Page 295 of Nobody's Girl

CHAPTER 55

ALYSSA

I feel wind blowing in my face. The beating of wings fills my ears. My eyes open to see Eden in front of me, but he’s in his bird form. His emerald eyes look at me.

“What happened to me?” I ask, but all I hear is a shallow shrieking sound.

I must be in bird form too. I move my arm and feel the wind ruffling my feathers. I stand up but feel a little wobbly. Eden walks around me. I keep my eyes on him and then I see Kyle standing next to me. I look right at Kyle, who’s smiling like crazy at me.

Eden moves out the large doors which lets in the only light into this dark thing we’re in. He sends thoughts to me, telling me to follow him. Then he shoots up into the sky, shrieking at me as his mind says, ‘Follow me.’

I stumble out of the barn thing, the light in the sky nearly blinding me. Moving my arms up and down, my feet lift off the ground and I’m in the air.

The wind on my face helps me to wake up. I feel groggy, but every flap of my wings seems to clear my brain a little more. Eden leads me very high up into the evening sky.

The sun is beginning to set over Lake Pontchartrain as we fly over it. The colors are so brilliant.

The mansion comes into view. I suppose we’re going there as Eden begins to fly lower and lower until our feet hit the ground.

I’m surprised to see we’re both birds still. I take a few steps, then I see Eden looking at me. He blinks his eyes a couple of times, then I hear his voice in my head, ‘How do you feel?’

‘I think I’m okay,’ I send back.

He sends, ‘Picture yourself in human form and you’ll turn back.’

I close my eyes and try to see myself as a human again. I feel a change. I can feel the breeze on my skin. I open my eyes slowly to find my husband standing in front of me. I’m engulfed in his embrace right away.

“Thank God, Alyssa. It worked. I was so afraid. I love you. I love you so much. I’m so sorry this happened to you,” he gushes.

“I’m okay, Eden,” I tell him as I laugh a little.

As he pulls his body away from mine I notice the breeze on my skin. My entire skin. Looking down at myself, my mind goes blank. “Why am I naked?”

Instead of answering me, he laughs. “How do you feel, really, Alyssa?”

“I feel okay, I think. The fact that I have no clothes on is problematic though. What happened, Eden? The last thing I remember, I saw your face and then heard Kyle knock that freak out. What happened to me?”

Eden takes my hand, leading me to the house. He pulls his shirt off and puts it on me, barely covering my ass.

“Stiles stabbed a syringe full of morphine into your shoulder just as you opened the door. I can’t believe he had the strength to do that after what I heard you do to him in there,” he tells me.

“I know! Like, I knocked him about six feet through the air into the wall and somehow he kept coming. Then I kicked him in the chin, splitting it open,” I say. “Then he pinned me against the wall, so I head butted him. I thought that was enough, but I guess I should’ve knocked him all the way out before I turned my back to him.”

I find we’ve made it to a side door I’ve never been in before. Eden opens the door, revealing a set of stairs. He leads me up them, and we come up to find a door at the top of the staircase. He opens it, and we’re at the back of our suite.

Once safely inside, Eden leads me to the sofa, and motions for me to sit down, then he kneels on the floor in front of me. “I’m so sorry this didn’t work out as well as I hoped it would. He should’ve never been able to lock you away like that. My mind was frantic at the thought he might hurt you and then he did. I wouldn’t blame you if you never forgive me for that. For the whole thing. This was entirely my fault,” he tells me sadly.

I have to stop him. “Eden, you stop that right now. I’m fine. I don’t know how I’m fine, but I am. Things happen. We made it through this without the ending being terrible. Now please enlighten me about what you did after I passed out.”

The skin crinkles around his eyes as he grimaces. “You really want to know, princess?”

I nod. “Of course I do.”

He proceeds as he looks down at my legs, rubbing them as he says, “Just as you passed out from the morphine, I was given a flash of what I had to do to keep you alive. The scene played out super-fast in my head. I had to get you into your bird form. I guess that, since you’re so much larger as a bird, the morphine wouldn’t be a lethal amount to you if you were in that form,” he tells me, then pauses for a second.

“Go on,” I coax him.

“I felt your breathing begin to slow to almost nothing and your heart beat was taking longer and longer between beats. Alyssa, please believe me when I say there was absolutely no time to waste,” he says with a sense of urgency in his voice.