I drifted into sleep with the taste of him still on my lips, but I was jolted into another shitty memory.
One second I was asleep, being held by Dimitri; the next, I was sitting at a tiny café table with Darian. The familiar restaurant he and I used to frequent formed around me.
Candles flickered between us.
He smiled at me with a charming curve of his mouth that I stupidly used to trust.
A plate appeared in front of me. My regular pasta with cream sauce and herbs.
I knew, before I even picked up the fork, that the sauce shimmered wrong.
“That’s sweet,” I said, staring at the faint oily sheen. “You poisoned my food.”
“Of course I did,” Darian said, voice warm. His ice-blue eyes glittered with something much darker, something I wasn’t sure how I’d missed. “You like the sting on your tongue.”
I looked up at him, and the restaurant melted, like ink running off a page.
The next breath, I was on my back, pinned to a mattress that gave me heart palpitations. His ice crept up my wrists, ankles, and coiled around my throat.
“Hold still,” he crooned, leaning over me. “You’re prettier when you’re helpless.”
Rage and fear tangled through me until I couldn’t tell where one stopped and the other started.
Movement flickered in the corner of my eye.
A figure stood there, half-obscured by the shadows of the room.
“That’s new,” I hissed.
Its head tilted slowly toward me, as if shocked that I could see it.
The ice around my throat tightened as Darian moved his lips toward mine.
“Wake up, Rune!”Dimitri’s voice cut through the dream like a blade.
The matebond flared, hot and desperate, yanking me out of the nightmare.
I jerked upright in bed, a ragged gasp tearing out of my lungs. My heart thundered against my ribs.
The room was dark, shadows pooling in the corners, but Dimitri’s hands were on my shoulders, his eyes glowing faint red in the dark.
“Hey,” he said, voice low and rough. “I’ve got you. You’re with me.”
My phone buzzed nonstop on the nightstand, vibrating like it was possessed.
I dragged in air, fingers digging into his chest. “It was Darian. The restaurant. Then, the bed. And something in the corner. It was just standing there, watching. I swear it was a drude.”
His jaw clenched, and rage funneled through the matebond. “You’re safe,” he said again. “It wasn’t real.”
The phone kept buzzing.
He reached over and grabbed it with one hand, still holding onto me with the other.
The group chat had blown up.
Zuko Vyre
What the fuck was that spike through the bond?
