Page 78 of Scars of the Sun
“Not sure. Both? He said that he wasn’t going to ask you to become pack, but he needed to know you.”
Río gave me another kiss, and I relaxed into his chest, glad that he wasn’t getting upset at the notion. It’d be a shock to everyone when I turned up with a mate, but I was also excited to have him by my side.
“All right, Princess. You just tell me when.” I nodded into his skin and kissed his mark. He shivered, tightening his arms around me. “Who woulda thought that I would mate the most beautiful girl in the world?”
I groaned into his skin, “You are so stupid.”
“Nah, baby, I think I’m the smartest motherfucker alive. As soon as I saw those honey eyes of yours, I knew that I had to have you.”
My nose wrinkled. “Honey eyes?” I watched him suspiciously, but he just kept on smiling, like I was missing a joke, and we fell into each other once more. He allowedme to unfurl into a softer version of myself and open myself completely. Only with him.
We fell asleep sometime later, tangled and pleasantly exhausted. So much so that when I was awakened by a foreign distress in my stomach and the urgent blare of an alarm, it took me a moment to realize where I was.
The sky outside was already a bright blue, and, knowing that Río had an opening shift this morning, I figured that his alarm had been going off for a good while.
An elbow knocked into my ribs. The nudge didn’t hurt, but it wasn’t comfortable either. “Ow.” I propped up on my hand and blinked to further clear my senses. Beside me, Río’s muscles were past the point of tense, coiling as if he was facing an attack. But there was no one here other than me, so it looked more painful than anything. His features were twisted in outrage, beads of sweat ran down into his hair that stuck to his temples.
That was the feeling in my stomach. Whether I was truly experiencing it or just more attuned to him now, I didn’t know for sure. What I did know, though, was that I had to soothe him.
“Hey, it’s okay,” I laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, feeling the burning and hard skin. “Río, it’s just a nightm?—”
His roar was loud enough to be heard a block away. It rattled my teeth, and if it weren’t for my own dormant training, I would’ve been completely thrown on the floor by whatever was happening in his dream world. Instead, we fumbled back onto the mattress, destroying the outer edge of our nest.
Río’s eyes were wild but unaware as he flashed his fangs at me, and my heart cracked for him. No, I wasn’t scared, because even though his teeth and claws could easily tear my throat out, he kept the latter buried in the mattress beside my head. He snarled in my face but went no further.
He breathed heavily over me, gaze still unfocused. “Baby, it’s okay,” I tried, going for a lighter caress on his chest.
Bad idea, because he ripped his hand out of the bed, and, before I could flinch, slapped himself. It caused a reverberating smacking noise and bright wounds from his claws that welled with blood.
“Stop,” I cried and grabbed his wrists. Twisting both of our bodies while he thrashed, I flipped us, disturbing our pillows even further, and straddled his hips. He kicked uselessly at the bed as I used all the strength I possessed to subdue him. I kept Río’s hands bound to the mattress above his head where he couldn’t hurt himself anymore.
In turn, he shredded the blankets, head whipping back and forth while he mumbled in a language I hadn’t yet heard him speak. It wasn’t Spanish—Portuguese, maybe?
“Río, honey, p-please. You’re gonna hurt yourself. I love you, please stop.” Fat tears plunked down on his cheeks, brushing into his lashes and arcing down to his ears. “You’re okay. I love you,please,” my lips trembled as a particularly harsh wave of resistance wracked his body, arching his back before he collapsed back to the bed.
His hands were still opening and closing, making a complete wreck of the covers and sending up a flurry of pillow fluff.
So at a loss of what to do, I bent forward. Still unafraid of his body’s weaponry, I kissed at the side of his mouth. He growled but didn’t bite, so I risked a brush of my lips at his lower right fang.
A barely-there touch of his tongue met my lip. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” I chanted while I moved up his face. When I reached the sharp edge of his cheekbone, I dragged the flat of my tongue up the skin. Tasted the salt of his sweat and my tears.
The sour scent of fear began to retreat from the air, so I kept doing it. I licked up his face over and over while murmuring about how much I loved him.
I was so lost in my efforts and prayer that I hadn’t totally noticed that he’d stopped fighting me. Not until a hoarse croak halted my pleas. “Ramona?”
My grooming of his face became less frantic, switching back to kisses, but I didn’t stop. “You’re okay. You’re safe.”
“W—what?—?”
“You had a bad dream, you, you hit yourself, and I had to make you stop, baby tell me what to do, I don’t know how to make you feel better, tell me how to help,” my voice broke, muddled by the torrent of tears that refused to stop.
“What’re you…” he blinked up at me, eyes widening as he took in my panic that he was surely seeing. When he shoved against my hands, this time, I let him go, and he scrambled out of the bed. He was hyperventilating while staring between me and his hands as if he didn’t know what to be horrified by.
Then, he went from flushed to pale, and he dashed down the steps and to the bathroom. The door banged against the wall, followed by the sound of the toilet lid cracking against the tank and his vomit splashing into the bowl. For a moment, I was stuck, listening to him be sick and grieving over the ruined nest. It was silly, but my… my Wolf whined at the realization that our post-mating peace was over. Despite being so dormant that she would never fully emerge, she was part of me all the same.
I could kill his family, I cursed as I scrambled out of the bed. Río was coughing into the toilet, now, and I knew that they were the cause of his nightmares. Whether it was his father or sisters that scared him in his sleep, they’d all had hands in the abuse he’d suffered.
The acrid smell of vomit was wildly unpleasant, but I pushed through to hold back Río’s hair while he emptied the rest of his stomach. In the white-tiled bathroom, my suicide attempt scars were illuminated in total clarity, but I barely gave them a glance.