Prey

Chapter 50

Xander's POV:

She slept in the cage that night and has been there ever since.

After dressing and bandaging the wound with the limited supplies I'd collected from Nico, she crawled in there and hasn't come out.

Something she hasn't done in over a year and a half.

Back when she was skittish and hadn't yet evolved a different reaction other than fear.

She used it to just hide away for a few hours.

It was well into the afternoon of the next day and she hadn't budged.

I don't think either of us got any sleep last night.

I know that I didn't, and every time I checked in on her breathing, it showed me that she was awake too.

It was just like the waiting game I've played before with her.

When she needed a break from me and everything else she had to deal with.

Except this time it felt so much more dire, and felt absolutely nothing like a game.

Usually, during those times she'd at least look at me.

She'd meet my gaze and I'd see the anger or annoyance or sometimes just the far-away look in those eyes.

But now there was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Not that I blamed her...

Everything felt empty even that ache in my chest that's been haunting and pestering me was gone completely.

The second she shut the door behind her the day before, it just vanished with her.

Only to be replaced with a violent knot in my stomach that made me feel sick.

Now that was the feeling constantly biting at me, and I did absolutely nothing to try to get rid of it.

I didn't want to, And the truth of the matter was, that feeling was the least of what I deserved from what I allowed to happen.

What I spent so much time fighting myself, trying to defuse the scene gently when she was just seconds away from-

That pain thumped hard in my chest, wincing the thought away.

I turned my head from my desk just enough for her to be in my periphery.

She was in the same spot as she was this morning, not looking to have moved an inch. Curled up and facing the wall with her eyes closed, though she wasn't asleep.

During the times where I'd have to wait her out, she would have to be the one to initiate speaking again.

Which was fine... I could usually handle the one or two days in which she kept to herself.

This time proved to be the opposite, everything crawling in me and begging for me to get some kind of reaction out of her.

Some kind of definitive hint as to what was going on in her head right now.

To check in with her and make sure she was okay.

I knew she wasn't, no one in their right mind would be and that's why I was so distraught.

The scent she was radiating wasn't one that I was too familiar with.

It wasn't the anger that I thought it would be.

The closest one I knew that I could compare it to was sadness and it was only just barely similar.

This one was almost deeper, more potent in every way.