Page 75 of Brutal Alpha Beast
“What,” I stretch my shoulders back a little. “How can you see me?”
He cocks his head and sets his phone aside. “I was timing the tea so it’d still be hot when you woke. You were stirring a little, looked like you were coming to. I guess I was right.”
His quiet, satisfied grin makes me smile. It’s as though he’s won some competition, like he’s proud of himself for timing everything right.
“I guess you were,” I say, sitting up.
He didn’thaveto wait around for me, though the fact that he did makes me feel warm and fuzzy. It’s confusing. I’m not even sure how I should feel about him anymore.
“How are you feeling?” He asks me, his face serious, leaning forward.
The intensity of those eyes sends a jolt through my chest.
“Better,” I nod, wrapping the blanket around my shoulders and bringing a cup to the lip of the teapot’s spout. “Definitely, better.”
I pour myself some tea and gently blow on the steaming brew. It smells good.
“I let Penelope know what happened,” he says. “She says it’s possible you could just be having a reaction to the undoing of the spell. That the intensity of it all…”
He trails off, and an understanding flickers between us in the silence. Yes, we’ve both gotten some closure, but there are still so many feelings between us that are unresolved.
“But if I’m this affected, then you should be affected too—even worse. No, this was wholly related to a vision.”
I sip the earthy tea, hot enough to soothe my dry throat but cool enough to drink without flinching.
That vision. It felt like I was on fire, a pain like the one accompanying my first vision, but so much more intense.
“Okay,” he says. “I thought that’s what it was, too. You were making the vision face.”
I smile. “The vision face?”
Ellis mock stares into the distance, his eyes blank, his face dropped.
I laugh.
What most people don’t know about Ellis is that when he’s not grumpy or commanding, when he feels comfortable with you, he can be funny. Charming.
That’s the Ellis I used to spend all my evenings with when we were kids.
“Yes,” I say. “I guess that is the vision face. Pretty hot, right?”
“You read my mind!”
We both laugh, and I feel my body loosening, returning to its full health. I’m using humor to skirt around the issue, though. I need to talk about what I saw.
“So,” I say, taking a deep breath. “The vision.”
He nods.
“The vision,” I continue, reluctantly bringing it to mind. I want to live in the warm, fuzzy, sparky feelings that Ellis gives me, not the chaos of our looming future.
“It’s okay,” he murmurs. “You can take your time.”
I nod.
“The vision,” I say. “Was the same as before, but this time more vivid. I felt the burn of the fire so strongly, the screams of chaos, they were so loud…but this time, there was also something else. Long, thick, green vines that grew in front of me, I thought they were just leading into the fire at first. I thought the whispers telling me to follow were malevolent and harmful, but then I saw the vines snake away. As much as I tried to follow, I couldn’t get to the destination.”
“Where do you think the destination is?”
