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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Stephanie
Aman who wasn’t afraidof anything wouldn’t have nightmares like that.
I sat up like a shot, heart racing, immediately sensing that something was wrong. I turned my head this way and that, trying to get my bearings. The fire had almost completely died down. Apart from the slanting silver light from the stars and asteroids coming in through the natural cave window, the space was thick with darkness.
My frantic eyes landed on Errok beside me. The splashes of starlight turned his hide to shifting metal. He glistened as if he’d been painted with mercury. His angelically handsome face was twisted into a furious dark mask. Shadows pulled and streaked over him, deepening in the hard lines between clenched muscles.
He was on his back, his huge hands curled into hammer-like fists at his sides. I barely managed to dodge one of those fists when it went roaring through the air. I clambered away from him, panting, and stopped at the edge of the bed.
His fists loosened just enough for him to dig his claws into the hides, shredding them. His tail twisted on the mattress, like a python in pain. A feral growl built deep in his chest, and he arched right off the mattress.
Oh my God. He’s going to hurt himself, I realized, near-blind with panic.If he keeps this up, he’ll re-open his wounds!
I could call one of the Sea Sand men from next door...
But I rejected that thought almost as soon as it came to me. They might see him as a threat like this. If he didn’t wake up easily and kept acting aggressively in his sleep, they might be the ones to hurt him instead of him hurting himself. And even more than that, I didn’t want anyone else to see him like this. Because I wouldn’t want to be seen like this, either.
It’s up to me, then.
“Errok!” I whisper-shouted at him. I tried to keep my voice calm but firm.
He didn’t register what I’d said at all. Another growl tore out of him, turning into a ragged barking sound. His feet scrabbled on the hides as if he were trying to run. The hides that had covered us both when we’d fallen asleep had been entirely kicked aside by now, a sad, crumpled pile his sleeping body had beaten to a pulp.
“Errok!” I said, more loudly this time. It was harder to keep my voice steady. Thoughts of him bleeding internally, bleeding so deep I couldn’t stop it, made my hands shake and my head pound.
I crawled towards him, being careful of every twisting, trembling limb.
His snarls and grunts had changed, turned to a keening whimper. And somehow that was even more terrifying.
I came to a stop beside him, then, acting on pure instinct, I straddled him the way I had when I was healing him earlier. I wanted to grab his wrists and hold them in place on the bed with my weight, but I wasn’t tall or strong enough to do that.
Errok must have sensed me on him. He strained his hips upward as if trying to dislodge me, baring his fangs, his eyes screwed shut.
But I refused to let him go.
I tightened my thighs, clamping onto his waist as my hands moved over him.
I skimmed nervous fingers across his chest wound, glad to know that, at least for now, he wasn’t bleeding on the surface. I kept sliding my hands up. Up over the thick column of his throat to his jaw. His hips slammed back down to the mattress when my hands came to rest on either cheek. I shifted further up on him, making sure not to get so high that I put any pressure on his wound. But even with that in mind, and the size difference between us, I was still able to lean forward enough so that my face was directly above his.
“Errok,” I whispered. I was so close that my lips brushed his as I spoke. “I’m here. You’re safe.”
Errok’s whirling tempest of a body turned to stone beneath me.
Except for his eyes.
They flew open, his sight stars reflecting the silver light.
“Errok! Are you awake? Can you hear me?”
He remained frozen. And I noticed there was a lack of clarity in his wide gaze. His sight stars spun, frantic and fevered. I couldn’t tell if he was looking at me or looking right through me.
