Page 27 of Somnium

Damon.

Adrenaline shot through her veins. His sweaty palms grabbed her shoulders, spinning her around before he slammed her body back into the car, her skull screaming at the impact. He tore her keys from her hand and threw them out of reach. Even if she managed to fight him off again, she couldn’t escape. Her instincts finally surged to the surface, tearing through her shock.

“Hel—”

Damon’s thick hand clamped hard over her mouth, smothering her cry. Cadi thrashed against him, fighting. With her hands now free she clawed, scraped, pushed, and hit, anything to get him away, but he just pressed forward, undeterred. As she stared into the fury burning in his eyes, the cold truth of her situation sank like a stone in her gut. He was bigger than her, stronger … and they were alone. No one was coming.

A ragged cry tore from her throat, the muffled sound straining against his hand. No no no, this isn’t happening, this can’t be real. Tears mixed with the blood on her face, and desperate sobs wracked her chest as she bucked against his violent hold.

Then she was falling. Damon’s weight vanished and her knees buckled, palms connecting with cold concrete as she collapsed onto the sidewalk. The sound of Damon’s low grunt from somewhere in front of her sent her heart hammering against her ribs. Her head snapped up, eyes pulled to the brick wall across from her by a flurry of movement. Damon’s head snapped to the side with the force of a punch before his body was slammed into the wall, pinned beneath the weight of Elias’s arm where it pressed against his throat.

“Fuck you, Masterson,” Damon spat.

He moved to swing, but Elias reared back, knocking Damon against the wall with enough strength that he let out an audible grunt as the air rushed from his lungs with the impact.

“You don’t get to speak,” Elias snarled. “Touch her again and it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”

Damon seethed, but beneath his anger and bravado, Cadi saw the flicker of fear that shadowed his eyes. Elias leaned in, pressing his weight deeper into Damon’s throat, his voice a low, threatening growl. “Do you understand me?”

For a moment, Damon said nothing. He just stared at Elias with a fury that heated the air around them until finally, his chin dipped in a tight nod. In a single, swift motion, Elias pulled his arm from Damon’s throat to let him drop to the ground with a thud. Damon scrambled to his feet and shot one last, venomous look at Cadi before sprinting down the street.

Hints of pine and mint mingled with the salt-tinged air as Elias crouched in front of her, his sudden closeness sending another shot of adrenaline slamming into her veins. Her body went rigid as she pressed her back against a tire, and he held up his palms while leaning back to offer a small buffer of space between them. He didn’t move, didn’t speak—he just watched her, his gentle concern slowly unraveling the tension in her limbs. In the silence, her pulse began to settle, her lungs once again finding a steady cadence until at last she let out a long, trembling breath.

When Elias spoke, his voice was soft, steady. “Are you okay?”

Cadi huffed a dry laugh. Normally, she believed that there was no such thing as a stupid question, but he may have just proven her wrong. She opened her mouth to educate him on just how far from “okay” she was, but the softness in his eyes made her pause, killing her sharp retort.

“Yeah,” she said instead with a voice still rough from her cries, “I’m fine.”

His attention shifted to her forehead, and she saw the muscles in his jaw flex when he caught sight of the cut still streaming blood down her face.

“We need to get you to a doctor.”

She shook her head, wincing at the dull ache that bloomed behind her eyes with the movement. Every piece of her medical training screamed that he was right, that the chances of a concussion were extremely high, but doctors asked questions. Questions she wasn’t ready to answer tonight. If ever.

Shifting onto her knees, she pushed up, then immediately regretted her decision as the ground beneath her dipped, pulling her right back down. Elias was there in an instant, his strong arms effortlessly supporting her weight before she could fall. Cadi tensed at the sudden contact, but before she could protest, a wave of nausea washed over her, forcing her to squeeze her eyes shut and focus on her breath to keep the contents of her stomach where they belonged. She would not throw up on this man. If the street would just hold still …

“I just want to go home. Where are my keys?”

Elias’s quiet breath of amusement caught her off guard. “There’s no way you’re driving. You can barely stand, and you might need stitches.”

Any comfort she had started to feel at his timely presence immediately morphed into annoyance. He didn’t even know her; who was he to tell her what she could or couldn’t do? Even if he did have a point. Which she would never admit out loud. Twisting against his supportive hold, she turned in the direction of what she hoped was the way to her apartment.

“Fine. I’ll walk.”

She took a step. Then another. Her third stride ended abruptly when her toes caught on her heel, and she stumbled forward, landing right back where she started: cradled begrudgingly in Elias’s arms. Yet beneath her irritation, a flicker of something that vaguely resembled gratitude began to take hold.

“Okay,” he said, “let’s just slow down for a minute.”

With surprising care, he guided her back to her car, holding her gently while she steadied herself against the metal frame. For a moment, he just stared at her, and Cadi stubbornly stared right back, though her tenacity may have been slightly undermined by the way she kept stumbling from the periodic shifts in her vision.

Elias let out a deep sigh and ran a hand down his face. “I’m not winning this, am I?”

She blinked, but said nothing. Something shifted in his gaze, a hint of unexpected lightness softening the concern.

“Okay. Fine,” he murmured, “may I at least drive you home?”

Her pulse ticked up, her fingernails digging into her palms to hide the tremble that was trying to work its way into her hands. The idea of being alone in a car with a man she hardly knew made her stomach go acidic, especially right now, but she knew there weren’t many viable alternatives at present. She studied him for a moment, the way he kept his body angled away, his touch light instead of claiming. It was clear he just wanted to help her, and she had a feeling that Sera’s taste in male friends was significantly better than Zoe’s.