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21
Niall
When the giant caretaker approached Tessa, I’d honestly been worried that it would eat her; that was how big it was. I figured it would be her final sacrifice to save the realms. It would make sense after everything else she’d been through.
My heart froze in my chest when it bumped against her with its nose. After it disappeared, I was flooded with relief, at least for a split second, then came the concern.
Tessa had been frozen in place ever since the caretaker left, as though he had just pushed a stop button on her. At first, I thought it was just some kind of stasis since her limbs and everything were frozen in place, but when Griff and Finn started freaking out, terror rushed through me at the idea that I might have been right.
The worst part was that her dragons had been sucked back into her skin as though she'd become a whirlwind, and they had no choice. They were there marking her skin, though, so we knew they had settled where they should.
"Dres, can you talk to her?" Kai's panicked voice startled me.
Ever since Dres, Tessa, and I had shared a bed, the connection between the three of us had been more open, so when Dres reached out to her, I was aware of it as well.
Tessa? Ladybird, can you hear me?
I could sense Dres' trepidation, his hope that this was like something they'd been through together before, that she'd snap out of it or that he'd hear her voice in her head calling for him. There was nothing I could do to reassure him because I heard the same silence coming back as he did.
Tessa, please...Whatever is going on, keep fighting. We'll find a way out of this, I promise.
My heart ached not just because I couldn't see the hope that he could but because of the hurt I knew they were all feeling alongside me. It wasn't something I was used to being so exposed to.
"She's not responding," Dres murmured eventually.
"Her heart's not beating." Griff's voice was a mix of fear and anger, as though his body couldn't decide which emotion would be more useful in the moment.
"What do you mean her heart's not beating?" Kai demanded.
Griff spun on Kai and snarled, "Exactly what I fucking said. Her. Heart. Is. Not. Beating."
"Well then, fix it; you're her mate," Kai shouted.
"So are you, asshole, though I have no idea what she sees in you right now." Before Griff and Kai could come to blows, I stepped in.
I was the new guy, and they could vent their frustrations on me if they needed to, but I didn't want Tessa to wake up from whatever this was to them both being beaten to hell. "How do we get it to start again?" Mentally, I reached out to Tessa to check her brain and make sure everything was still working, and it was, but it, like her body, was frozen.
It was like her brain was just repeating the same couple of seconds over and over again, but it wasn't actually doing anything. It wasn't telling her lungs to breathe or her heart to pump; it was just stuck in a thought loop.
"She should be on the floor," Dres said from behind me.
I hadn't even noticed him approaching, and when I turned, I saw him examining her. My own frustration rose. "Why are you looking at her like that?"
"Because whatever is going on isn't natural. If her heart had stopped beating in normal circumstances, she would have collapsed, wouldn't she? Yet, here she is, standing straight up with her arms and legs locked in place. Magic is at least partially responsible, meaning there's a way to reverse or undo it." Dres' words gave my heart the hope it needed, and I felt a thump inside my chest.
As though I wasn't the only one experiencing it, Finn and Kai clutched their chests.
"What the fuck was that?" Finn gasped.
Kai was about to say something snarky when Griff commanded, "Quiet!"
It almost didn't work, Kai opened his mouth to speak again, but the glare Griff gave him was enough to make him shut his jaw with an audible click of his teeth. His hands flexed at his sides as he fought to control his temper.
When Griff finally spoke, there was a note of awe in his voice as he said, "Our hearts are all beating in unison."
Something sounded familiar about that, but I had difficulty placing it until it clicked a second later. "The prophecy!"
Dres' eyes lit up, clearly following the same line of thought that I was. "Yes! Five hearts beating as one." We all went quiet at the realization that Tessa was not only part of the prophecy, but we were also.
