Page 66 of Solivagant

I didn’t move straight away. Didn’t let him know I was awake yet.

Something about this was familiar, and not just because this was the third time it had happened. Being against him like this felt oddly… right. His fingers played with the hair on my stomach under the stolen flannel, telling me he was awake. How long had he been doing that?

My head still ached, the remnants of a dream still circling through the sleep fog. The same being, and me in a body that weren’t this one. He’d held me in his arms as we sat by the creek, with long fingers gently combing through my hair.

“What are you thinking about, Tusks?”

“You, my Jem. It’s always you.”

I’d called him Tusks. He’d called me Jem.

He looked so different to the creature currently holding me, and he’d been able to speak to me then, but as my stomach twisted with something both familiar and not, strange but pleasant, I had to acknowledge that his arm around me felt just like the Tusks that held me in my dreams.

I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Then he squeezed at the soft flesh of my belly and a rumble vibrated in his chest, against my back.

Was he… purring?

I pulled away, suddenly feeling much too warm to be pressed against him like that. The purring stopped, but he didn’t seem bothered by it, just watched me expectantly.

I could only stare at him. He stared back. Brown eyes locked on red ones.

What was this?

I should leave.

Stay.

I should look away.

Don’t.

It was strange, the way I could tell his eyes dropped from mine to my lips even though he didn’t have pupils. Then he whined. It was a pained sound that made my chest tighten.

Then I tasted the blood, and realized what he’d been looking at wasn’t my lips but the blood dripping from my nose.

I grunted, wiping it away only for more blood to follow.

What the hell was happening to me?

34

JOSIAH

It was all connected. The sleepwalking, the dreams. This place. Him. That weird altar that made my skin itch and my heart beat rapidly. All of it, the same mystery.

Tusks whined again, but I waved him off, heading back to the still-open tent to grab one of the clothing items too small for me, using it to soak up the blood streaming from my nose. I wasn’t one to get nose bleeds, but until recently, I wasn’t one for sleepwalking either. Was that connected too?

The bleeding stopped but Tusks still continued to hover around me, trying to check for a wound or something.

“I’m fine, really,” I assured him.

His ears still drooped, his eyes locked on my nose as if he could prevent it bleeding again if he stared long enough. Maybe he could. I had no fucking clue what he was capable of.

It was kind of sweet, though.

“I’m really fine. It’s stopped now. See?” I tilted my head back to show him.

He took it as an invitation. One large hand gripped my jaw as the other pulled me closer by a firm grasp on my hip. His tail weaved around my thigh and calf.