The Alpha's Desire 3 (7 page)

Chapter Seven

I dreamt of my wolf again as I slept. Or, at least, it seemed a dream at first. Later, I may have called it a meeting of consciousnesses, more than the fevered nightmare I’d had last time. Either way, whatever it was, he appeared as my wolf to me, and in the state I’d left him last in reality, right before the vampire rescuer had scooped me up and taken me away.

This time, no woods, glorious and otherworldly or otherwise, were there as a backdrop. Rather, he stood beside me while the two of us were surrounded by a stifling darkness, as if in the middle of nothing at all. There was no temperature to feel, and no shadows or even shades of grey to see. I couldn’t hear so much as white noise outside of the sound of his breathing or mine; which one, I wasn’t quite sure. There existed only the two of us in this place, only I couldn’t see or feel myself. Nothing touched me, and I touched nothing. That sense seemed not dulled, but turned off, as if I only observed, was only a consciousness at first.

Regardless, or most importantly, I could see him, and from the look of love in his eyes, he could see me in this dreamy haze of pitch. My emotional reaction came back into my awareness first, bringing me back into the body I still couldn’t see in my view of things. His fear hit me like a wooden stick against a tight drum, me being the head hit, of course. The tightness of his body, his rush of emotions, made my body vibrate and then shiver, resonating his anxieties and dread. Even together in this state, I reached out for him with a hand I wasn’t exactly sure existed. A blur of flesh color, my hand I surmised, slipped right through the mirage of his body when I gave the act my best attempt. This just made things worse for us both. I don’t know how or why, but it did.

All my life, when I was scared or in need, my wolf would appear in my dreams and curl around me, a physical and warm shield against the world. He would feed to me, through our connected psyches, the ideas of protection and being loved, cherished, making me feel as if I mattered in this world, had a purpose, as if there were indeed a point to my suffering, and something I could eventually offer back to those who suffered like me. Being of use to others had always been important to me, and as both a motherless child and then an adult orphan, with no family, that basic, everyday usefulness often could be hard to come by on a steady basis.

Now, maybe because I was not in peril, at least not any that the vampires would let me feel anyway, he came to me, and I couldn’t touch him. I could only feel his rising panic, and the tightness it rendered in my core. I couldn’t take or offer, only witness, and I hadn’t a need for that. I needed answers, hopefully ones that brought about reassurances as to his state of being in this world. Simply, all I needed was to know for sure that he was alive, also healing from his injuries.

I kept trying, urging him to come closer, even if only in my mind, as the silence of this dark world grew as deafening as the white noise that didn’t exist. It made no sense, but I ached to hear something beyond this rush of breath, and strained my ears, in fact. They hurt, though for the most part, I couldn’t feel my body, not really, though I sensed it was there, and had moments of physical response to emotions, but it all was too fleeting to be real, if that made sense at all. I couldn’t describe it even to myself, this state.

Finally, with my continued efforts, to hold onto some semblance of the reality I knew, even in a dream state, I was able to will my hand back toward him as he moved closer. I ran my hand over his side, but felt nothing, and his wolf’s eyes grew sadder if possible, the colors in them changing, the gold growing darker, dimming.

His head seemed to hang, to be weighted and suspended. I welcomed the sensation of being in this world as my mind cried out for him. With my gratitude around us like the faint glimmer of a light, my internal power, this time when he moved, he went to curl up around me, as he had done so many times before. Only this time, in the glow of my magic, our magic, I finally began to feel his warmth. Reaching out again, I felt his fur fluttered through my fingers, more like feathers at first. With all I was here, all I had at my disposal, I concentrated, and found that finally I could pet him. Only, this act of comfort, of me giving to him myself, it wrought a horrendous moan from his throat.

This sound, an inhuman fog horn blended with the anguished cry of one abandoned, seemed to spark something in him, or maybe, more to the point, it extinguished his magic. My second guess had to be more on the mark, because he turned human as his groaning continued on. The solid strength of his wolf, even battered, vanished along with the fur, until he became flesh and bone. I watched this transformation in his eyes. While bigger, the golden eyes of his wolf with amber flecks changed to his smaller, human, amber eyes with the matching gold flecks. Sadly, they didn’t sparkle at all now.

