Dev laughed as he kept walking away from her. "I thought you were on the evening shift."
"I am. I'm just going to the bathroom."
He gave her a devilish grin. "I left the seat up."
"Of course you did. At least you warned me this time."
He wrinkled his nose playfully at her before he vanished.
Shaking her head at her brother and his antics, she redirected her steps to Fang's room. She nudged open the door to make sure he was alone which, thankfully, he was. Vane must have finally gone to his own room.
Aimee slipped into the room and shut the door.
Everything here was quiet. Not even a whisper could be heard.
I am out of my mind. . . .
She had to be.
Moving to stand beside his comatose body, she placed her hand on his soft fur. His breathing was shallow, but steady. There was no sign of violence or of anything.
Fang was fine.
Except for the fact that he refused to rejoin the world. She didn't understand that kind of weakness. He'd seemed so strong and capable. What had happened to make him shatter like this?
It didn't make sense.
But there was nothing she could do for him. Stroking his ear, she sighed. "Sleep well, baby." Then she turned and went back to her room.
Berating herself for being ten thousand times a fool, she pulled her robe off and tossed it to the bed.
As it fell, she saw something strange. . . .
A stain.
A red stain.
Confused even more, she looked down at her gown and saw the blood from Fang's wound. And as she caught sight of herself in the mirror, she saw something else that added veracity to her dream. Her face was marked from Fang's whiskers. Her lips swollen from his kiss.
It'd been real.
All of it.
Fang was trapped and she was the only hope he had of coming back. . . .
"What are you doing?"
Aimee jumped at the unexpected sound of Dev's angry tone coming out of the darkness of the hallway while she was trying to slip out without being seen. Why hadn't she just popped outside instead of going to the bathroom like a normal human being?
That'll learn you.
"Damn it, Devereaux Alexander Aubert Peltier, I swear I'm going to put a bell on you if you don't stop sneaking around here without making any noise! What do you do? Wait until I leave my room to pounce on me like a cat with a mouse?"
Narrowing his gaze on her, he crossed his arms over his chest in a tough stance. "You only get angry at me when I've caught you doing something you shouldn't be doing. So what are you up to?"
She tried not to look guilty, but it was hard. "I'm not doing anything."
He raked a look over her that said he knew better. "So why aren't you working tonight?"