As he floated through the door and into the main house, I cursed myself when my body immediately relaxed.
Chapter 15
Myrelaxationwasshort-lived,because all the trauma hit me at once. I’d almostdied. And yes, I’d died plenty of times since coming here. We were in the thirties, by this point. This was different.
I’d almost died in a scenario eerily similar to the one that had made me a terrified, broken woman to begin with.
I made it into Felix’s bedroom and to his bed before my legs gave out, body collapsing onto the covers. Looking at the spirit box wouldn’t help me calm down, nor would being in the space where everything had happened. This room was better. A sanctuary.
Pulling my legs to my chest, I sobbed and tried to remember what my therapist had told me to do to deal with these episodes. Talk to myself. Take deep breaths. Make myself feel something with a little bite or pinch. OK, she had expressly told me not to do the last one, but I couldn’t stop myself. Sometimes it was the only thing that worked.
My teeth sank into my arm and the discomfort helped me zone out, giving me a chance to implement the deep breathing. “Why are you harming yourself?”
I jolted at Abraxas’ voice, scrambling back to the head of the bed. I wasn’t quick enough to hide the bite mark on my arm, and he stared at it with his eyebrows drawn together.
“What are you doing here?”
“Zan said you were traumatized. He was correct. According to him, I’m the best cuddler.”
If I were to award that honour, I would have given it to Bennett. He was big and soft and furry, but then again, he would want to talk. No, he would insist on taking, especially if he’d walked in on the minor self-harm. Abraxas was the silent type, and his scales were surprisingly smooth and comfy.
Without waiting for me to ask, he hoisted himself up onto the bed and pulled me to him. I didn’t resist, body limp as a rag doll. He placed my hand against his chest and curled his tail up onto the king mattress, creating a bed that lifted me and held me and cocooned me in a blanket of safety. He wasn’t warm, and his scales cooled my heated flesh.
“Do not harm yourself again, or I’ll do it for you. I have much sharper teeth.”
I glanced up at his pointy incisors, watching his forked tongue flick out. He would follow through. He’d lapped up Kirin’s blood like it was his favourite flavour of ice cream.
“I won’t.”
He grunted.
We lapsed into silence, every second without stress letting my body calm. With him beside me I could focus on my deep breathing, matching my breaths to his. Sometimes, when I was alone, I forgot how slowly I was supposed to breathe, and even my attempt at slow and deep ended up borderline hyperventilating.
“I’m terrified of ghosts,” I said after a while, noting the tremble in my voice.
“I’ve been told humans are terrified of many things. Why are you scared of ghosts but not of me?”
It was hard to explain when I couldn’t tell him how long we’d truly known each other. At first, I had feared him. But then he’d saved me from that horrible fall and shown how adorably unknowledgeable he was about the world outside this mansion. “I was attacked by a ghost, once.”
Abraxas didn’t say anything, and I didn’t elaborate. I’d thought maybe I was ready to talk about my attack; to tell them, knowing they wouldn’t remember, but the words choked me. Another time.
When my body calmed down, sweat drying on my skin, I eventually started to shiver. His chilled scales were no longer as comforting, and I noticed the skin of his bare arms pebbled with goosebumps. Without a thought, I stroked my finger down his arm. He let out a little noise, on the cusp of being a moan. “Why are you so cold?”
“Cold-blooded. Now the days are getting colder, the house is as well. I’m originally from a warmer climate.”
“Can’t we heat the house to a higher temperature?”
He shrugged. “We don’t control the heating or cooling. There’s no way for us to start a fire to warm the house further. Felix said keeping the house a perfect temperature was built into the seal.”
“But not a perfect temperature for you.”
He shrugged again.
Squirming, I made him put me down, the length of his form sliding off the bed. Quietly he watched me, but didn’t stop me. I tore the top duvet off the bed, then raided the chest of blankets at the foot. Some were unusable, but most only had a few small holes in the fabric. I piled them all at the foot of the bed, glancing over at Abraxas.
His damn tail was too long.
I marched over to the windows and tried to pull the curtains off the rod, to no avail. He took pity on me and helped, and I shook the dust out of the fabric. “Go curl up on the bed like we were before.”