The man I had fallen in love with laid there now, suspended in this darkness, motionless save for a low vibration in his chest. His mournful breathing continued, making me feel, finally, gratefully, even more real, a human myself, with each seep of grief the sound brought about in this still mostly invisible me. His amber eyes were dark and stormy, an almost black now against the blood that had dried on his face. These dried drops and smears had come from a still seeping wound on his head. His hair looked darker, more like tar, since it had stiffened with the blood. As I looked down over his bulging form, his strong muscles were bruised, leaving his skin more green and purple than flesh-colored. 

More blood oozed a blackish crimson from gapping wounds all over him as I inspected farther. Arms and legs showed cuts and scrapes, bumps and dents, even open gouges. He should have been healing by now. I wasn’t aware of exactly how much time had passed since I’d last seen him, but it had to be enough that he should have begun to heal. Like the last time he’d battled in my apartment and I’d thought him dead, the other wolves had told me that as long as his heartbeat, he would heal. And, he had. In an instant, once it had started, I’d almost been able to watch wounds grow back together, and bruises fade. This wolf, this version of my Lex, looked worse than when I’d left him. Instead of looking better, on the mend, however long it had been since the battle on the dirt road, he appeared to just be laying there dying.

It didn’t make sense, but at least in my dream, the appropriate feelings started to come. In an instant, I moved beyond panic to life-turning hysteria and all-out horror. Even the pain in my own body returned with a vengeance. My leg, probably broken, started to burn and throb, actually robbing me of some of my thoughts. My own head bumped and bruised, ached to maddening, the dried blood what I assumed to be making my skin pinch and burn. Here, in this state, whatever the vampires had done to protect me from emotions and pain had worn off, or gone away. In this brutal but real moment, I felt it all, my agony mixed with his.

I worried that his time grew short. What I felt of him, our connection... it was being snuffed out like a candle, struggling to keep a flame, smoldering and smoking, failing to light the encroaching darkness as it grew heavier and thicker around us. But, he was alive, at least for now. I knew I had to gather my strength for him. Maybe this had been a warning, a dream or a vision, either way, a lesson to tell me to fight, to get better.

It clicked then, that through our connection, he’d appeared to me. This was his grave state. For whatever reason, he wasn’t healing. The other pack’s sorcerer could be prohibiting his animal’s ability to heal, stifling his magic to a degree, but not enough to kill him. I vowed to heed this grim message.

I’d take a chance on these vampire people. They’d saved me and not killed me yet. I was at their mercy anyway, so what else could I do but listen and hopefully heal? Once I had my wits about me, I could gather more information. If my luck held, maybe they had a way to save Lex and me. I had to find a way to get to him, to save him, as he had me so many times. I owed it to him, and to myself. I couldn’t live without him. I’d lost a lot in my life, but this time, with our unique connection, I wouldn’t survive the loss. This I knew with absolute certainty.

I brought about positive thoughts in my mind. If I couldn’t rely on him for comfort, then I’d damn well find my own for him, for us. Our love would help me with that, I thought, as the dream or vision faded away. Once again, I fell into that comforting blackness that had become more the norm for me these days. As I did, I prayed, I guessed to whatever would hear me, that this would be the last time. I asked, urged, that when I woke up, I would be well enough to go get my love, my life now, back.

I was of Royal blood. I had a wolf protector with matching magic that loved me. I had powers. I had all I needed to save him. As I lost consciousness, I held on tightly to the shared dream we’d had the other night, of us on the island, happy and free, powerful and strong, in love. That we would have. It would come to pass, or I would die trying to make it come to pass. Those were my only options.

I’m sending you all my magic to heal
, I thought as I struggled to bring back the fading image of him in my thoughts. It had already gone, but I willed my thoughts to wherever he truly was. I believed with all my heart that he could hear me, or at least feel me the way I had just felt him.
I love you, Lex, with all my heart and soul.

