Page 46 of Beg the Night

I didn’t care about New Girl, but I couldn’t let her scream in her sleep.

“You called me Athena.”

“Excuse me?”

“When you woke me up, you didn’t call me New Girl. You called me Athena.”

Fuck. I fought the urge to smack a palm to my face. “Yeah, well, I assumed using your actual name would be more effective. Don’t worry. It won’t happen again.”

A weak laugh escaped her. “You don’t have to do that, you know.”

“Do what?”

“You don’t have to be the big, scary tier three who hates everyone. It’s just us now. You don’t have to pretend anymore.”

Her words were like a knife to the gut. “I’m not pretending. I called you by your name once, you don’t have to worry about that becoming a habit.”

“Right.” She sighed, shoulders sagging. “And what about your real name?”

I bit back a growl. She was awfully fucking talkative for someone who’d just woken up from a nightmare. Though I supposed maybe that was the point. She was distracting herself from whatever had scared the shit out of her.

But turning the conversation on me? Wasn’t going to fucking work.

“What were you dreaming about?”

The smile slipped from her face. “I can’t remember.”

“You can’t?” I hummed. “It must have been bad. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been screaming for help.”

She swallowed thickly, her eyes so wide another version of me might’ve felt bad for her in the past. But that version of me was gone. Dead. Forgotten.

The man I was now didn’t give a fuck that those big doe eyes were locked on me.

“It was only a nightmare.” She lowered her head, focusing on her lap. “It wasn’t real.”

I scoffed. “We both know nightmares are very, very real in this world.”

Even drenched in sweat and clearly still recovering from the battle she had been fighting in her mind, she looked at me in defiance, her jaw set, ready to wage war.

All the more reason I knew she was hiding something. People like that—fighters—weren’t simply born. The world made them that way. The world had shown New Girl here that for whatever reason, she had to be tough. She had to fight.

Fight what? Director, sure. The Ministry, of course. But what else? What was she fighting in that pretty little head of hers?

I leaned in, loving the way she flinched slightly as I approached her space. “I’m going to ask you one more time, New Girl, and you’re going to answer me. What were you dreaming about?”

“Dying.” The word was so quiet I barely heard it.

My stomach sank. “You have nightmares about dying?”

She finally broke our electric gaze—thank god, because I never would have—and dipped her chin. “I have nightmares about dying, and I have nightmares about being alive. I can’t quite decide which ones are worse.”

No fucking shit.

“I don’t buy it.”

“Don’t buy what?”

“A girl like you seems to have very little fear of dying. You don’t seem too concerned with your safety here. Unless you’re an expert at hiding all that behind that mask you’re always wearing.”

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