why he loved her.
Looking away, he clamped his mouth shut. The words had been in his chest for weeks, maybe months, demanding to be spoken, but any time he tried to force them out of his mouth, he locked up. Bethany hadn’t said those words, either, and if she didn’t feel the same, he was afraid he’d scare her off.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her inch cautiously toward the edge. “Be careful,” he said.
“I’m always careful.”
Dawson pivoted around and crossed to the other side of the rock. From where he stood, he was almost in perfect alignment with where the colony existed. He sighed, closing his eyes. Neither him nor Daemon had heard from them since the beginning of this year. Soon, he realized, soon he would have to face them, and they’d want to talk about mating. What would he say? There was no way he could even entertain the idea of being with someone else. But he couldn’t tell them about Bethany. He wouldn’t be able to tell them anything. And that would go over like a—
A wicked sense of dread shot through him, forcing his eyes open. He glanced down at the sandstone rocks below his feet. The crystals embedded deep into the sediment winked. The surface was shiny, still damp from the recent rain. Slick—
A gasp shattered his core, barely audible but as loud as thunder. The scream that came next chilled his entire body.
There hadn’t even been a second — time seemed to have stopped, though. His heart pounded in his chest as he whipped around, catching the blurred outline of Beth’s flailing arms.
Lead settled in his stomach, but he shot forward, slipping out of his form without thinking about it. He was fast, but all it took was a second — a second for gravity to do its thing. To reach up and suck Bethany down into nothing but space.
But it was worse than just empty air, because then he would’ve had time to catch her.
He went over the edge blindly, knowing that the side she’d slipped off of had several jagged outcroppings that were bone breaking.
And one, a spike about ten fight long and six feet wide, had stopped her fall about thirty feet down.
Chapter 17
Dawson wasn’t thinking.
Two seconds had passed. Two fucking seconds for him to shed his human form and reach her body, which lay at an odd angle — one leg under the other, an arm hanging limply over the side.
Bethany wasn’t moving.
Something red pooled under the left side of her head. Not blood — it couldn’t be blood. Whatever it was — because it couldn’t be what it was — leaked from her ears. The camera was gone, having fallen even farther.
He couldn’t think.
A part of his brain, the human side, clicked off. Reaching for Beth, he cradled her against his chest, swallowing her in the whitish-blue light.
She didn’t move.
She wouldn’t move. Some part of him recognized that a human couldn’t have survived that fall depending on how they landed, but Beth…not his Bethany.
This…this couldn’t be happening.
His light flared around them, until he could no longer see her pale face but only an outline.
He’d promised he wouldn’t let anything happen to her. A second — a goddamn second — he had turned away from her. This was his fault. He shouldn’t have brought her up here after so much rain had soaked the ground, coating the bottom of her sneakers. He shouldn’t have kept going up the hill when he’d seen how nervous she was, how shaky her legs were.
He should’ve been able to stop this — to save her. What the hell kind of power did he have if he couldn’t have
Dawson screamed again, the sound in his ears that of sorrow and rage. But Bethany couldn’t hear it. No one could hear it. Something wet was on his cheeks. Tears, maybe. He wasn’t sure. He couldn’t see past the pulsating light.
He rested his head against hers, his mouth inches away from her parted lips. His body shook. He inhaled and then exhaled…and the world seemed to stop again.
An unknown instinct propelled him forward, a whispering of ages before him. An image filled his mind, of Bethany basked inside and outside in light—
At first, he wasn’t sure what was happening. He thought he felt her stir in his arms. Then he thought he heard a rough first breath — a weak gulp of air.
He was shaking, his light pulsating erratically.
“Dawson?”
The sound of her voice — oh, her sweet voice — destroyed his world for the third time. His eyes flew open, but he still couldn’t see her beyond his own light.
Those whispered words weren’t spoken out loud. They were inside him, reverberating through his body and the part of him that had developed something human — a soul.
He pulled his light back into himself. He couldn’t believe what he saw.
Bethany stared up at him, her warm brown eyes shining with tears. Her face was still pale, but color infused her cheeks. There were smudges of blood around her ears and at the corner of her mouth, but she was looking at him.
“Bethany?” he croaked.
She nodded and whispered, “Yeah.”
Hands shaking, he touched her face, and when she closed her eyes, he panicked. “Bethany!”
Her eyes flew open. “I’m here. I’m okay.”
It couldn’t be, but she was alive and breathing in his arms. He ran his fingers down her cheeks, smoothing away the hair caked with blood. His chest was doing that crazy swelling thing again. “Oh, God, I thought…I thought I lost you.”
“I think you might have.” She gave a shaky laugh. “I’m so, so sorry. I should’ve been paying—”
“No. Don’t apologize. This wasn’t your fault.” He kissed her forehead, then her cheek and the tip of her nose. “How are you feeling?”
“Okay. I’m tired…a little dizzy, but I feel good.”
He was exhausted. As if he’d fought a hundred Arum all at once. Pressing his forehead against hers, he breathed in her clean scent. He couldn’t close his eyes, afraid she might vanish.
Bethany trembled. “What did you do, Dawson?”
