Shadows (Lux 0.5)

“Yeah,” he said slowly. “It’s amazing. A different world up here.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him. “It would be so cool to be able to sit up here and paint.”

“We could do that.”

Bethany laughed. “I don’t think I’d be able to get my stuff up here.”

“Ye of little faith,” he teased. “I can zip your stuff up here and have it ready in three seconds.”

She grinned. “It’s so strange. Sometimes I just forget…what you are.”

Most people wouldn’t know how to take that, but he recognized it for what it was. And that was why he…why he loved her.

Looking away, he clamped his mouth shut. The words had been in his chest for weeks, maybe months, demanding to be spoken, but any time he tried to force them out of his mouth, he locked up. Bethany hadn’t said those words, either, and if she didn’t feel the same, he was afraid he’d scare her off.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her inch cautiously toward the edge. “Be careful,” he said.

“I’m always careful.”

Dawson pivoted around and crossed to the other side of the rock. From where he stood, he was almost in perfect alignment with where the colony existed. He sighed, closing his eyes. Neither him nor Daemon had heard from them since the beginning of this year. Soon, he realized, soon he would have to face them, and they’d want to talk about mating. What would he say? There was no way he could even entertain the idea of being with someone else. But he couldn’t tell them about Bethany. He wouldn’t be able to tell them anything. And that would go over like a—

A wicked sense of dread shot through him, forcing his eyes open. He glanced down at the sandstone rocks below his feet. The crystals embedded deep into the sediment winked. The surface was shiny, still damp from the recent rain. Slick—

A gasp shattered his core, barely audible but as loud as thunder. The scream that came next chilled his entire body.

There hadn’t even been a second—time seemed to have stopped, though. His heart pounded in his chest as he whipped around, catching the blurred outline of Beth’s flailing arms.

Lead settled in his stomach, but he shot forward, slipping out of his form without thinking about it. He was fast, but all it took was a second—a second for gravity to do its thing. To reach up and suck Bethany down into nothing but space.

But it was worse than just empty air, because then he would’ve had time to catch her.

He went over the edge blindly, knowing that the side she’d slipped off of had several jagged outcroppings that were bone breaking.

And one, a spike about ten fight long and six feet wide, had stopped her fall about thirty feet down.

Chapter 17

Dawson wasn’t thinking.

Two seconds had passed. Two f**king seconds for him to shed his human form and reach her body, which lay at an odd angle—one leg under the other, an arm hanging limply over the side.

Bethany wasn’t moving.

Something red pooled under the left side of her head. Not blood—it couldn’t be blood. Whatever it was—because it couldn’t be what it was—leaked from her ears. The camera was gone, having fallen even farther.

He couldn’t think.

A part of his brain, the human side, clicked off. Reaching for Beth, he cradled her against his chest, swallowing her in the whitish-blue light.

Bethany. Bethany. Bethany. Her name was on repeat. He rocked back against the smooth wall, and he screamed and screamed. His entire world shattered. Open your eyes. Please open your eyes.

She didn’t move.

She wouldn’t move. Some part of him recognized that a human couldn’t have survived that fall depending on how they landed, but Beth…not his Bethany.

This…this couldn’t be happening.

His light flared around them, until he could no longer see her pale face but only an outline.

He’d promised he wouldn’t let anything happen to her. A second—a goddamn second—he had turned away from her. This was his fault. He shouldn’t have brought her up here after so much rain had soaked the ground, coating the bottom of her sneakers. He shouldn’t have kept going up the hill when he’d seen how nervous she was, how shaky her legs were.

He should’ve been able to stop this—to save her. What the hell kind of power did he have if he couldn’t have saved her?

Dawson screamed again, the sound in his ears that of sorrow and rage. But Bethany couldn’t hear it. No one could hear it. Something wet was on his cheeks. Tears, maybe. He wasn’t sure. He couldn’t see past the pulsating light.

He rested his head against hers, his mouth inches away from her parted lips. His body shook. He inhaled and then exhaled…and the world seemed to stop again.

Wake up. Wake up. Please wake up.

An unknown instinct propelled him forward, a whispering of ages before him. An image filled his mind, of Bethany basked inside and outside in light—his light. It poured through her body, a part of him attaching to her skin, muscles, and bones. He invaded her blood, wrapped himself around her on a cellular level, mending and repairing, healing torn skin and muscle, stitching together shattered bones. It went on and on, seconds into minutes, minutes into hours. Or maybe it wasn’t even a minute that had passed. Dawson didn’t know. But he wasn’t breathing; he wasn’t losing the image or the pleading litany in his head.

Wake up. Wake up. Please wake up.

At first, he wasn’t sure what was happening. He thought he felt her stir in his arms. Then he thought he heard a rough first breath—a weak gulp of air.