Zane sat bolt upright, gasping for breath, his muscles twitching like there was a living thing inside him trying to escape. For a few moments, all he could smell was the acrid scent of smokeless gunpowder mixed with the nearly overwhelming stench of sweat and blood. His heart hammered in his chest as he realized he was lying in bed in the two-story cottage in Hempstead he and Sienna shared.
It was the same nightmare every time, reliving the night his friends had died. It always ended right before the rescue party arrived, so he never got to the moment when he realized he was going to live.
Zane breathed deeply, letting the scents and sounds of Afghanistan and the battle slowly fade away. His throat was raw from growling, and he had the coppery taste of blood in his mouth from where he’d bit himself with his fangs.
He knew he was dealing with PTSD from everything that had happened to him in Sangin. He couldn’t make sense of the fangs or the growls, though. Sometimes, he thought he was going insane.
He glanced at Sienna’s side of the bed to find it empty. That wasn’t surprising. She tended to leave the room when he had a nightmare. A quick glance at the clock told him it was barely past two in the morning, and he considered lying back down, desperate for more sleep. But it’d be a waste of time. There was no chance he’d be able to get any shut-eye tonight. He’d rather check on Sienna anyway.
He didn’t bother with shoes or even a shirt, slipping into the hallway in the shorts he usually slept in. Well, the shorts he slept in now. He and Sienna used to sleep naked all the time; that had changed since he’d gotten back. A lot of things had.
Zane glanced down the hall toward the bathroom, wondering if Sienna was in there, but a soft noise from downstairs convinced him she wasn’t. He listened for a moment, expecting to hear the murmur of the telly. Instead, he picked up on the subtle tread of bare feet on wood in the kitchen downstairs. He headed for the steps, not bothering to wonder how he knew something like that. His weird hearing was merely another thing he had no explanation for.
The lights in the living room were off as he moved down the stairs, but the soft glow coming from the kitchen was more than enough to light up the entire first floor of the house.
He slowly padded the rest of the way down, hearing Sienna moving about in the kitchen, likely making cocoa. The thought of his fiancée dressed in her long, blue bathrobe and fuzzy, pink slippers, standing in front of the stove, stirring a pot of chocolate, brought a smile to his face. Things hadn’t gone the way they’d planned upon his return from Afghanistan. Instead of squeezing their wedding into a few short weeks of leave time, Zane had spent endless days in the hospital recovering from wounds that should have killed him. When they didn’t, he’d been promptly and efficiently separated from military service. The official cause was “combat-related disabilities.” The real reason was because the doctors thought he was a fucking nutjob.
He and Sienna had postponed the wedding while he dealt with hisissues. Considering the number ofissueshe had, he wasn’t sure when things were going to get back on track, but Sienna seemed willing to stick with him through them. He had no idea why. It certainly wasn’t anything he deserved. He’d be the first to admit he was a bloody mess.
He was still smiling as he reached the bottom of the steps. But when he caught sight of the two suitcases by the door, his heart started to thud hard in his chest. Then he saw the engagement ring on the coffee table.
Zane was still processing the scene when Sienna walked in from the kitchen. Instead of her bathrobe, she was dressed in a skirt and blouse, a pair of low heels dangling in one hand, her red hair up in a bun. She saw him standing in the shadows of the stairs and froze in her tracks.
“You’re awake,” she said.
“You’re leaving,” he pointed out.
The realization of that was like a wound spreading across his soul. He wished he could say he was surprised, but he wasn’t. A part of him had known.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, looking like she genuinely meant it. “I wish I was strong enough to be here for you, but I’m not.”
Sienna walked over to her suitcases, then turned to look at him. “You push everyone away. Your family. Your friends. Me. You won’t let anyone help you.”
He supposed that was true, so he didn’t try to deny it. He gestured at her suitcases. She’d done a good job of packing quietly. He hadn’t heard a thing. “So you were going to leave in the middle of the night without saying anything?”
At least she had the decency to look chagrined. “I was going to leave you a note.”
He didn’t respond. Because really, what was there to say?
Sienna gazed at him, her gray eyes sad. “You’re different than the man I used to know. The one I fell in love with. The one I wanted to marry.” The softly spoken words felt a lot like the bullet wounds he’d received in Afghanistan—painful but muted. “I don’t know what happened to you over there because you won’t tell me. You won’t tell anyone. But you’ve changed into something I can’t recognize. It’s like you’re some kind of…”
Her voice trailed off as though she couldn’t quite put a name to what it was he’d become.
Zane considered the reflection he’d caught in the mirror after he’d woken up from one of his nightmares and gone into the bathroom. He’d seen what he was now. Sienna had obviously seen it as well.
“I think the word you’re looking for ismonster,” he said quietly.
Sienna stared at him, emotions roiling in her eyes. But she didn’t disagree.
Sighing, she slipped on her shoes, then opened the door and picked up her suitcases. She hesitated for a moment, as if she wanted to say something more. But there weren’t words for a situation like this. She must have known that, because she turned and walked out without saying anything, closing the door behind her.
Zane heard her footsteps tapping away across the sidewalk and parking lot. A few moments later, a car started, then drove away. Damn, he really hated how good his hearing was now.
Walking over to the coffee table, he picked up Sienna’s engagement ring and stared at it. He remembered picking it out with her before the deployment. She’d been absolutely gaga over the thing. He wanted to be angry with her for walking out, but he couldn’t find it in himself to blame her. She was right. He’d pulled so far away from everyone that sometimes it seemed like he wasn’t even living in the real world. It was like he was floating around the edges of it, waiting for something to come along and convince him there was a reason to keep going.
He’d thought that something would be Sienna, but apparently he was wrong about that.
Zane rolled the ring back and forth in his hands for a while, then flipped it across the room and into the fireplace, where it was lost in the ashes of the smoldering fire.
