Fear filled me and I screamed.
* * * * *
“Leah, wake up!”
* * * * *
They were burning him.
And they were hanging me.
The sentence for his crime was to watch my death before his own.
My eyes were riveted to him as the flames curled around his powerful body.
I felt the noose go around my neck.
I love you, I whispered to his mind.
* * * * *
The hand shaking me stilled but the fingers curled, biting into my arm.
* * * * *
I watched his eyes close, not with the pain of the flames with a different kind of pain.
I closed my own.
I love you too, sweetling. I heard his voice in my head.
My heart took flight.
Then the trapdoor fell out from beneath my feet.
* * * * *
I came awake with a jerk and a cry, yanking away from Lucien’s warm, heavy body, my own prepared to flee. From what, I didn’t know.
I had my feet to the floor when an arm hooked around my waist and I was lifted up, back into the bed. Lucien curled me into his body, cradled in his arms. His back was to the headboard, I was in his lap.
I melted into him.
In all this bizarreness, the most bizarre of all was that I was trembling like a leaf and bawling like a baby.
“Ho… ho… holy crap,” I whispered, my voice hitching. My arms were around him, holding tightly and I didn’t let go as I kept right on blubbering.
One of his arms left me and I felt his hand stroking my hair.
“Holy crap,” I repeated, this time without the hitch. I burrowed closer, not knowing why, just that I needed to get close, as close as I could.
I actually needed it. I needed to feel his warm, hard, big body surrounding me, keeping me safe.
“It’s all right, Leah, you’ve just had a bad dream,” Lucien murmured to the top of my head.
Was that what happened?
I didn’t remember. I just remembered the terror.