Chapter Eight

I woke with a start, sitting straight up in bed, my heart racing, my breathing light yet fast. Sleep, confusion, and quick movement all added to the haze over my vision. I blinked like I had something in my eye until my vision grew clear. Rubbing my dry eyes, the strange bed I’d been waking in for however long I’d been here came into view. The greys and blacks, along with the amethyst, all formed that modern elegance I’d become semi-familiar with. In fits of waking as I’d healed, I’d begun to build a sense of comfort with the knowledge that, if these beings I’d dubbed vampires had been going to bite me and drain me of my blood, they surely would have done so long ago.

No one or no being healed a person just to drain them. Did they? My sleepy thoughts rambled around in my brain as I ran my hands through my hair, surprised to find no knots, only a silky mane of hair. Lifting a section of it to inspect, I saw that my brown curls had been not only tamed, but conditioned, maybe. Whatever had been done, it looked healthier than it had since I was a child. The idea that someone had brushed it while I slept, or done whatever else to my hair, or me, brought an odd sense of gratitude mixed with a space-violation uneasiness.

Looking over the edge of the loft, seeing no one again, I laid back again for a second, trying to gather myself together, to make a quick assessment of my situation and my options. For reasons unknown, I’d been brought to this amazing loft, one I’d have liked if the situation had been different. In fact, if it had just been a normal day, I’d have wanted to look around the place, to come to truly appreciate all its majesty. I’d honestly never seen anything even near this place outside of magazines about the rich and famous. Everything about this place, from the furniture to the placement of knickknacks, if these sorts of people called a small vase that, was of refined taste and money.

I believed the person who owned it to be a vampire. Given the state I was in after the car accident, I could have imagined the speed my rescuer traveled, and even the brief glimpse of fangs I saw. Still, I had this innate sense that these people were actually creatures of the night, the ones that had once been a thing of fiction in my writer’s mind until Lex and I had briefly talked of them. If I remembered correctly, and I doubted myself a bit, Lex had talked of saving me from a vampire once.

Now I wondered if I’d misunderstood him. These vampires, if they were indeed that, had saved me. Well, at least one in particular had, but the rest I’d seen hadn’t thrown me to the curb either. Not only that, but with a quick mental assessment of all of my body parts, they’d healed me completely, as well. I could once again move around the leg I’d been sure was broken after the crash. I could wiggle my toes and flex my muscles without even a hint of pain. As well, my head no longer hurt. My hand rose up to my hairline. No cut, not even a drop of blood, remained on my forehead or matting my hair. In fact, not only was I healed, but I was clean, and glancing under the covers, I saw that I also wore clean clothes.

I had to calm my suddenly erratic breathing, to focus on the healed and clean part rather than who had bathed and dressed me. The fact that someone had gotten me clothing was above and beyond any good deed, so being naked in front of a stranger, I had to put up with. I’d chalk it up to being in such a state of undress with a doctor or such. Not that I liked doctors, but I had to move on to more important matters, not get stuck in a rash of insecure thoughts about my body, and who had seen or thought what of it. Hardly relevant in this situation. It didn’t matter even if my programed-by-society mind still went there, and toyed with the idea, baiting my ego to come out and terrorize me. I had more than my share of terror to deal with.

It was those thoughts, though, that brought me around to Lex, hearing him in my head scold me any time I even alluded to putting myself down. No matter my full figure, or anything else, in his eyes, according to the way he acted, and spoke, I was beautiful. In his arms, I felt so, too. He made sure of it. I couldn’t lose him. I hoped that someone had rescued him, as well. I had to hold onto that hope or I’d lose my shit, again, and in an instant. Last time it had been pain-induced. This time, it would also be pain spurring it, but a different kind, the agony of a heart who feared for the one she loved, the one she needed to keep that heart beating at all.

