Page 69 of Guarded By the Nightmare

Not long after that,she fell asleep, and I couldn’t deny she needed it.

I’d held her heart in the palm of my hand, dipping my claws inside its beating flesh as she came—and just thinking about the moment made me yearn for her again. She’d been so close to death while she’d been filling me with her light—and then she’d let me pour my darkness into her. Each jetting burst had seemed to come from deep within and the feeling of giving her myself had been so profoundlysatisfying, it felt like, that just like killing people, it was something I was meant to do.

But as I watched her sleep in my arms, and on top of me, I realized I could not allow myself to kill her.

It was one thing to lust for it—but I had gotten as close as I ever would, there, with my hand inside her breast.

I loved her.

And love was not death, not when she was so young and healthy. I brushed a kiss against her temple once more. Her mind might ache, but that was something that was fixable—there had to be a way to sever her from her fate with me.

It was just nothing that I’d ever considered doing before.

Every other person that had hired me deserved to die, oftentimes long before I met them—whereas she was eager for it, even as she loved me.

She wasn’t scared of death.

She was scared of being alive—and finding out that life had no meaning.

But time gave fate reason. And fate gave time a point.

We had not become intertwined on accident.

And from this moment forward, the only way I was willing to steal her breath was by pleasing her.

I let eyes open up across my back, so I could reach down a hand and reabsorb the inky fluids that had splashed out from her after I had filled her, pulling them back into myself, and underneath the blackness of my spill, I found a little metal T with two strings attached.

Some intrusion from the outside world, no doubt, probably brought up here by a nesting bird. I covered it with a handful of gravel from the cave floor, so that she wouldn’t see it and remember that there was anything beyond this place.

Mina slept soundly, and I kept an eye on her dreams for her. I would wake her in a few hours, take her some place to eat and possibly bathe, and then we would face the next name on her list together.

The Golden Wolf’s army would be preparing, condensing their ranks around their last precious three, but nothing they did would matter. I spent my own time dreaming of a sort, thinking of all the ways I could make them pay for hurting her. Flesh-eating beetles, pulling out their nerves strand by strand, breaking their necks high enough that they knew they were going to die but were completely unable to do anything about it.... I was strong, fast, and deadly, and if the men they’d sent after us already were any indication, all of this Wolf’s whelps were human.

But then there was the magic around her friend—and I pulled the scrap of skin she’d had me peel off of Nolan from the dimension I’d hidden it in. Something in both of them was vaguely familiar. I would dare say it called to me.

I stretched the gory piece of skin open with one hand. Why was this mark important? And what power did it imbue?

I’d overcome both of the men wearing it easily enough—had Mina defeated their plan in the cellar that night, or had they been lied to about its power?

Whatever the case was, it didn’t matter right now. I put the skin away and curled myself around her again, ready to chase off any of her nightmares.

She didn’t need them anymore, when she had me.

Mina wokewhen it was dawn outside, which meant it was night at her home. She turned into me before she pulled away, smiling. “I’m starving.”

“Then we will go eat before we wreak vengeance next.”

She laughed. “I can’t believe I need to eat before murdering someone.”

“Some human needs are quite prosaic.”

“And what do you need?” she asked, pulling a fingertip down my chest. I let the clothing I seemed to have on peel away at once, so that it looked like she was stroking against bare skin.

“Fear. Death. You.”

She blushed and twisted her head away—I caught it and pulled it in, to kiss at her temple. “May I enter you again?”

“Is that all you’ve been thinking of all night—er, day?” she added, after taking a glance outside the cave.

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