Page 7 of Creatures Like Us
“Yeah, what the fuck do you think?” I pull my foot under my thigh, protecting it from his long pale fingers.
“But you feel it?”
I nod.
“Good. It’ll be a while until the blood flow returns properly. If I wouldn’t have found you, you would have fallen into a deeper sleep than you’d be able to wake up from.”
Yeah?…?He keeps saying that.
I wrap my hands around my knees, clutching my legs to my chest. “Maybe that would have been just as well.”
“What?” He frowns, showing the most emotion yet.
I scowl, looking sideways. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Not with a stranger.
Not with anyone.
My brother’s face resurfaces in my mind, and I pinch my eyes shut.Leave me alone, leave me alone?…
When I reopen my eyes, my savior is crouching before me, offering me a piping-hot mug of some kind of liquid.
“Here.”
“What is it?”
“Chicken soup. I slaughtered one just a few days ago. The last one.” He says that last part in a lower voice, as if he doesn’t want me to hear.
“The last one? How many did you have?”
“We had twelve, Auntie and I.”
“Auntie?”
He doesn’t reply, instead motioning for me to drink the soup. I sip the liquid, and it heats me up from the inside out.
“Aren’t you going to ask what happened to me?” I mumble.
My savior shrugs. “I know what happened. You got drunk and high, and you fell asleep in the snow.”
“How’d you know I got high?”
He raises a brow, as if to say,What do you think?
I groan. That obvious, is it? I look a little gaunt and pale, sure, but I didn’t think it was that bad.
“What’s your name?” I ask, tired of referring to him as “my savior.”
“Noah.” He goes quiet after that, and I raise a brow.
“Aren’t you going to ask me for mine?”
“I already know your name, Asher Dalton.”
The soup goes down the wrong hatch, and I heave, “Did you go through my stuff?”
My savior—Noah, apparently—sends me one of his leveled stares again, giving me a one-shouldered shrug, as if saying,Obviously.
