Page 11 of Haunted Nightmares
Lorna.
Our healer.
A trusted ally, someone I’ve known for centuries.
And she fucking hooked me up to a bloody IV right over my wretched and rotting heart.
Small hands smooth the surrounding skin, pushing out from the needle toward my collarbone before they do the same toward my sides and stomach. “He is much colder than he should be. Too cold even for us. We need to get him clothed, convince him to feed in some way. He’s no good to anyone in this state.”
A terrible stench hits my nose as Lorna’s hands leave my body but it grows stronger almost immediately when they return, a manufactured and medicated heat trying to seep through the frozen creature I’ve become.
The healer slowly and methodically rubs the smelly salve all over my skin, paying close attention to the parts that visibly show my decay. It tingles some as she does this, working whatever ointment she’s created into my marred flesh in hopes of what, I do not know.
As soon as Lorna gets to my hands, I feel the blood from the IV begin pushing its way to my heart like a venomous lava. Oozing. Rolling through the organ, a sludge forcing my own polluted blood to accept it.
It burns.
Burns because my body does not want to accept it.
Burns because it does not come from my mate.
My living breathing corpse wants nothing to do with nourishment unless it comes from the bonds created by my fated one and I, of life and blood to sustain us both, and any supplement introduced outside of them will be useless.
Until… it isn’t?
The fire in my chest intensifies to near painful as Lorna continues pushing her salve all over my skin, its warmth fighting against my cold, the heat forcing the new blood to carry itself through my veins. I can physically feel the battle taking place, the way the clean and healthy blood almost absorbs the corrupted garbage flowing through me and in each area the healer applies her ointment, it almost feels as though I’mthawing.
And I do not bloody like it.
I didn’t ask for this, didn’t ask for help or healing.
I agreed to aid them in the ways I’d promised strictly for my gentle breeze, and in no way did that imply I wanted to prolong my pathetic existence while doing so.
But it seems I have no choice.
Not right now anyway since they’ve caught me while momentarily incapacitated.
The new blood works its way up my neck, stinging and tingling through the veins in my face all the way to my scalp and as soon as my eyes pop open, I gasp and my entire body jolts upright.
“What in the fucking hellhounds are you doing, female?” I snap, my blurry eyes blinking rapidly as they try to focus on Lorna. “I asked for nothing of?—“
“You’re conscious, aren’t you, my lord?”
I scowl at her relieved expression. “I would have come to on my own.”
“Hours from now. And we’ve already lost several trying to figure out how to wake you.”
“Several?”Bloody daft female.It couldn’t have been that long. “I highly doubt…” My words trail off as my vision clears, my stare bouncing between the five who surround me.
Lorna is still relieved but has returned to looking rather stone-faced, and her irritation with me is starting to resurface as I gape at her. Edith shares her sentiment, an annoyed expression quickly replacing the traces of worry that were most likely there moments before. Orion and Aries, well the males are simply nodding like bobble heads and while I trust them, it isn’t until my black eyes connect with Declan’s dark green ones that I know it is true.
“It’s almost noon,” he grunts as he extends his hand toward me. “We’ve been waiting on your unconscious ass so long that we can’t get out. We’re stuck with you, and since you’re still acting like a prick, I suggested we speed things up as much as possible.”
It seems as though my oldest friend is still rather pissed with me.
Not that I can blame him, not entirely.
I discharged him out of grief, told him to get bent while I mishandled my mourning. He didn’t, though. Declan kept coming around, kept trying to take care of me, toprotectme in my weakened and crazed state no matter how I treated him. Which was terribly to say the least, attacking my friend verbally as well as physically if he so much as looked at me.
