Shut up!I want to yell. I can’t get my mouth to work. I’m not even sure that they would be able to hear me if I could. Can they hear my thoughts as I’m hearing theirs?
Fuck, my head hurts. This is all so much. I’m going to explode. I want to fucking die just so that this will allstop.
Very faintly, through the numbness, I feel the mattress start to shift. People are putting their weight on it and climbing in with me. My mates.
I hope that they can do something, even if I don’t know what that something is just yet. I’m burning up. I feel like my very bones are melting, and I would be a little more concerned about it if I wasn’t busy trying to get these fucking voices out of my fucking head.
It hurts. It hurts so much. Help me.
I can’t tell if I’m saying those words out loud or not. I would be if I could, I’d be screaming. Maybe I am screaming, but I can’t feel my fucking body properly, so I can’t be sure.
The power in me is vibrating. No. Expanding? Maybe both. Fuck, it hurts. I can’t untangle or filter this mess of information I’m receiving from all of the fae. I’m laughing, I’m crying, I’m happy, I’m angry, I’m depressed, I’m feeling everything that they’re feeling. I can’t cut it out.
And then I hear three other fae voices. Ones that I recognize.
“Kiara!”
“Kiara, can you hear us?”
“Listen to our voices!”
My mates.
It hurts, a searing agony tearing through me, but I do my best to focus just on my connection to those three. I try to hear just their voices.
Don’t stop,I think desperately.Don’t stop talking to me.
If they stop, I won’t be able to focus on them, and I’ll be lost again in all this pain and power.
They don’t stop. They keep talking to me, and I reach out with my mind to their voices. I feel like I’m climbing up a rope in gym class, that stupid exercise where you’re just wanting to die and your arms are burning and everyone hates it, but I keep going. I have to reach their voices, I have to or I’ll die.
I keep focusing on the connection, on their voices, on our mating bond. It’s been getting stronger and stronger the more time we spend together and the more I open myself to them. I can only hope that all we’ve been through is enough to make it strong for me now. We haven’t been together all that long, after all. Only a few weeks at this point. Is it going to be enough?
Underneath all of the pain and power, underneath the cacophony of voices, I can feel the mate bond. It’s warm, but not painful the way the heat of all this power is. It’s more like the comfort of a warm fire on a winter’s day.
I can’t move my body, but I try to imagine myself opening up to it, welcoming in this warmth, welcoming the men’s souls into mine.Please, please hold me.I need their strength and connection now like I never have before.
The entire time I can hear them calling for me, talking to me, trying to soothe me.
“It’s okay, Kiara,” one of them says. I’m so out of it I can’t tell which one of them is talking. “It’s okay, just listen to us.”
“Breathe, Kiara, just breathe.”
“We’re here. Hold on to us.”
“Just keep breathing.”
“Don’t leave us.Pleasedon’t leave us.”
I don’t want to leave them. I have no intention of leaving them. I want to get closer to them. I keep climbing the rope made of their words, higher and higher, away from the light and toward them.
Then it feels like I’ve been caught in a tide and the water is suddenly sweeping me up, up, up, on a wave, and I gasp, and I canfeelthe gasp! I can feel my body breathing!
My eyes fly open, the light is gone, and my chest heaves a horrible rasping gasp like I haven’t breathed in ages.
All three of my men are around me, watching me, relief washing over their faces as I blink and breathe.
Holy shit. I’ve never experienced anything like that before, and I’d really not like to experience anything like it again, but I’m really scared that I might.