Beloved Beast

Chapter Thirty-Three

Hovering somewhere on the brink of consciousness; lulling darkness poised just on the skirts of her awareness, little details floated to her.

Seagulls crooned faintly from afar. Thunder rumbled in the distance. The briny smell of seawater. A warm, sticky substance pooled in her palms. Clothes flailing on her chilled bones as a strong gust of wind swarmed in.

And a hoarse timbre shouting her name.

Something wasn't right. She couldn't move. Couldn't open her eyes. The air felt wrong – heavy, despite the cool, oceanic breeze misting her face, and awash with misplaced voices.

Voices.

There were two. The second, a malignant vibration scraping the inner walls of her mind; a diaphanous presence hissing a string of indistinct words, locking her limbs in place. Paralyzing her. Making her defenseless.

Panic cleaved through her chest, congealing her blood to ice. She knew that feminine voice, had heard it before, only this time, instead of the light, it promised certain death.

With every raspy collision of words, came an excruciating bout of pain. It crashed in like the undulating collapse of waves, dousing her body in sheer agony. And she was helpless to stop it. Unable to fight it. She willed her body to move, but her extremities remained unmoving, tethered to the sand by some unseen threat.

Gnashing her teeth, a searing sensation rippled across her flesh, burning widely across the span of her body. It was everywhere. An escalating pressure in her head and bones. An intensifying heat in her tendons and veins. It was all-consuming. Unforgiving and relentless as it wrung a strangled scream past her lips.

It felt as though she was being ripped apart, stripped from her flesh.

Darkness lengthened across her mind, edging in like a high tide, lessening her breaths, dulling her heartbeat, stealing her strength, and her will to live. Slipping deep into a dark chasm devoid of pain.

"Elle!"

A violent roar. A desperate plea. An anguished cry.

That deep timbre, again. Gravelly. Masculine. Intimate.

It roused her back to pain. It compelled her to fight. To resist the evil that wrestled to invade.

It demanded she come back to him.

Her unlikely savior.

Elle jerked awake, gasping for air, her mind caught in the throes of her nightmare. It took a few disorientating beats for her to gather her bearings, to find purchase in the four woven walls surrounding her.

With a sharp exhale of relief, she discerned quickly that she was not on an oceanfront, confronted by some obscure evil. There were no tangible voices in her head, threatening to invade. No agonizing pain ripping her apart. No imminent death looming.

It was just a dream ... a nightmare, but it had left her shaken.

For it had felt very real.

She could almost still smell the sea.

A headache bloomed at the backs of her eyes as she sat upright and massaged her temples, recalling the scathing voice from her nightmare.