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I repeated them in my head over and over until I was sick with it.
I think by the end of this, you’re going to have to choose.
I didn’t want to believe he was right. I didn’t want to believe we’d change as fundamentally as we had, but I’d been wrong.
Very wrong.
The connection grew and solidified as days passed, but we also settled into the new normal. Fine-tuning the levels of flow between us, careful to not cut each other off while not laying ourselves bare. The connection was harder to moderate when we fucked, and I hypothesized emotions would hinder our ability to moderate the flow as well. I didn’t look forward to our first fight.
And still, I wouldn’t change it. I wouldn’t take it back. I would give everything, including my immortal life, for our limited days.
There would be no getting used to the change, the connection, that much I knew. I’d never recover from it. The idea of losing him weighed heavily on my mind. What if he was right? What if this was all we were allowed? I might spend my entire life looking for another version of him, but it wouldn’t be him.Thishim.
I’d go mad trying to protect him from a rabid pack of wolves.
My security had gone out the window in a second with teeth and good intentions, turning to ice in my veins. Real fear I’d never known in my entire existence. I had to figure out a way to stabilize my emotions, or I would drive myself crazy. If I couldn’t get it in check, surely everything around us would fall apart.
Research was usually my solace, but never had I come up empty-handed so often. I’d spent days scouring my resources for any mention of what was happening or for anything about the use of his blood, only to come up with nothing when I dragged myself to bed long after Dominic. He snored softly in time with the rain as I slipped into bed beside him. He shifted with my weight, like magnets drawn to one another. I kissed his ribs and settled in, pretending my mind would grant me a few hours of sleep.
His mortality terrified me. I’d never felt a life this fragile, and now he seemed like an hourglass, time pouring through my fingers like sand, with no way to slow the passage. No way to get more of the finite resources of his breath.
When they were gone, he’d blink into oblivion, and so would the part of me so intrinsically woven into him that there was no way to separate the two.
Shifting our bodies, I lay my head on his chest as Dominic slumbered on, listening to the beat of his heart. This single organ kept him alive. Kept blood flowing in his veins. Kept my person on this earth next to me. How easily it could be stopped.
Had I ruined all that we were building, demanding to be out? I’d blame myself if they turned on him. There would be no surviving mutiny. He wasn’t a coward. He wouldn’t run. He’d take his death head-on, and that’s what I was scared of.
At least the comfort of Dominic’s body safe in my arms would bring me a little bit of peace. I could lie here and feel he was safe.
“Your thoughts are so loud,” Dominic murmured, wrapping an arm around me.
“That’s my line.”
“And yet, here I am sleeping peacefully, and you’re the insomniac now.” He turned to me, sharing his warmth.
“I’ll try to turn the volume of my brain down.” I turned to kiss his chest, hoping to distract him so he wouldn’t question any of the things in my brain.
“What are you worried about?” he asked, combing his fingers through my hair.
“You can’t tell?” My surprise was genuine, still testing the waters of the bond.
“You have it locked up tight. All I’m getting is waves of unrest. Worry.” His words were laced with sleep. Stress kept him up, and whereas it wouldn’t kill him not to sleep, his mental capacity would decrease until he was a useless, blithering idiot, and then he’d be more at risk of the things eating at the back of my mind. “You haven’t been sleeping well.”
“Don’t worry about it. Sleep. You haven’t slept well either.” As if my words could urge him in that direction, but Dominic had never been that easy. He would never do what I wanted him to, which was for the best. I think I’d be bored with a complicit partner, but that didn’t make me want to staple his lips shut any less when he got like this.
A growl rumbled through his chest, vibrating my ear pressed against him.
I picked my head up to gaze into his eyes. “So irritable.”
“I don’t like when you keep secrets from me.”
“I don’t enjoy you knowing I’m keeping secrets, either.” My soul twisted in pain. How easy it would be to pour my turmoil all over him and let him feel the weight I carried, but I couldn’t admit to him he might be right.
That we might have ruined everything by allowing him to claim me as his mate.
“Maybe it’s better if we quit keeping things from each other?” He had a point.
“Can we, after operating the opposite way for so long?” I asked.
