Page 33 of Emerald Waves
Don’t let him go beyond the door, Emerson. Please. I know you don’t understand, but keep him out of the horde, please, nothing happened when I touched it, it all happened before. Of all of them, not him, I’ll never live it down if he sees what’s in there.
Of all my mishaps and mistakes, this was the worst of them, hands down. I could not gain control of the situation, I could scarcely make my wishes known, all I could do was suffer, over and over, as the sound kept coming like it was attempting to drown me. The mental shields I’d prided myself on were in tatters, leaving me miserably exposed and weak.
Weaker than I’d felt in my long lifetime.
I could hear the echo of my mate’s voice as he struggled to communicate with me, but I couldn’t make out a single word. My snarly ass dragon wasn’t even roaring anymore, it was curled in the corner of my mind, hissing occasionally, like it struggled to muster up the effort to do even that.
What a pair we made.
“Caro, focus on me, dammit!”
Two curses, that was never a good sign. Ionus sounded pissed. I hated when he was angry at me and truly, his tone was beyond furious. So far beyond that it rivaled only the high-pitched wailing inside my head.
For a moment, it almost reminded me of the dragonets’ cries when they needed something, only on a much grander scale.
“Caro!”
Goddess be damned I was trying.
“Go get the statue, now!” Ionus barked as the sound eased its grip on me.
Some guardian. Some protector. I couldn’t believe how powerless I was against it.
Shame followed the sound, crushing me in a way the ocean depths never could. Filling me with bitterness and rage.
“Stop staring at me!” I snapped or tried too.
It came out like a weak croak and took way more effort than it should have. What the hell had I done to face such torment, especially when it could not be endured alone? Why had my goddess forsaken me?
“Brother, please, look at me.”
Ionus rarely said please. He rarely sounded like anything but the gruff, stern taskmaster he’d always been. Right now, he sounded almost broken, and I was gripped by a second wave of shame, this time over what I was inadvertently doing to him.
It was the only thing that made me move, and I fought to turn my face from where I had it buried against the cloth arm of thecouch. Inch by painful inch, I managed it and blinked bleary eyes up at him in an effort to focus.
“Can’t see you clearly,” I muttered, blinking again.
What I wanted was to sleep and hope the sound wouldn’t find me there. My dragon already slumbered, silently coiled in a tight mound in its corner. When had his hissing stopped? I couldn’t pinpoint the moment, not when thought was the last thing I wanted to attempt.
“And I can barely feel your dragon,” Ionus said. “I can barely feel you and you’re right here beneath my hand.”
It was only then that I realized he was stroking my hair the way he used to when we were children, and I’d cringe and shake while lightning tore across the heavens, accompanied by the booming echo of thunder.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, unable to keep my eyes open any longer. “Tired. I’m sorry. Tried so hard. Could never live up to what you expected of me.”
And there it was. My greatest fear, my biggest failure, even worse than the one I suffered through now.
No matter how hard I tried, I’d never grown into the kind of dragon he’d become or the protector he’d tried to forge us into.
My final thought, as the turbulent haze in my mind was swallowed up by black, wasplease, forgive me.
Chapter Ten
Emerson
Must save my mate.
Must save our mate.
