Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
She’d been frowning as she walked through the trees, the cool brush of the fog against her skin and her cat alert inside her. Her head had been full of worry about the man with pale eyes who she’d had to leave with no warning. He was so important to her, and he’d think she’d left because she didn’t want him. She had to fix that, had to—
Her chest clutched, her breathing speeding up.
The fog was whispering away, the dead ready to confront and accuse her.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she whimpered in her dreams. “I’m so sorry.”
But the boy who stood in front of her wasn’t bloody or broken or gray. He was warm with life, his eyes a piercing pale hue and his hair wind-tousled black. “Why are you sorry?” he asked. “You didn’t kill her. She killed herself.”
Trembling, she went to go to her knees so they’d be at the same height … but they already were, her body as small as his, and her hands delicate and childish. “What’s happening?”
A frown marring that smooth brow, he looked down at the hands she’d spread out in front of herself, then lifted his own hands. “Regression?” he muttered. “Dream mechanics.” He didn’t sound like a child.
Soleil couldn’t help it. She poked him with a finger … and jerked it back as fast when she felt flesh and bone. Looking down at the spot on his shoulder that she’d touched, he frowned again, then looked back at her, so solemn and serious that it made her sad.
“Why do you have green hair?”
Her hand jerked up, touched the strands. “I got paint in it today.” No, not today. A long time ago, when she’d still had a family of her own, including a mother who’d delighted in allowing her to play wild. “My mother let me do anything I wanted.”
“So did mine.”
Cracks of silver across his face, across the world, across the dream, until the entire thing was a fractured pane of mirrored glass, and she was falling, falling …
Soleil jerked awake on a gasp, her heart thunder and her mouth dry. Looking around with wild eyes, she half expected that very lifelike dream boy to be standing next to her. But he wasn’t. Of course he wasn’t. He was a man now. A very dangerous man who her cat had claimed. “Mine,” she murmured. “Mine.”
Pushing her braid over her shoulder, she reached for the glass of water she’d put on the bedside table. It was only after she’d gulped it down that her eyes registered the time on the vintage bedside clock.
It was six in the morning. She’d fallen asleep at midnight.
Six hours of uninterrupted sleep. Well, but for the dream—but that had been more unsettling than terrifying. And there was something …
Narrowing her eyes, she rolled the dream backward, and there it was, the most important fragment of memory from what she thought of as her lost month. Heart thudding, she pushed off the blanket and got out of bed.
She didn’t know what she was expecting when she looked in the mirror in the attached bathroom, but her hair was still black and she was still an adult of twenty-seven years of age, and she still had a face that was too thin. She used to have rounded cheeks and generous curves. These days, she was just bones held together by skin, and it wasn’t a good look on her. Her Psy could pull off razor cheekbones, but Soleil’s body was made for softness.
Her Psy.
Yes.
Determined to figure things out between them today, she got naked and walked into the shower. Afterward, she released her hair from the braid, brushed it out, then dressed in the same pants as last night. She paired them with a fine wool sweater in bright fuchsia.
“One of the juveniles left it behind the last time she visited and I washed it for her and set it aside,” Tamsyn had told her. “I know she won’t mind if you borrow it.”
It was the brightest color Soleil had worn in the time since the massacre. Making a note to give some kind of gift to the juvenile in thanks when she had the means to do so, she opened her bedroom door; instinct and need had her padding across to the cubs’ room. All four lay on the futon in a happy pile, the twins on either side of Razi’s and Natal’s curled-up bodies. They were still in the forms in which they’d gone to bed, and appeared in a deep sleep, but Natal stirred a mere second after she touched his fur, his sleepy eyes blinking open.
“Hello, Nattie.” Stroking his head, she kissed his nose, keeping her voice to a low whisper. “I’m going out but I’ll be back later.” She hadn’t wanted to wake either cub but knew she couldn’t simply vanish, not after all that had gone before. “You’ll tell Razi?”