First

Chapter 57

I woke to pain; that was the only thing I was able to process. My heart thumped in my chest, blood rushed in my ears. I started fighting but that only made the hands around my neck tighten. Hands around my neck. Strangling me. Panic began to set in but something in my body took over.

An intruder, I thought. Jace, where's Jace? I desperately wanted to search for him—I knew he would save me—but the hands around my neck wouldn't allow it. I was pinned to the bed, unable to move a muscle. I was slowly losing consciousness and just as I was starting to black out, I realized that I recognized the hands wrapped securely around my neck. Oh my god.

Calloused yet soft, long fingers that were made for caressing. They'd danced and stroked over my body on more occasions than I could count. They'd once touched my body as if it was glass; as if one wrong touch and it could crumble beneath his touch.

My eyes popped open with the realization. Jace. Jace's hands were the ones wrapped around my throat; choking me. And when my eyes landed on his, he stared back at me, cold, unyielding, unseeing. He was having a nightmare and just like I'd feared would happen for the last few days, he was acting them out. I fought to speak, knowing that if I didn't pull him back to the reality fast, he'd do something he'd regret.

"J... Jason... Jace. Stop! It's me!" I pleaded. My voice broke the eerie silence in the room. Up until I spoke, I hadn't realized that Jace was talking, whispering in my ear. It was as if a stopper had been pulled on my senses and suddenly everything was being unleashed, overwhelming me.

"You son of a bitch! I'm going to kill you for what you did to them." His voice was steadily getting louder and the venom in his voice made me shrink back in fear. This wasn't the Jace I knew and loved. Something deeper and darker had taken him over and it scared the living hell out of me. Jace was being possessed by his demons. I was more scared in that moment than I had ever been in my life. I could hear the true violence in his voice. His nightmares had been bad but they never escalated to this and never this quickly.

Tears pricked my eyes as my hands scrabbled at my throat. "Jace, please!" I gasped. "Stop, you're hurting me." I was starting to see black spots in my vision and I instinctively knew that my window for escape was disappearing. I continued to beg him to stop. "Jace, let go. It's me..." I struggled to get enough air into my lungs to talk and I knew I was going to pass out. But my fight or flight response had kicked in and I had decided I was going to fight. But I wasn't fighting for myself, I was fighting for Jace.

"Jason, please, you're going to kill me." Suddenly his hands left my throat and I sucked air into my lungs in heaping gasps. But my reprieve was short lived.

"Shut up!" he yelled, his hand cracking against my cheek.

I cried out and reached for my cheek, surprise, hurt and pain piercing my body. But Jace was back on me in an instant. He wasn't coming out of this as easy as any of the other nightmares by just hearing my voice... But this one, I didn't know what to do. I was scared. Jace's hands surrounded my neck again.

Oh god, I thought. This is it; he was right. Jason was going to kill me.

I needed to get him to let me go. I didn't want to die. Jace wouldn't be able to live with himself if he killed me. I couldn't let him face that because... I knew him well enough to know that he'd only end up killing himself. So I resorted to the one thing I thought I'd never have to do. I fought to free my hands from where he was sitting on them but I only needed one and when it was free, I raised it.