Thinking back to my dreams about him since I’d come here, I had to also believe that the first, when we’d been chased on the Royal island by the true, natural werewolf pack, was either a fever-induced nightmare, or a premonition which I hoped to change the course of the future to prevent. However, the second dream felt more real, like he’d used our unique connection, the one of wolf protector and his protected, to reach me. He’d used it when I was a child to come to me, in my dreams, when I’d needed him. It had to be the same now, a way to connect when we couldn’t be together. 

I loved that he loved me that much. No matter his state, and in the dream it had seemed bad, he had to still know how I was, and had a need to help me.  The only thing was, in the second dream, I’d felt him dying. Still, whatever it was, dream or connection, that didn’t make sense. Riker and Vivian had said that if he still had a beating heart, he could heal. Yet, in the dream state, or psychic connection, he’d just been suffering, dying, like a human would. The only comfort I could find was in the fact that, in our last connection, however long ago it had been, he’d been alive. Suffering horribly, but breathing, his heart still beating. I needed him alive more than I needed air, or at this moment, a large bottle of water to fix the fact that my mouth was so dry that my lips were sticking to my teeth, and my tongue to the roof of my mouth.

Beyond that, I still had the aftertaste of whatever they’d been feeding me, an herbal tasting tea or something I’d been awoken to drink a few times since arriving here. The spicy mix had that grassy aftertaste of green tea. It was not a favorite of mine, so that is what it tasted like to me. Beyond that, I still had that metallic taste of my blood in my mouth. At least, with my teeth gritted together to keep down the rising bile, I hoped and prayed it was my blood. If these were indeed vampires, I’d hate to think the lore had gotten that right, and that I’d been fed their blood to heal me.

Swallowing hard over the sudden lump in my throat, I swore I smelled blood, even on top of the scented candles and whatever else they pumped through this house to make it smell so fresh and clean, like freshly cut flowers and baking cookies all at the same time. It had to be my mind working overtime, though, as there was not a trace of blood left anywhere, save maybe my breath, I guessed, and that thought didn’t help the roll of my stomach one bit. Pushing up to sitting again, the feeling of being watched turned my head to the top of the stairs. The woman with brown hair and matching brown eyes stood at the top of the stairs to my private loft bedroom, which hung in the crook of a high ceiling within this huge loft.

While I would have expected to startle, I didn’t, seeing my rescuer. More, I simply wondered how she’d come into the place and climbed the stairs without me seeing her do so. She nodded at me with a warm, kind smile on her angular, thin face. It added a warmth to her more masculine features. Gracefully, though, she walked to my bed and sat down. I took notice of the fact that the mattress hardly moved when she did so. Strong, as she’d somehow carried me, and solidly built, as in having defined muscles, she was still a wisp of a thing, slender and trim. Not an ounce of body fat on her, and the tight clothing she wore revealed all of these facts.

“Hello, Christina. I’m Nira. It’s nice to finally see you fully awake and all healed. You had a nasty broken leg, and an ugly bump on your head,” she said, sticking her hand out to shake mine.

I reached out my own hand, and was surprised to find her fingers only slightly cold, as any human’s could be, rather than ice cold like the books and movies described vampires to have. Her skin was pale, as I’d noticed before, but not deathly so, just in an  I-don’t-care-for-the-sun sort of way. She didn’t speak like she was from another time, at least not so far, and come to think of it, she didn’t cower from the sunlight streaming through the walls of windows in this place. I guess that if she burnt in the sun, she wouldn’t have bought, or even agreed to be in a loft.

With all my fiction-born ideas of vampires out the window, I found my own voice, as I forced my eyebrows to unknit due to my confusion. “Thank you for saving me. I don’t know what to say for all you’ve obviously done. Although my memory is fuzzy and fragmented as to all that happened, how I got here, how much time has passed, and all, still, I can see that you have cared for me on top of saving me. So, I am indeed grateful. I figure it is in poor taste to hit you with all my questions, so please forgive me when I do so anyway, as they are spinning out of control in my head. With my fragile grip on the reality of the past hours or days, I feel like I’m going mad trying to make heads or tails of all that happened.”

