Echoed Lullabies (Lunar Chronicles x Reader)

Chapter 86

 This time it was Isaac that made an appearance in my dreams. A little boy with charcoal hair and bottle green eyes. A little boy still untouched by the Lunar Queen.

It was bittersweet. Throughout the entirety of it, I was somehow aware that this was not reality. That Isaac was no longer the round-faced boy I once knew.

Dream Isaac smiled up at me. "I miss you, big sister."

***

Someone was shaking my shoulder.

I pried open my eyes and glanced up to see Thorne—no, Aimery.

I gasped and shot back against the headboard, legs tangled in the blankets around me.

My heart thundered against my ribcage. He didn't say anything for a long time.

I flinched when he reached for my wrist. He paused, then continued at a much slower rate. He gently led my hand around to the back of his head. My fingers brushed a small bump.

"That was where I hit my head against the bedframe in the satellite." His voice was like rock salt.

He shifted my hands to smooth along the raised skin of his forearm. "This is from when the lunar operative bit my arm in France."

The next few moments were the same, him leading my touches against the scars and marks that decorated him. Each was attached to a memory—sparring on the Rampion, the brawl at the Khufran bar, Cinder tranquing him in France.

"And here," he said, placing my palm on his neck, "is where you nearly suffocated me against the seat of my ship the first time we met."

My eyes watered. "Thorne?"

"Yeah," he whispered, voice hoarse. "It's me."

A half-sob, half-whimper escaped past my lips, and Thorne drew me into his arms for a bone-crushing embrace. I didn't even care for the throbbing pain beneath my collarbone. All I cared about was that I was here. With Thorne.

I hadn't even realized I was crying until I noticed the fabric of Thorne's shirt pressed against my cheek was wet.

"Shh," he soothed, smoothing back my hair. "I'm here."

I pulled him closer as my body shook with more sobs.

"I'm sorry," he breathed, pressing kiss after kiss to the crown of my head. "I'm so, so, so sorry, Y/n."

I buried my face deeper into his neck.

***

He dreamed of Ran, his younger brother, after he'd become a monster. In the dream, he watched as Ran prowled around his prey, his muscles flexing beneath his skin, saliva gathering at the corners of his mouth. Ran's hand curled into a fist, then sprang open, revealing the fingernails he'd filed into sharp points. His eyes glinted with the knowledge that his prey had nowhere to run.

With a snarl, Ran dug his claws into the victim's sides and tossed her—her. The dream sharpened, the blurred shadow turning into a girl as she was thrown into a statue at the center of a dried fountain basin. She was bleeding, her red hair dark with grime, her eyes bloodshot with panic.

Wolf watched, but could do nothing. He was encapsulated in stone and only his thoughts were wild and alert, telling him again and again that he'd failed her.

The scene switched, and he was a boy meeting his pack for the first time. He was still trying to get used to the fact that they had taken his Lunar gift away from him and turned it into something unnatural. Something that would make him a better soldier for their queen. The rest of the boys eyed him with loathing and distrust, though he didn't know why. He was just like them. A pawn, a mutant.