felt as if it were being burnt by coldness. He held his finger in front of her face, and her own blood stared her in the face.
She reached up slowly to touch her cheek. She cried out, yanking her hand away and recoiling from the creature.
“Oh... my god. Oh my god, I’m going to --” Jamie felt her stomach leave her and the creature, with a disgusted sound, shot away from her, out of site.
“Jamie!”
She wrapped her hands around her stomach, curling into a ball. Zyn wasn’t going to come for her. He didn’t even know she had left. A tear rolled down her cheek as she stared at the crumpled leaves, the broken twigs, and her own spots of blood.
“Damnit, Jamie, answer me!”
She froze. Looked up. It couldn’t be Zyn. He wouldn’t... No, he wouldn’t come after her, would he? The minute she thought it, she felt stupid. He had just told her a bit ago that he would protect her no matter what...that he was her real father... Her body convulsed as pain tore through her, not only because of their conversation, but because of the ice that was slicing through her veins.
“Zyn...” she coughed, finding her throat tightly constricted and, as she talked, her breath became visible. Horrified, she cried out.
It felt like someone shoved a knife down her throat.
She heard pounding footsteps, and then Zyn’s strong hands were in front of her face. When he tried to touch her shoulder, unimaginable pain shot through her and she screamed, causing him to pull back.
“Goddamn It, no,” he half shouted, half groaned. The torment in his voice matched the pain in her body. She stared up at him, wishing she could just grab onto him and make him fix everything -- but it would hurt her too much.
Jamie panted, feeling the heat in her body slowly drain. Her cheek no longer felt as if it were burning -- there was simply too much happening to her body to account for it. The ice slid through her body, out of her body, everywhere it could reach.
The tears that fell from her eyes were turned to crystals. They gathered there, like a pile of diamonds. Zyn stared down at her, and for the first time, she saw what she never thought she’d see in his face.
He was crying.
Jamie fought the pain and coldness for as long as she could. She tried to reach out to him, to get him to stop crying and just...find a way to help her. She didn’t want to leave him after everything that she had learned, after learning that he was her real father.
And yet, it wasn’t enough.
Within seconds, she felt the final tug of her soul and the warmth that she had tried to find so hard, finally came to her.
“Is there anywhere that I can...hit something?”
Jessica looked up with her large bird eyes and peered at Jamie suspiciously. “In the building? Yes. But if you get me fired, I will never forgive you. Last time, I swore Talon was going to kill me!”
Jamie winced, putting her hands in her pockets. “I’m sorry about that...”
“Don’t worry, he didn’t. As you can see,” she smiled broadly, getting up from her swivel chair. Jamie stepped back to allow her some room and then gestured for her to lead the way.
As Jessica started talking up a storm, Jamie’s mind trailed off. She had woken up from the dream, bawling her eyes out and screaming. She was grateful that Talon hadn’t been there. It was the one thing that she feared most. That dream had become the bane of her existence, and she had all but forgotten it. It was so realistic, so... vivid. She never knew what to think after having it, and it had been years since she had been sent to therapy to subdue it.
While they walked through the blank walls, she saw Vladimir come out of one of the rooms with a grimace on his dazzling face.
“You okay?” she asked, doing as she had done all her life and forcing the dream from her mind. He looked utterly fed up, as if he was going to rip his now green and orange hair out.
He nodded, sighing dramatically. “Women amaze me, sometimes. Like right now, I have no doubts as to why I swing the other way.”
Jamie coughed as Jessica laughed. “Why do you say that?”
“My dear friend Devlin has struck again, wounding my fragile heart. Sometimes, I just want to drain her and throw