Her thoughts rambled as she struggled to come to grips with these bizarre events.
"Kyrian said you weren't a psycho serial killer." That sounded stupid even to her, but she didn't know what else to say to him.
"No," he said quietly as he came to stand in front of her. "But I'm not human, exactly."
Tabitha's angry voice echoed from the kitchen. "What do you mean, he's a friggin' dog?"
They both turned as Tabitha rushed into the room.
"You're a dog?" she asked Vane.
"Wolf," Vane corrected.
Bride got up and put the couch between herself and Vane. This wasn't real.
No. This was a dream. She'd hit her head. Something.
"Jeez," Tabitha sneered. "I should have known it that night you were outside the restaurant. I thought you looked too smart for the average beastie."
Kyrian came into the room and tried to pull Tabitha back to the kitchen.
Tabitha shrugged off his hand. "Bride needs me. She's not used to you loons."
"I need to go home," Bride said as a strange lucidity came over her. It was as if her mind were rejecting everything she'd heard.
Vane a dog Yeah, right. Well, most men were dogs, but that was only figuratively speaking. No. This was some weird dream. Vane had drugged her during lunch and she was now hallucinating. Whenever she woke up, she was definitely calling the cops on him.
She moved to the door only to have Vane materialize in front of her. "You can't leave."
"Oh, yes I can," she snapped angrily. "This is my bad psychotic delusion and I can do anything I want to in it. Just watch. I'm going to turn into a bird now" Okay, she didn't.
Bride waited for a full minute. "Why am I not a bird? I want to be a bird."
"Because you're not dreaming," Vane said, placing his hands on her arms.
"This is real, Bride. In a very fucked-up sort of way."
"No, no, no," she insisted. "This isn't real. I reject it all. I have" Bride stopped mid-sentence as she looked past Kyrian to see his daughter. Marissa was crawling into the room. The baby stopped near the couch, and sat up, laughing.
She held her tiny arm out and her sippee cup on the coffin-shaped coffee table flew into her outstretched hand. "Rissa, cup, Daddy," she said happily even though the baby was too young to speak.
"Yeah," Bride said while Marissa sipped her juice and Kyrian picked his daughter up from the floor. "I am definitely one oar short on the boat."
She started past Vane only to have him pull her to a stop.
"Please, Bride, you have to listen because your life is in danger, but not from me."
She looked into those magnetic hazel-green eyes and wondered if his image was part of her hallucination, too.
Maybe none of this had ever happened. Maybe she was still in bed with Taylor and all this had been one very long, odd dream.
She shook her head at Vane. "I can't accept what I've just seen. It's not possible."
He held up his palm with the same tattoo as hers. "I don't know how to help you accept this. The unbelievable has been part of my life since the moment I was born. I"
Vane sighed, dropped his hands from her arms and pulled his cell phone out again and dialed it.
He was making a call? Now?