When she finally fell asleep, I sat there for a long time, staring at the dark.
If that demon wanted my mate, he was going to have to go through me.
I’d kill him, even if it meant dragging us both to hell.
Chapter 19
Brie
By the time the sunrise found its way through our bedroom blinds, I was already awake—if you could call it that. Most of me was still locked in a dream somewhere else, or maybe a nightmare, and the only thing keeping me tethered to this bed, this house, was Finn’s hand around my wrist.
He was watching me, eyes wide open, barely blinking. There was something sharp in his gaze—worry, hunger, the residual charge of a night spent fighting things you couldn’t see. I tried to roll over, but my body didn’t want to cooperate. Every muscle was sore, like I’d run a marathon or spent all night at the gallery hanging drywall by myself.
“Morning.” My voice was hoarse, like I’d been screaming.
Finn’s grip on my wrist loosened, but he didn’t let go. “You okay, Maverick?”
“No, but give me a minute and I’ll fake it.”
He cracked a smile—tight, but real. His hair was wild, sticking up at weird angles, and he was moving slowly.
I sat up and immediately regretted it. The room spun, and a bolt of nausea twisted through my gut. “Shit,” I whispered, pressing the heel of my hand to my forehead.
He was back with a glass of water, which I drained in two gulps. Then he stood and started pacing, which was never a good sign. “Last night. The dream. Do you remember any of it?”
I closed my eyes, tried to drag up anything besides the taste of blood and the feeling of suffocating. “Not really. Just like all the other times. Just know when I woke up, you were also screaming. Because you were there too. I tried to hold on to it, but it just faded and I fell back to sleep.”
Finn stopped, raked a hand through his hair, and muttered something under his breath.
“What about you?” I was still a little freaked out that he was somehow having the same dream.
He stared out the window, shoulders hunched. “Just darkness and a shadow.” He shivered, the movement violent. “It wasn’t just a dream, Brie. I could feel it.”
He sat back on the edge of the bed, hands balled into fists. For a second, I thought he was going to punch the mattress, but instead he picked up the notepad on the nightstand. There were notes scrawled there.
“What’s all that?”
“It’s what I wrote down last night right after.” He fumbled with the pages.. “Before I forgot the details. It’s not much. It’s like everything started to disappear right after I woke up.”
His eyes squinted like he were trying to decipher what he’d written in his haste to get every memory down before it had vanished.
After a minute, he read the list he’d made. “Here’s all I got:stone room? chains? Brie on knees? voices/mine, not mine? shadow monster/man? man touching Brie? not me? claws? NOT REAL?? can’t help her? DEMON???Clearly all questions and what seems like nonsense.”
“That’s fucked up.” My voice couldn't help but shake.
He nodded. “I know.”
We sat in silence, the list between us. My skin prickled; I remembered a little of the dream now. The stone, the heat, the way my body wouldn’t cooperate, wouldn’t even try to fight back.
I hated it. Hated how it made me feel—weak, exposed, helpless. I’d spent my whole life building armor, and now I felt like a kid again, naked and afraid of the dark.
Finn touched my hand, so gentle I almost missed it. “I’ll figure this out, Brie. I swear.”
“I know you will.” I squeezed his fingers, tried to ignore the tremor in my own. “But what if it happens again?”
He hesitated. “Then we get help. Juliet, Aspen, Aspen’s father, I’ll call in every favor I have.”
The wolf in him was still fighting to get out. I could see it in the set of his jaw, the way his shoulders were squared for a fight that hadn’t even started yet.
