Refusing to let the ache tear me down, I focus on the man beside me. His blond hair is swept back off his face, his entire chest and abs are on display and his veins bulge down his arms like he’s coiled tight with tension.
“Where am I?” My voice is raspy and weak and I hate it. Running my tongue over my dry lips, I swallow a few times to try to calm my sore, raw throat.
“My room,” he answers, and my eyebrows rise in surprise, causing my head to flash with pain.
I grimace, closing my eyes to half mast. “Why?”
“Because I don’t trust your safety anywhere else right now.” His words linger in the air, stealing my breath as I stare up at him.
“My safety?” I repeat, too worried to trust my wandering thoughts, but before he has the chance to answer, I keep talking. “How did I even get here? The last I remember, I…” I can’t finish the sentence for fear of igniting the excruciating pain inside of me again.
“How do you feel?” he asks, finally daring to look down at me.
“Like death,” I admit, and he nods like that’s enough.
“Thorne is ready to heal you, but he wanted you awake before he did anything,” he states, making me frown.
“I don’t need healing,” I insist, and he cocks a brow at me.
“You don’t?” There’s almost a curl to his lips.
Ass.
“No.” My insistence is weak and we both know it.
“So you’re not aching to the bone?” I don’t say a word and he takes my silence as encouragement to continue. “You’re not mottled with bruises all over your skin? You haven’t slept for almost eighteen hours since I picked you up with my bare hands and carried you away from The Sanctum?” His voice starts to rise along with my heart rate, and I exhale slowly, trying to calm the stress building inside of me.
“All of that may be true, but it doesn’t mean I need someone else’s help,” I mutter, desperately wanting to drag my hand down my face, but it’s not worth the effort.
He scoffs. “So this is a pride thing.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I nuzzle into the pillow, despite the desire to get as faraway from him as possible. The pain, however, has other ideas.
My eyelashes flutter as my eyelids grow heavy, and I feel the soft brush of his thumb over my cheek.
“Now,” he starts, whispering so gently I can barely hear him, his breath ghosting over my hair as he speaks. “How about you give me a tiny little nod, agree to be helped, and I’ll tell everyone I had to force you against your will because your ego wouldn’t allow it any other way.” My nose crinkles, ready to argue, but he pushes on. “Give in just this once, Elodie.”
“That’s all I seem to do around you, and it never goes in my favor,” I breathe in response, and I can almost see the twitch to his mouth.
“Should I get him or not?”
“Not.”
“Not healing means staying under my care for longer.”
I pry my left eye open to find him staring at me in amusement, and I think I hate him more than ever. He knows how to play me better than I know how to get the upper hand on him. When he looks at me like that, it’s almost like my pain melts away, as if I’m too wrapped up in him to notice it at all.
He’s right.
I definitely need some space.
“Fine,” I mutter, letting my eyes close once again.
He doesn’t say a word, but I feel him shuffle off the bed, leaving the air to cool around me as the door creaks open. Once it clicks shut, I take a deep breath and force myself to try to sit up. I don’t want to get too comfortable in Kael’s space. I need to go back to my room and lick my wounds as I dream about making The Sanctum pay for the pain they caused.
It’s a struggle, but I flop back against the headboard with a grunt just before a knock at the door rings out and Thorne peers his head around the wood.
“May I enter?”
