Fade (12 page)

Ronan, his friends, Chelle, and the cold all faded away, leaving only me and Dace standing there, both of us wrapped in heat and aching. Like before, what he wanted swept through me like a storm, making me want the same things too. My fingers twitched up toward him, desperation to feel his skin beneath my fingertips one more time overriding everything else.

No!
His warning sounded like a desperate cry.

I stopped moving, stopped breathing.

Don’t touch me. Not now. Not yet.
His voice was no more than a gentle whisper this time, so much softer than his actual voice.

A muscle in his cheek twitched.

All the questions I’d wanted to ask earlier came floating back up. I bit my tongue to keep them from pouring out and nodded once, heeding his warning. If I touched him now, the animal in him would break free, and that thought didn’t scare him. That thought terrified him.

He looked at me for another moment and then flicked his gaze back to Ronan. Rage broiled between them even stronger than before. No one said a word, but Dace was implacable fury, pissed off and seething because Ronan upset me. He’d touched what didn’t belong to him.

I felt half-awed at everything whispering along our bond, half-confused, and already half-addicted. I still couldn’t explain how the connection worked if my life depended on it, but everything was right there. Like shadow puppets playing inside my skull, I saw what Dace saw, felt what he did. His thoughts were precise, regimented, and more controlled than mine would ever be.

Chelle stepped closer to me, and then leapt backwards, a pained cry dropping into the silence enveloping us.

The tension seething between Dace and Ronan seemed to gather in upon itself and shatter. One minute their anger seethed right in front of me. The next, a tidal wave hit me, knocking me back into Dace as my breath whooshed from my lungs.

Sensation poured through me again. Fear dug its claws into me and held on tight.

I swayed beneath the onslaught.

Dace wrapped one of his strong arms around me, holding me to his chest. He and Ronan stared at one another for another long minute, still not speaking, but leaving the impression that entire volumes were being written between the two of them.

I wanted to cower behind Dace and hide from what those words implied. Whatever was coming seemed vast, endless, and incomprehensible, and it bore down on me, Dace, and Ronan. Didn’t matter if we were ready or not, danger was coming, and it was going to mow us down. We couldn’t run or hide. Nothing we could do would stop it. Nothing.

Dread washed through me more strongly than before, pulling a breathless whimper from my throat.

Dace tightened his arm around me. He looked down, his expression devoid of anything warm or recognizable. “Let’s go.”

Chelle and I obeyed his demand without question, turning on our heels and walking away without a single word or look passing between us.

My knees were weak, and my heart raced. I felt dirty, as if filth and grime covered me from the inside out. I’d never been so scared in my life.

Dace walked at my side, his body a barrier between me and Ronan. His stance screamed I belonged to him, I was under his protection … and to deny that truth would be complete idiocy. He protected what was his, fought for what belonged to him, and whether I agreed with him or not, I was his.

Knowing that didn’t make me feel any safer.

I looked over my shoulder at Ronan, unable to stop myself.

He stood right where we’d left him, staring in our direction.

I shivered at the look stamped on his face.

The cold expression erased that empty look from his eyes and replaced it with something else entirely. He wasn’t human. He was something else. Something darker, more malevolent, and infinitely crueler than the animal in Dace could ever be. Dace might rip someone apart for touching what belonged to him, but Ronan would do so without provocation, and he would enjoy every minute of it.

I trembled, cold from the inside out.

Ronan slipped back into my head as easily as before and began to prowl again. His presence scraped at my mind, seeming shrill and grating. Whatever he sought in there sent tremors of terror through me. I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to force him out to no avail. As he rifled through my memories, something turned on like a flipped switch. Something truly
was
coming, something bad.

Dread bubbled through me like hot water all over again.

Dace launched himself into my thoughts. I could no longer tell him from the wolf I’d imagined earlier or the wolf from him. They were one and the same. Part of me felt like I’d always known that.

The wolf had Dace’s eyes and his energy, but his snowy white, gray streaked fur was as familiar to me, if not more so. I wasn’t sure what alarmed me more: the realization that Dace seemed more himself in that form than he had before, or the sudden certainty that I was just like him. Whatever lived in Dace, lived in me, too. With everyone else in my head, the thing in me seemed bigger than it had earlier, as if it really had woken and was as pissed off as I’d imagined.

My body quaked.

The Dace-wolf hybrid lunged for Ronan’s mind, responding to my fear.

A desperate, furious growl tore through my head, but the sound wasn’t coming from Dace or the wolf. The savage snarl came from me.
I
wanted Ronan’s blood pouring from his throat, and I wanted to be the one that caused him that wound.

I whimpered at the unfamiliar urge, trying to get away from it. Struggling didn’t do any good though. The murderous urge was inside, and I couldn’t get it out.

My head was going to explode from the flurry of emotions raging through it. Fear. Fury. More fear. I couldn’t tell which belonged to me and which belonged to Dace anymore. They were snarled as tightly as his emotions had been earlier, feeding off one another and stabbing into me like knives.

Arionna, calm down,
Dace said.
Please.
 

Ronan’s empty laugh seemed to echo in response, taunting Dace.

The Dace-wolf hybrid tore through my mind, trying to find Ronan wherever he hid in there and force him out.

I groaned and stumbled.

Arionna, you’ve got to calm down.
Dace’s hand tightened on my arm. He fought to pull the animal back and contain it, but the wolf wasn’t cooperating. Whatever Ronan did, whatever he wanted, sent the animal in Dace into a rage.

I looked up at Dace. His brows were furrowed, and his pupils wide. He clenched his jaw so hard it looked like the bones would break under the strain. The tendons in his neck bulged. He breathed hard and fast as he tried to pull himself and the animal back and sever the link between us.

