d been in, I could still tell that he was shaken from it—could sense him sinking quietly into himself in that way of his.

It probably didn’t help that Wade kept casting suspicious glances at him out of the corner of his eye, almost like he thought Darius would snap back into robot-vampire mode if he kept him out of his sights for too long.

When we came to the familiar sight of the medical cabin, my blood froze. Something felt inherently wrong.

Darius tensed next to me, no doubt catching onto the shift in the air even before I did.

“What’s wrong?” Wade asked, falling back into my side when my body acted like an anchor and paused mid-stride.

I started towards the med center again, resisting Darius’s attempt to keep me back. “The door’s wide open.”

Greta would never leave the door open. It was freezing in these mountains, and there were beds of patients in the direct path of the draft.

Fuck.

Greta.

She slept most nights here, and I knew from experience that she was a light sleeper. She would have noticed if something was wrong, alerted us if she needed help.

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