Page 27 of Forsaken Dream
Chapter Thirteen
Echo
Stretching my arms over my head, I twisted my body, my stiff muscles protesting at the movement. I was sore, so sore I almost thought I’d been sleeping on a rock because of the aches and pains covering every inch of me. With my eyes closed, I enjoyed the half-awake state I was in, knowing too well I had a lot of work cut out for me as soon as I was up. I had the strangest nightmare, dreaming about being sick and dying, Proto telling me stories about him ruling the Seelie kingdom, and Josh sneaking up in the early night trying to kill me—and only the fates know what else he had planned.
A shiver made me tremble.
“She’s coming around.” The mattress I was stretched over spoke, freezing the breath in my lungs.
“Echo?” The voice of another male wrapped around me, and another shiver, a very pleasant one, passed through me when knuckles gently grazed the side of my face.
My eyelids pulled open slowly and, blinking away the blurriness, the face of an angel came into focus. A real angel in this case, with golden locks falling around his head and a worried expression gnawing on his face as his bright blue eyes searched my gaze. Watching him mutely, I did my best to keep my heartrate low, but it was a futile attempt.
“What happened to you, Angelo?” My hand lifted to his blood-crusted face, and his fingertips trailed over his square, stubble-covered jaw.
A line formed, pulling on his forehead as if he couldn’t understand what I’d asked. “A skirmish you shouldn’t worry about, dove. How do you feel?”
“Little sore, but fine. Why?” I sounded wary, but I knew before he said anything that what I’d thought had been a nightmare had really happened. I could feel it in my bones. “Did you kill him?” My voice fell flat, and the angel winced.
“He is alive.” My mattress piped in with a deep, rumbling voice filled with regret because the human had lived.
The words stuck in my throat when I turned to face Tyler. I wasn’t sore like I’d slept on a rock, no. I actually did sleep on a literal rock. Where I expected the male with yellow eyes, chocolate curls, and caramel skin to be, a creature of tales met my startled eyes. I knew he was a gargoyle, but for the first time I saw it with my own eyes.
Thick eyebrows stretched over too-wide, almond-shaped eyes what were proportional to his face. Still yellow, they had a vertical pupil that kept retracting and expanding as he allowed me to look him over. The soft skin I knew by touch from when he picked me up was light grey and hard as a rock. If he didn’t speak, I would’ve thought he was a statue I’d used as a bed overnight. Tyler’s strong nose sat above thick lips, and his cheekbones were razor sharp. As sharp as his teeth, what little of them I could see poking through. His jaw was too square to call him handsome, and his forehead was too wide, but he was a sight to behold. Pointed ears peeked through his chocolate hair, which resembled mine if I removed the glamour making them look human. Muscles chiseled in stone covered the vast expanse of his bare chest, every one of them perfectly lined to form him into the ultimate predator that he was.
The gargoyle looked majestic.
A lump formed in my throat from the uncertain expression on his face while I gaped at him. If he knew about Proto and what I’d been looking at for most of my life, the male wouldn’t have blinked an eye about his stunning, albeit terrifying, appearance. The strong fingers twitched around me where he was cradling me in his arms. My gaze flicked to Angelo, who was watching me ogle Tyler from the side.
“He wouldn’t let us take you from him while you were unconscious.” The angel shrugged with a pained wince, as if that was a great explanation. “It’s a gargoyle trait, they’re very possessive,” Tyler growled something, but I zeroed-in on one very important thing the angel said.
“We?” As soon as I spoke, Vaser stepped closer so I could see him over Angelo’s head.
If Tyler’s apprehension about me seeing his true form made my throat close, the defeated look on the incubus’s face shattered my heart. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the revelations that he hid his nature from me yet, but I never wanted to be the reason for that expression.It’s not like you told them what you are.A voice in my head sneered.Or whose daughter you are.Or that I was promised to someone else while I enjoyed his hands and kisses, I added to myself, my stomach plummeting to my feet.
“Thank you.” Opting for a safer topic, I owed them my gratitude for coming to my aid after I’d kicked them off my property. “I don’t know what would’ve happened if you didn’t show up.”
“Easy there, killer.” Angelo placated Tyler when the gargoyle snarled and tucked me closer to his chest. “She’s safe, which you can see yourself.”
Instinctively, I reached for the stone face looming over me, tracing his features with my fingers. “I’m fine. Better than fine, actually, thanks to you. Thank you.”
“The human needs to die.” The yellow eyes narrowed, but the hold he had on me was careful as if I was made of glass.
“I’m not sure that it was his fault.” Recalling what I thought was a dream, I remembered the shadow I saw around Josh before he was yanked away from me. “Something was wrong with him.”
“Yes, he is an unstable human that we need to dispose of,” the gargoyle rumbled through clenched teeth. He stared at me unapologetic, not at all mad at himself for voicing his murderous intentions. Not even when I lifted an eyebrow at him. “He hurt you,” he spat.
“He didn’t have a chance to hurt me because you came, right on time.” I wasn’t getting through to him, so I huffed in frustration. “You were here not even a minute after I opened that door to see what was making a noise. Josh had no time to hurt me. You protected me from it.” Never one to offer more than an occasional tilt of the lips, unless it was a scary smile to freak Josh out, Tyler’s stony features relaxed a fraction.
I’d take that as a win.
“Before you pulled him away, I could’ve sworn I saw some type of a shadow around him, like a cloak that was attached over his shoulders and covered the back of his head.” Pulling the memory to the front of my mind, I closed my eyes to examine it better. “I didn’t get a good look at it, but it was there. Josh is many things, and most of all a jerk, but a murderer he is not.” When the faces around me looked unconvinced, I rolled my eyes. “I’ve known the human since he could barely walk. They used to bring him here while his grandfather was alive. He’s always been an entitled little shit—as Pam loved to call him—but never cruel or evil.”
“Is Pam the female in all these pictures with you?” Angelo pointed his chin at the shelves where frames were sprinkled over every empty space.
“Yes, she was …” How did I explain to them what the human woman was to me. Saying she was everything to me wouldn’t cut it with this lot, not when they took words so literally. “Pam was my sister, my mother, and my grandmother depending on what the years and times required her to be, but she aged and I didn’t. Most of all, though, she was my best friend.” Tears prickled the corners of my eyes, but I blinked them away.
“You loved her.” Out of all three, I didn’t expect the incubus to say the words in such a wishful way.
