Page 10 of The Beast's Betrayed Mate
What if she really was in danger, though?
What if the dog…
Had it been a dog?
What if it came after him, followed his scent all the way to his apartment. It would probably only have to nudge the door for it to fall over and let it in. The thought of the dog following his scent made him frown, however, because Olive’s many different levels of scent was still in his nostrils.
Had the bite infected him somehow? Or was he carrying a virus that heightened his senses?
He downed the rest of the whisky and said, “Would you stay if I go lie down for a bit? We can continue this when I wake up, I just… I think I need some shut eye.”
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t frown either. There was no question mark anywhere in her expression or her body language when she nodded. “Sure,” she said as though him asking her this favor happened every day. “Go get some rest.”
It was strange how safe he felt just by having her there. As far as he knew, she was no security expert, neither of them had any sort of weapon and if that dog showed up again neither of them would be able to fight it off. And yet…
And yet he crawled into bed feeling as though he would get the best hour of sleep he’d ever had.
Chapter 4 - Olive
She watched his bedroom door close behind him, trying not to ponder what his bedroom might look like or how comfortable his mattress might be. Trying and failing spectacularly. She had a feeling it was one of those that shaped itself after whoever lay in it.
She stared at the empty whisky glass in her hand and then got to her feet, walking up to the cabinet for a refill. She swallowed the alcohol down in one mouthful, feeling it burn pleasantly down her throat, heat spreading in her chest. It wasn’t like her to drink this early in the day, and the effect had been almost immediate. She felt a little wobbly, but mostly it was in a welcomed way.
She needed to slow her racing thoughts. Because she couldn’t make sense of what was going on. The only thing she felt sure of was that whatever Peter had been suffering from that morning, it had not been fucking food poisoning.
What if he really was turning into a zombie?
His wrist…
How the hell could it have healed that quickly? It seemed… unnatural.
No, that was what it was. It was entirely unnatural.
Trying to put a spin on it did her no good. She was now part of something with this unnatural weirdness threaded through it, and her scientific brain was going crazy since it had no way of making out the full picture.
She had tried stepping back to get a clearer view, but nothing seemed to work.
And so—alcohol.
Not to numb the mind, but to take the edge off. It was an old trick of hers, and she’d used it at school whenever a problem she was tackling was beginning to seem insurmountable.
Have a drink, relax the brain, gain new perspectives.
At least it had always worked for her back then. Now, not so much.
She mostly felt as exhausted as Peter had looked when he’d admitted to needing a snooze.
A snooze.
Her eyes went to the sofa.
It wasn’t a terrible idea. Perhaps the alcohol had done its job after all.
She crawled onto the sofa, pulling the caftan neatly folded over one armrest over herself and closing her eyes. She wondered if she might dream of huge dogs the size of cars. The thought should scare her, but instead she found it intriguing. Like it was a story she was curious to hear the ending of. Like an urban legend. Bigfoot-esque in its quality. Like…
She slipped into her snooze not finishing her train of thought.
***
