I shifted him to one arm and grabbed for his hands, but he was so damn strong right now that he ripped them from my grip and kept scratching and punching me.
How the hell was he so strong? Like, unnaturally strong. Had he always been this strong?
“Stop—”
And then he launched himself up and out of my hold and was wrapping his arms around my neck, locking his legs around my waist. His chain smacked into my arm, the metal cold against my skin.
Everything in me froze for a long moment, and then I fell back into the wall behind me with a deep grunt.
Jesus, he was?—
He buried his face in my neck and started wailing, struggling to breathe as he choked on his sobs, and my heart broke for him even though I had no idea what was going on.
I grabbed ahold of his waist, slid my other hand down his back and started walking toward his room. He was squeezing the ever-loving fuck out of me, holding on like something would sweep him away if he loosened his grip even the tiniest bit. “Hey.It’s okay. I don’t know what’s happening right now, but it’s okay. I won’t let anything happen to you. You’re safe down here.”
I wasn’t sure if he was listening, or if he could even hear me over the noise of his own sobs, but I kept talking as I turned into his room, shutting the door behind us. When I got to the bed and tried to let him down, he clung to me even harder. His muzzle was digging into my throat, pinching me a little when he pressed his face into my skin even more, like he could disappear inside me.
“Come lie down on the bed and I’ll bring you some water.” Maybe talking to him normally would bring him back? He was in some kind of frenzy, and I wondered what had activated it. What had set him off.
“Keep…”
He choked out the whispered word in between sobs, and the fact that he was even trying to talk to me meant he was still in there somewhere. That he was asking for help maybe. He never asked for anything, so I tilted my head, trying to hear him better.
“What? Keep what?”
He jolted against me, moaning into my shoulder, and I could feel the wetness in his pants against my stomach. It was warm, and—fuck me, he’d just come again.
“Keep…talking. Please…please talk to me.”
Talk to him?
“Okay,” I said softly, rubbing my hand up and down in his back in what I hoped were soothing strokes. His breaths were so hot against my skin. All of him was hot, abnormally hot, like he was in the midst of a very high fever.
This wasn’t good.
A deep, low sound started to rumble through his chest, like he was making it in the back of his throat. It was unnerving, raising all the fine hairs on my body, and I tried to pull away so Icould see his face, look into his eyes, inspect him and figure out what was happening because that didn’t sound good.
He snarled and grabbed my head in both hands, trying to drag it back. I was able to get ahold of his wrists and stop him, trapping his hands behind his back and securing them there as he started screaming and thrashing in my hold.
He was moving so violently that all I could think about was how he would agitate his wound. “Hey, stop! Calm down! Whatever it is, we can?—”
He released the hold he had on me with his legs and began falling backwards. I was barely able to catch him before he smashed his head into the concrete floor.
“Fuck, stop moving! You’re gonna?—”
He slithered out of my hold, scrambled over to the bed, and reached beneath his pillow for something.
I only knew what it was after he slashed at my arm. Blood pooled quickly, flowing down to my fingers.
I was so shocked that I just stared at my arm while he backed away in a crouched stance, holding the shard of glass like a knife and growling at me like a wild animal.
Where the hell had he gotten that?
And then I noticed the blood on his shirt, right where he’d been shot, and panic scraped through me. That wasn’t my blood. “You’re bleeding. Damn it, you opened your wound!”
He didn’t seem to hear me or care at all. He made an animalistic sound deep in his chest, then ran from the room.
Fuck.
