on her.
“You’re not coming to bed?” She winced at the intimate sound of the question. For some reason the idea of him sitting in that chair in the dark as she slept made her uneasy. She’d have preferred he got into his bed and slept, too.
“I’ll get some sleep in a while.”
She nodded as if she understood or approved this. It was just a thoughtless movement because she didn’t really know what to say to him. Or what to think. Or how to act. He was doing this great thing for them—he could have ignored her pleas and finished Aimee off. And she couldn’t have really blamed him. His logic was correct. Which told her that some part of him had to be following his heart.
She slid into bed beside Aimee. Instantly, the girl’s baking heat reached out to envelop her. She lightly grazed the child’s arm. She was feverish again. Her skin burned and was slippery-wet with perspiration.
“You sure this fever will break?” She couldn’t stop the worry from entering her voice.
“It will,” he replied in that flat voice. “Initiation lasts a few days, but it will break. And she’ll be a lycan when it’s done.”
Her jaw clenched at the reminder. He got it in every chance. Like she could ever forget. “She won’t be a lycan until moonrise.”
“Let’s just say she won’t be human anymore once the fever breaks.”
She exhaled. She could handle that. What was Darby after all? A witch. What was he? Something similar to a lycan.
Neither were normal human beings. And they still deserved a chance, a hope for life. They were still struggling through each and every day. Like them, Aimee deserved a chance, too. And Darby was going to make sure she got it. She wondered why Niklas didn’t see it that way, too.
SEVENTEEN
Darby woke in the middle of the night. She wasn’t certain what roused her, but her every nerve was stretched taut. She’d woken like this before … seemingly with no explanation to find there was a very real, very valid reason for her state of high alert. That reason was usually in the form of a late-night guest.
The demons never stayed too long when that happened. It was too cold, after all, for them to last beyond a few minutes. But they made the most of their time, tormenting her in an attempt to get her to submit. As a child they would send her sobbing in terror into her mother’s room.
She squinted through the gloom, trying to see if a shadow worked its way toward her in the dark, slithering over the walls and floor. Goose bumps broke out over her flesh as her gaze scanned the room, darting around wildly, searching for any hint of something that shouldn’t be there.
She clutched the three charms resting against her chest and muttered a prayer low under her breath.
“What’s wrong?”
She jerked at the low voice. Her gaze darted toward the bed across from her. Apparently, he did sleep. Or at least he relocated himself to the bed.
Niklas’s eyes gleamed at her through the scant distance between their two beds. He slept shirtless. Her throat constricted at the sight of bare skin. Even in the gloom she could see the hard curve of his shoulder, the warm-looking male flesh, several shades lighter than the darker bedspread.
Her breathing grew tight and raspy, like she’d run a short distance at high speed, sprinting the last half mile on one of her runs. She couldn’t help wondering what else he had on under those covers. Or didn’t.
“What’s wrong?” he repeated.
She inhaled slowly and evenly through her nose. “Nothing,” she replied, her gaze once again darting around the room. Suddenly it seemed like a very good idea to look anywhere other than at him, so close, in that bed.
“Don’t lie. Something’s bothering you,” he insisted.
Drawn against her will, her gaze slid back to him, taken aback at his insight into her—that he should know she was awake at all. How had he known that?
She drew a shuddery breath through her nostrils. Too bad it was the middle of the night … and her circumstances weren’t more conducive. She could handle a run about now to quiet the worries in her head.
Something was bothering her all right. And it was him. Maybe that’s why she was awake—why she felt so restless. It had nothing to do with a visiting demon. Instead it had everything to do with him. He was the different element. Him. His nearness, his