Page 17 of Ex Somnis

She matters to me. I knew that.

But I didn’t know I would kill for her.

That’s new.

Noted.

“Maybe the threat wouldn’t be so hollow if I hadn’t pinned you under a log, don’t you think?” A small laugh huffs out of him, and it makes me even angrier. “Again, I did not take her. I simply kept the door open.” He spreads his hands, unhurried as everything else about him. “I didn’t push her through it.”

Stupid. Beautiful. Stubborn woman.

“Only because of Tessa.” My anger is useful right now, and I’m leaning into it hard. “Because of everything that woman did to Derek, because Tessa got stuck in your⁠—”

“I’m keeping my word,” he cuts me off, and something about his tone shuts the rest of the sentence in my mouth. “Tessa has Lennon. That gives me what I asked for. You’ll have your monsters back. Dr. Bennett has his nights back, and the boy his dreams.” He leans even closer to me, so close that his breath brushes against my sweat-damp skin. “All you have to do is keep away.”

His hand comes under my jaw, takes hold, and pulls. The angle is wrong for everything my back is already doing, and I make a sound I’m not proud of. It’s something between a snarl and a hiss, because it hurts, fuck, does it hurt, and he holds it until I’m looking at him, whether I want to or not.

“Get your dirty hands off me,” I grit out.

“Promise me to keep away from Lennon.”

“I promise to kick your ass.”

He holds my jaw and gaze for one more second, then his grip releases, and he stands back up. The relief that rushes down my neck is only short-lived when the fucking pain of the log still crushing my back flares up again.

“I’m not planning to revisit this,” This Man says quietly, looking down at me with something like disgust. “Do as you wish. Rage. Build your little monsters. Carry on being furious. The promise is already in motion. When it’s fulfilled, you won’t see me ever again.”

“What promise?” My jaw aches from the inside. “What are you talking about? What did she promise you?”

He’s looking at the tree line, and there’s something in the look that is very old and very alone. I’d almost feel something about it if it weren’t for my current predicament and the ghost of his fingerprints still on my face.

“Stay forever in this place. Limit yourself, if that’s what you want. Just think, you have every possibility to build and be in your subconscious, but you can’t even fathom what you could have elsewhere.” He tilts his head, and those green eyes come back to mine. “I pity you, Ridge Wells.”

I open my mouth to tell him where the fuck he can shove his pity when he’s just… gone.

Rude.

A second later, the pressure and pain, which feels like a held breath, is released. Then the ground disappears, and I fall face-first into yellow flowers, a soft carpet of blooms in every direction.

I take a deep breath, the pain in my back no longer, and enjoy the smell that doesn’t exist in the waking world but has always existed in this one.

My clearing on my planet.

The one I’ve been dreaming myself onto since I started this lucid-dreaming thing.

My subconscious comfort zone.

The one I haven’t seen in over a hundred days.

I turn onto my back and stare up at the Milky Way.

This is not the version I brought into Lennon’s dreamscape. This is the original. Lennon only saw the weak copy because I wanted her to see it, to share it with her the way she shared hers with me, but I couldn’t bring her here.

So I brought it to her.

I pick a flower and twirl it between my thumb and forefinger to ground myself in the moment.

Even if the copy was weak, at least it had her in it.