Page 105 of Beneath the Mountain Sky

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So I can keep her mine.

WILLOW

Excruciating pain bands around my abdomen, and I gasp, trying to find my breath through the agony. I wrap my arms around myself, curling inward, seeking any relief from the pain.

It doesn’t come.

Someone tries to grab my shoulder, but I bat the hand away with all the force I can muster up.

Not wanting the touch.

Not wanting it at all.

“Don’t fucking touch me!”

My stomach roils, and I barely manage to get the words out before another scream rents the air, ripped from deep in my chest, filled with my anguish and rage?—

No. No. No.

Not like this…

Panic wells.

Choking me.

Suffocating me.

The agony comes again—stronger, more intense, unyielding.

Blinding.

There is no escaping it, no hiding, no relief.

I bolt upright in the bed.

Soaked in sweat.

Lungs seizing.

Head spinning.

Vision unfocused.

A hand reaches for me, sliding across my bare shoulder, but I slap it away, my body violently shaking as the nightmare, or memory, or whatever it is, still lingers.

It’s there.

That pain.

So real.

So intense.

The touch of the hand on my shoulder that wasn’t Killian’s…

But I sense him beside me in the bed. “Willow?”

“I…I just need…”

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