The snow had stopped. Outside was just cold and dark now. Fitting, really. It matched the way she felt.
He started stroking her hair in slow, calming movements, from crown to ends. “Let me stay tonight, Daphne,” he said gently. “Nothing will happen. I just don’t think you should be alone.” A pause. “There’s no reason for you to be alone.”
She knew that. She wasn’t truly alone. Not in the technical sense. She had friends who would show up, who’d hold her without question. But she never took them up on it. Never reached out. Because accepting help when she was messed up meant admitting her past still had talons on her life. And that she refused to tolerate.
But here, now, wrapped in him, after he’d bled because of her and for her–even if he said otherwise, she’d seen the blood–after he’d watched her fall apart and hadn’t looked away... What was the point of saying no?
Tonight, her past had knocked her flat. She didn’t even know where the blow had come from.
Another day, another time, she’d need to unpack why she didn’t feel shame with him. Why, if anything, he made her feel like she wasn’t broken at all. Like someone with her history might just have bumps and hiccups in the road. Reasonable things.
Except, he didn’t know her history.
So the only person who made her feel like it was okay to be a complete mess was a demon with a questionable grasp on truth. A smoking-hot demon whose scent still clung to her skin. All considered, it was easier to focus on that. Leave the rest for a time when her head wasn’t pounding, and her body didn’t feel like it had run a marathon underwater.
“What if I want something to happen?” she murmured, barely able to shape the words.
Hunter’s voice was warm and solid and wicked. “Oh, sweetheart. We’ll get there.” His voice dipped lower, a rich stroke against her spine. “But not as a Band-Aid, not as a way out. When we burn, it’ll be on purpose. And we’ll make it the sweetest damn blaze you’ve ever felt.”
He started running those clever fingers up and down her back. Pulled a blanket over her. Kept holding her.
And in his warmth, she finally slept.
Chapter 5
Hunter dropped into her sleep, fully aware she’d have questions and possibly more right hooks if she woke up and didn’t find him beside her. But after... whatever it was that had happened, chances were her brain would look for something to help itself settle.
So he braced himself and got into her subconscious.
What he landed in gave him pause.
The place felt and looked real. No surreal dream logic, no bleeding walls or floating staircases.
Just an apartment’s unadorned walls, a half-decorated Christmas tree that slumped on the side in the corner.
A girl no older than nine sat on the floor beneath the tree, her arms wrapped tight around her knees.
Daphne.
So young, so small, and already broken.
He prepared himself to help her move this wherever she needed to, but then...Shit.
This wasn’t a nightmare.
It was a fucking memory.
Memories and dreams played in two different moments of sleep. They may overlap, but they were not the same event. Memories played in deep sleep, and they were a fixed terrain. They had no malleability; he couldn’t twist or guide them. He couldn’t protect the child from what had already happened. Nightmares were messy but interactive. Memories played like an unforgiving recording.
His first instinct was to pull her out. His second was to burn the whole thing to the ground.
He could do neither because of fucking Basic Dreamscape protocol. Never interfere with memories.
So he stayed and hovered, a thin vapor just outside her field of vision.
Music drifted through the house. A Christmas song. The same one that had played last night, right before she broke down in pieces. That had to be the trigger. Okay, maybe this was good. Memory surfacing sometimes meant a step toward resolution and healing.
Then came the first crash from somewhere deep in the house.