“First off, you’re welcome. It is what I do. I save people. Second, feel free to ask away. I can only imagine what is going through your head. We have nothing to hide from you.”

“Thank you. I appreciate that. But first, after all you’ve done, can I trouble you for water first? I’m unbelievably thirsty, so much so that, believe it or not, for as much as I’m rambling, it is making talking a struggle.” I tried to laugh, but the dryness of my throat showed in the way the air seemed to catch, and choke me instead of coming out as it should have.

“Absolutely. I should have thought of that and had a bottle ready for you. Hold on a sec.”

She’d not sounded sarcastic at all. In fact, she’d sounded and appeared, from the contorted look on her face, to be genuinely upset she hadn’t thought of a thing like water after all she’d already done for me. Apparently the ‘a sec’ part was literal, as she seemed to only disappear to reappear with a bottle of water.

“How do you do that? I guess I wasn’t hallucinating the speed you carried me at when you saved me. And, how does a woman as thin as you carry so easily a woman as big as me? Beyond that, for now, let me just say that I really appreciate the water.”

I stopped to take a sip from the bottle she handed me. My stomach did not feel like it could take all my mouth wanted to gulp down just yet. So, instead, I swished the bit I took in around my dry mouth before swallowing. I swore, before it even got down my throat, I felt my stomach almost immediately roll in protest. 

“What I am gives me well beyond human strength and speed. It assists me in my job, my duties to save those who need me. You were pretty out of it when I found you on the road. I’m surprised, actually, that you remember anything. You barely mumbled or even moaned at first. I believed you to be unconscious.”

“How long have I been here? Hours? Days? Weeks? How am I healed so completely?” I’d not gotten the answers I’d wanted from the first questions, only confirmations that I’d been right. I moved on, though, with so many questions still driving me mad, making my head start to ache to ask them all without rattling them off like an insane woman.

“You haven’t been here long. You slept through a little more than one day, off and on, that is. The moments you were awake, though, you were not exactly lucid yet. Part of that was the healing, and partly the medicine of sorts we gave you. Regardless, you needed the rest and recuperation time. You have been healed by magic and blood. I hope that doesn’t freak you out. If you remember being woken to drink, that was a special recipe born of a spell given to us long ago by a sorcerer. The Royal sorcerer, in fact. It contained juices of fruits and vegetables for nourishment, which helps hide the taste, too, of the special herb mixture and drops of our blood.”

I gulped as my stomach rolled again, a little more toward the nauseous side than it already had been. A swipe of heat burst from my neck, creating fevered droplets to form a condensation there. My hand flinched to swipe across the sweat breaking out on my forehead, but I thought better of it. I didn’t want to appear more freaked out than I already was. I was sure my skin had gone much paler than hers by now. Instead, I redirected my hand to my lower abs, resting it there gingerly as I set the water bottle aside. A second sip was pretty much out of the question at the moment, no matter how much my tongue still wanted it.

“I’m sorry. I’ve said too much, maybe too fast,” she continued. “Your face that was just starting to get some color back into it is paler than mine.”

My brain went immediately to mind reading, and then to a fear that she could alter my thoughts like the vampires did on TV. Glamouring, they often called it. I kindly reminded myself of all that had already been untrue about them, save using their blood to heal and the super speed. That line of thought not helping, I forced myself back into the conversation at hand.

“No. It’s okay. I’m learning to wrap my head around the unimaginable more quickly these days. It was just the blood thing. But then again, at least you didn’t bite open your wrist and feed me gallons of blood from it like they do on TV. Oh,” I suddenly said with a gasp. “I hope I didn’t insult you by comparing you to fictional vampires. Oh, there I go again. Please tell me I at least got that right. You are a vampire. Correct? Please tell me I’m right,” I semi-begged, semi-pleaded. I really didn’t want to repay her kindness with some sort of stereotyping that would be seen as a sort of racism or something against her kind. “I really am not trying to insult you with my babbling. I will try to get back my filter here sometime soon.”