Page 12 of Haunted Nightmares
Most of the damage to my house was done within the first week after my gentle breeze left me. I trashed the house, completely destroyed it and when that wasn’t enough, I went after Declan. We fought in ways we haven’t since we were lads going through the change, brutal and almost animalistic battles where we would literally tear into each other until flesh was shredded and bones were broken. The only difference this go around being I was the one to instigate full force every time, with every intention of killing him while Declan simply let me.
He took the brunt of my grief, of my distress and self hate. He took it because he chose to, in hopes of helping hisfriendin any way possible because Declan is a male of worth who cares for those he deems worthy in return. And yet, I tried to kill him repeatedly, if I acknowledged him at all, and it wasn’t until I changed the locks on my doors and prevented him from entering that he stopped. Which Declan did after he slid what could be comparable to a letter of resignation—complete with contact information and who he was now working for—under my front door.
Whether it was for his safety or my madness, I’m not sure, but my friend has every right to be pissed at me after all I have put him through, and though I don’t regret or wouldn’t change one thing about it, I am glad that he is here now.
Even if he’s insulting me and barely restraining himself against the urge to ring my neck.
I stare at his outstretched hand for a beat before pushing myself up, getting to my feet on my own then bracing against the wall because of the dizziness it creates.
“Now then,” I say with a sigh before my gaze drops to where the thick needle and tube are sticking out of my chest. “Since you unintentionally forced me to keep you here…” Gripping the delicate tools connected to me, I pluck them from my sternum and discard them on the floor, rubbing the space they previously occupied. “Perhaps we should get down to business?”
“Hold up.” Orion lifts his hands in front of me, a frown marring his handsome face. “You’re just going to skim over everything that just happened? The shit upstairs, passing out on the floor?” Then his brow raises in defiance as I take a step toward him. “The fact that you were leading us to the fucking laundry room that you’ve clearly been living in?”
Turning back to the doorway behind me, I look inside the small, relatively empty space, taking in the windowless walls and stone floor. There are no appliances here, nothing but the hookups if I’d decided to do my own washing, just a few baron shelves on the wall and dried blood stains that have settled each time I return from doing my most gruesome work. This is the only room of the entire house that Zephyr did not frequent, the only space that does not hold the haunted memories of my love, and it is where I come to collapse when the voices or my new reality force me to do so.
But I will not tell them that.
No, I don’t feel the need to share anything more with this group for today.
My grief, my insanity is mine alone, and I deserve to suffer through it on my own.
Which is exactly why I wave him off before giving them my back. “If I remember correctly, there are things that you need to share with me, not the other way around. If this is to be an intervention of sorts, I’ll throw you out into the street and watch with a grin as the midday sun does what I cannot.” I step into the laundry room and breathe deeply for the first time in months, ignoring the way the new blood rushing through me has in fact quieted the voices and my need to retch. “I am available for a strategy meeting but that is all, I’ve things to do and people to kill, so pussyfooting around will not be tolerated.”
The group grumbles in my direction as Aries says something about grabbing kitchen chairs for the females and finding pants for me while Declan curses under his breath, bringing up how hehopes I haven’t destroyed the war room in all my crazy.
It’s strange, but it seems losing my mate and living the way I have been has both given me an odd level of humanity I did not possess before, and taken away what little there was to begin with.
Regret isn’t the word, I’m relatively sure that’s something I cannot experience outside of my gentle breeze, but I feelsomethingtoward them. Pity? Relief? Doubt? A combination of all three? Whatever it is, whatever feeling keeps flashing inside my mind for the briefest of moments, it is why I haven’t lost my shite on them entirely after everything that has transpired since Orion and Aries found me at the Hall.
And while I know they are each experiencing their own confusing and conflicting emotions over this entire shitshow, it does something to know they are here in spite of it.
It is unfortunate it won’t last.
Nothing will, not anymore.
No one is safe from it.
And I have little desire to change that.
4
The Good Old Days
My eyes carefully scan the pages in my hands, stopping periodically only to start again.
It’s almost as if my brain has forgotten how to read the fucking English language but is trying anyway.
That’s not it, though.
Regardless of my mental state, my IQ has remained the same—just as inflated as my ego.
It’s the actual words on paper that have me stopping and starting like a young first learning how to read.
Well, the words on paper as well as the words in my head.
Zenlothanai is reading right along with me and they are throwing in their two cents far too often for me to completely comprehend the documents in hand.
“Quiet,”I hiss as I shift uncomfortably on the stone floor. “This is hard enough when I don’t give two shites about the humans and their government. Add in your infantile reading abilities and unwanted commentary, and I’m suddenly thrown into an intelligence level I haven’t been at since I quit shitting in nappies.”
