Aelia was still tucked under the blankets, her breathing a little fast and uneven, but otherwise unharmed. His hand dropped from the hilt of his sword, his chest heaving as he cast his eyes around once more.
Nothing. There was no one here.
A gentle groan came from under the blankets, and Keeran closed his eyes against the fear and torment that flooded the pair bond, rising in a wave before crashing away into nothing.
She was having a nightmare. The visions he’d seen had been of her nightmare.
How was that possible when the mating bond wasn’t even fully formed yet? Unless they both accepted it, unless they slept together, it was nothing more than a ghost of a true pair bond, a whisper of its true potential. And if this was what just a whisper could do, he wanted it even less than ever.
Until she moaned again.
She looked so small, so alone.
Keeran’s eyes flicked to where his pack lay by the glowing embers of the fire, pretty much ready for him to grab and go, and then back to Aelia. His resolve melted the instant he laid eyes on her.
Fuck it.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
There was no escape from her grief, especially not after sleep immured her in its suffocating embrace. Instead, the darkness of her mind was given free rein in the realm of her subconscious. Every thought she worked to suppress whilst awake was unleashed upon her in a barrage of nightmares. The most vicious part of her psyche seemed to turn on itself, her imagination wielding the cruellest of her innermost thoughts, screaming them at her through blackened mouths, in melted faces, from fiery pits. She could do nothing, trapped by the powerlessness of unconsciousness, a victim of her own guilt.
Aelia woke thrashing, her screams piercing in the darkness, but it wasn’t that that had woken her. Keeran loomed over her, a steady hand on either shoulder, gently shaking her out of her tortured dreams.
“It’s just a nightmare,” he said, over and over, although his eyes were wide, worry hiding in the creases between his brows. “It’s just a nightmare,” he repeated, more softly this time as she quietened.
Dawn teased at the horizon, softening the edge of the darkness that surrounded them just enough for her to make out his features.
She threw her hands over her face, mortified.
“I’m sorry,” she choked out, her breathing still a little erratic. “I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologise for a nightmare.” Keeran let go of her shoulders but didn’t make to move away. Only then did she become aware of his leg pressed against her from where he had skidded to her side.
“I woke you up?” She dropped her hands from her face, not sure she wanted to hear the answer. As if she wasn’t embarrassed enough by the way he’d stopped kissing her, leaving her naked from the waist up and gawking at him, she now had to face him knowing he’d had to wake her up from a nightmare like a toddler.
“No, I was already awake.”
Aelia pushed herself up onto her elbows, careful not to move away from him. She tried not to think too deeply about why she didn’t want to lose the pressure of his leg against her.
“How did you know I was having a nightmare?” she asked, mortified.
Something flashed across his face too quickly for her to understand it.
“You were crying out a little. I thought it better to wake you.” The uncertainty on his face made him look younger, as far as possible from the emissary of death she’d seen earlier that night, and some of the disquiet tangling her insides in knots eased. He didn’tlookrepulsed by her, by what they’d done; he looked as worried as she felt.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, dropping her head to her chest. So fucking embarrassing.
“What is it you were dreaming about?” He ignored her apology, his voice gentle and encouraging. Aelia pulled the blankets a little higher around herself, as though that would somehow stop the panic from rising at the thought of talkingabout it, of reliving the horrors her mind had thrown at her every night since she’d left Callodosis. “You don’t have to tell me… but it might help.”
Aelia bit her lip anxiously, the band of panic around her chest tightening with each breath she took.
“I see the people I left behind. The people Beserkir took from me,” she whispered. “Otis, Mirra, Fenrir… it all replays over and over in my head, and I do nothing. I don’t help them.”
His eyes darted to her face. “Do they talk to you?”
Aelia nodded slowly, blinking furiously at the tears that were welling in her eyes. She must not cry, she absolutely must not cry.
“What do they say?” he probed, gently.