I can’t,
I cried silently, another wave of emotion slamming into me.

Dace groaned aloud this time. His nostrils flared, and his step faltered.

Chelle touched my arm, and I bit my tongue to keep from screaming.

“Deep breaths, Arionna,” she murmured, eyeing us nervously. “Come on, you can do it. Slow, deep breaths.”

I took a deep, gasping breath. I held it.

The prying sensation started up again, sending the flood of emotion swirling higher. The Dace-wolf howled, and the unfamiliar part of me that had bubbled to the surface in response to Ronan’s invasion wanted to join Dace all over again.

My body shook hard, trembling like paper blowing around in a strong wind. I thought my legs were going to collapse. “Please,” I whimpered, wanting the constant build to stop. There was too much going on at once. I felt like I was being ripped apart from the inside out, and I couldn’t force any of my tormentors out, either. Not Dace and the wolf, not Ronan, not the fear, and not the thing in me fighting to respond. “Please, make it stop.”

My legs gave out.

“Hell,” Dace growled and swung me up into his arms. He was as angry as the animal in him, but he cradled me almost reverently in his arms, tucking me against his chest. “Chelle, you’ve got to … I can’t … .”

“I know,” she said, her voice soothing and worried all at once. “Go. I’ll take care of it.”

I didn’t hear how Dace responded. My head pounded, and I couldn’t catch a big enough breath.

Another wave of emotion slammed into me. I groaned into Dace’s shoulder, burying my face in his neck. “It won’t stop, Dace.”

“Shh,” he murmured, his breath coming in short pants. “Hold on, Arionna. Please, hold on.”

Ronan’s laughter echoed again, and the invasive feeling swelled beyond what I could handle. All of the emotions and sensations split my head open with a violent, tearing pain. I think I screamed.

Darkness swam up and plucked me from the world in an instant.

Chapter Nine

T
he world returned in little snatches. I held my breath, waiting for the pain to hit again. When it didn’t, I opened my eyes to soft, fluorescent light. I was no longer outside. Knowing that didn’t help much. The room around me was as unfamiliar as the black chaise I lay on.

Floor to ceiling windows, covered in dark curtains, took up one entire wall. A desk sat beneath the windows, a powered down PC sitting atop. The rest of the wall space was given over to built-in shelves, row after row of neatly ordered books marching across them in descending size. A lamp sat on a table beside the chaise.

The afghan tossed over my lap kept me warm. Warmer than I remember being when I fainted, if fainting is what I’d done. I wasn’t so sure about that. I wasn’t sure about much of anything, and I didn’t want to think about any of it right then either. I rolled onto my back to find Chelle standing over me, her eyes as worried as they had been the last time I saw her.

“Oh, thank god,” she said, her shoulders slumping as if a great weight lifted from them. Her hands shook. “I’ve been so worried about you.”

I looked up at her, blinking. “Where’s Dace?”

She grimaced. “He’ll be here soon.”

“Where am I?”

“His house.” Chelle perched on the end of the chaise, watching me warily. “The study. Are you okay?”

Was I okay? I wanted to laugh. I didn’t know the answer to that question. Ronan no longer prowled through my head, and Dace wasn’t raging in there. I no longer felt the urge to rip out Ronan’s throat. I also didn’t feel like I was going to be ripped apart by everything tearing through me, but … “I don’t know.”

The last weeks had brought nothing but pain after pain. I’d been certain all the spaces in me were too full to hold any more, but I hurt in places I’d never thought it possible to hurt. My entire body felt scraped raw, like I’d been battered from the inside out, and I wasn’t quite sure how.

I couldn’t seem to string thought together well enough to figure out the problem, but as pathetic as my inability to think straight felt, that relieved me. If I started thinking, I knew I’d start panicking, and I didn’t want to panic. I wanted not to feel anything at all.

But when do we ever get what we want?

The animal that launched himself into my head at the rave swam to the surface, behind my eyes. He stood there, watching me with sad, knowing eyes, half wolf, half Dace.

He looked more lost than I felt.

I wanted to cry for me and for Dace. I still wasn’t afraid of
him
, but I was afraid. I would’ve been a fool not to be. That realization hurt both of us, I think.

“What happened?” I asked Chelle, dragging my attention away from Dace’s wolf. He stayed in my head though, sitting quietly in a corner that seemed reserved solely for him.

“Um … .” Chelle’s gaze darted away from me and focused on the floor.

“Don’t.” I reached out and put my hand on her arm, forcing her to look at me. “I could feel them in my head, Chelle. Dace. A wolf. Ronan. Something in me. They were tearing me apart. And you know how. Tell me.”

“I … .” Chelle looked up at me, pleading with her eyes for me not to put her in that position. Not to make her tell secrets that weren’t hers to tell. Not to make her choose, I guess, between her loyalty to Dace and her newfound friendship with me.

I wanted to give in, but I couldn’t. She had answers, and I needed them. If she never opened her mouth and told me about Dace, I could forgive her that, but the things happening to me were a different matter altogether. If she knew, she had to tell me. That might not have been fair to her, but fair didn’t matter anymore. Something was happening to me, and I had to know what.

She’s not the one you want to ask, Arionna.

I jumped at the unexpected sound of Dace’s voice echoing in my skull. He wasn’t loud, but the words reverberated powerfully all the same. They commanded my attention, compelling me to close my mouth and listen.

I held my breath, waiting for his emotions to feed mine and start the painful cycle all over again. The wrenching sensation didn’t come, and I relaxed. Slightly.

Why?

He ignored the question, or maybe answered it in his own way.
Don’t put her in the middle. Please.

I hated how he said that single word, as if all of existence hinged upon my answer. Part of me thought that maybe it did. Another part didn’t think it mattered either way.