Page 10 of Stay With Me

* * *

WhenI finally fall asleep much later that night, I expect the nightmares to follow me. Most days, I can shove my past behind me. It’s something I’ve always been good at. I used to be able to shake off the day, no matter what, and still have a pleasant night’s sleep.

Not anymore.

It’s probably not the healthiest coping mechanism, but I still try. If I don’t think about what happened after Barrow first turned on me, or when Walker’s dark, menacing aura would visit me in the cells, threatening more effectively than the words the cruel Alpha tossed my way, then I can pretend I’m the old Trish again. It never lasts for long, but it’s worse when I fall back into the spiral of reliving those awful moments.

Barrow was a kid, barely twenty, and he sliced me to ribbons before injecting me with enough quicksilver that my hold on my wolf has never been the same. Walker told me that I’d be another one of his personal bitches, a willing pussy whenever he wanted it, because my Alpha all but threw me away. If Ryker didn’t come, I’d be passed along to any male who wanted me, and maybe then I could see how long I’d stay so pretty…

Even dead, his threats still haunt me the same way his golden wolf chases me into my dreams. I can never escape him—except for when I sense the comforting energy of a protective wolf who will never, ever harm me.

I sleep dreamlessly for a few hours, and when I wake up suddenly and it’s pitch dark in my cabin, I reach out. It’s a subconscious act, one I do without even really meaning to, and when my wolf follows an invisible thread and finds Duke’s waiting at the end of it, I sit up.

I don’t know why I’m so surprised that he’s there. Sure, I left him standing off the edge of my porch after that strangely charged moment between us, but he’s the one who mentioned my nightmares. If he somehow figured out that I suffer from them when he’s out patrolling Accalia at night, if he wasn’t on duty now, of course he’d stick around.

That’s what a decent protector like Duke Conlon does.

I don’t know why I start to climb out of bed. Or maybe I do, but I want to blame my sleepy state for what happens next. It doesn’t matter either way. My wolf whines, imploring me to go to his, and after I snag my blanket off of my rumpled sheets, that’s exactly what I do.

Tip-toeing on my bare feet, I know instinctively that he’s still out back. I push open my back door and immediately found him.

In his human form, Duke stands above a crowd. He’s no different when he’s shifted to his fur. Dark grey and massive, he sprawls out over nearly the entire length of the blanket I leave outside for nights like these. He’s on his side, legs stretched out in front of him, belly falling and rising in time to his chuffing breaths.

He’s dead asleep. Knocked out to the world. I have no doubt in my mind that, if a threat approached, he’d flip like a switch, waking up to confront it with barely a missed step. But since it’s just me and him and the trees that surround the back of my cabin, he sleeps on while I look my fill.

I should go back inside. He’s here, and that means that the nightmares won’t find me tonight. But then I remember the look in his eyes I swore I saw before I bolted. His gentle rumble, the way he told me I was important to him… and I close the door behind me before stepping lightly over to him.

Duke snuffled, but his wolf doesn’t stir. Not even when I drop to my knees, then cozy up against him. I prop my back up against his bulk, turning my face into his sleek fur. This close, the pine scent is stronger than ever. I breathe in deep, letting it settle over me.

In the Wolf District, we had bars between us. Walker’s people allowed Duke to stay with me, just not in my personal cell. That didn’t stop him from trying some way to make physical contact between us, even if the silver burned him over and over again. He wanted me to know I wasn’t alone.

As I drift off to sleep, soothed by the sounds of his wolf deep in slumber, I do the same for the big delta.

No matter what happens, at least one good thing came out of my captivity.

We have each other.

* * *

I’m up before Duke.Good thing, too, because I’m bare-assed naked.

It’s the whisper of the breeze against my overheated skin that tickles me awake. I stretch, and it takes me a second to realize that his fur is cradling my bare back, and my nightgown is gone.

Not only that, but my muscles don’t feel tight anymore. The slight headache—a rarity for a supe—I’d been battling for days has disappeared. In fact, I feel better than I have in a while.

And that’s because I… I shifted.

It’s obvious. When a shifter goes too long between changing forms, we pay for it. In a world full of humans who have no idea that supes exist, it’s a given that we spend more time in our skin. Throw in the fact that we communicate better with words than howls, and shifters don’t fuck in the fur, and our two-legged shape is the default.

But we’re shifters. We need to shift. If our wolf doesn’t get their fair share of being in control, we get antsy. Our skin itches, then our muscles clench. We get stomachaches. Headaches. Fatigue. All signs that our body needs to change shapes, but ones I purposely ignored for way too long.

A laugh bubbles up inside of me, one that I swallow as I scoot to my knees, looking at the disturbed grass beneath my legs. The grass is torn up, my feet muddy. I must’ve shifted, then dug in the dirt with my paws before circling around and falling back asleep with Duke. At some point, I shifted back to human—obviously—but that doesn’t change the fact that I did it. I shifted.

Now that I’ve gone wolf again, I can admit my deepest, darkest shame: I was afraid that I’d never be able to let her out again.

It’s the quicksilver that fucked me up. I don’t know if my reaction is usual. Though Audrey’s not proud of what she did, she only served a couple of drops to Gem in a doctored glass of Coke. Enough to sedate the powerful alpha female, but there was no harm done. Within a couple of hours it wore off, and that gave the pack council time to escort her to Ryker’s cabin.

They didn’t shoot her up with it like Barrow did me. She got a couple of drops. I got two or three doses a day during travel so that I was a groggy, frightened mess when I woke up in the Wolf District, completely naked and cut off from my wolf.

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