Her delicate tongue tangled with his and stroked along the seam of his lips. He needed to claim her, wanted to imprint himself on her so she’d never forget she belonged to him. But something was wrong. He broke the kiss, nearly forgetting his thoughts when she cried out in protest, but he needed to know what had made her so upset.
“Why did you think you’d lost me?”
“I was attacked at my house, and you saved me, but not before you were injured. You bled out fast and went unconscious. I didn’t think you’d make it.” She cupped his jaw in her hand, and he rubbed against her.
Everything came rushing back at that moment. This was a dream. He’d been injured, possibly fatal y. Rage tore through him when he remembered how the rogues had handled Rose. They’d hurt her, and he’d kil ed them for it, but not before the last one had gotten in a lucky swipe at him. And then another one had come, and he’d barely been able to help her. He reached up to his neck, but it was fine. Of course it would be since his throat was only wounded in the conscious world.
“I couldn’t wake you up. No matter what I did, you wouldn’t open your eyes until Russel came. But you passed out again after yanking him of me. I kil ed him this time—for real.”
“Russel ? The same Russell who killed your friend?” Anger coursed through him.
She nodded.
“I thought you already kil ed him?”
“I thought I did too, but apparently the misconceptions I had about how to kil lycans al owed him to survive what I thought was sure death. Al this time, I thought he was gone, all this time—”
“Shh. It wil be okay. I promise.” He stood and pul ed her up with him.
Now that he knew his real wounds had been dictating his body in the dream world, he could shake of the feeling of lethargy.
He would go back to reality. He would go back for her, Rose, his mate, and he would live for her.
A squeak of surprise escaped her plump lips, as if she’d only just realized he didn’t have a scratch on him. She reached up and traced his neck, no doubt where the hideous wound had marred his skin. Her brows furrowed.
“How is this possible?”
“This is another one of those things that you didn’t know about even through al of your research on lycans. Mates have a mental connection that is strong enough to fol ow them into their dreams.”
“We’re dreaming.” She spun around. “None of this is real?”
“It’s real . . . but not.” He grinned when she scowled at him. “We make up our own fantasies here. We feel everything that takes place. We can control what happens, but of course, it only happens here. While we remember it al upon awaking, it cannot breach the real world. If you get pissed at me and shoot me with an arrow again, I won’t be injured when I awake. What happens in our dreams, stays in our dreams. The same is true for reality.”
She frowned.
“What’s wrong?”
“So you are stil injured in reality?”
Rose sat up with a start. She’d fallen asleep. Knox was still lying across her lap, and she was still sitting on the hard floor, leaning against the bed. He’d been in her dreams? No. It’s not possible. But yet she knew it was.
That’s how he found me. While she’d been casually showing him around her neighborhood in the dream the night before, he’d been honing in on her location. When he woke up, she was going to throttle him for not telling her about this dream stuff sooner.
“Knox.” She brushed his blond hair back from his face, and his lashes fluttered.
He sucked in a great gulp of air as his eyes opened. She wanted to cry in relief, but she cradled him to her instead.
“Rose?” His voice sounded gravelly and strained.
“Don’t talk, Knox. Can you shift? You have to so you can heal.” If he didn’t, he’d die. He’d lost too much blood, and the damage was too great. She didn’t know how he’d held on this long.
“I don’t know.”
“Please do it for me.” She bent and kissed him gently on the lips. “Don’t leave me.”
She gasped when golden hairs poked through every inch of his exposed skin. Fangs shot down over his bottom lip, and his muscles began to contort. Within a split second, a wolf stood staring at her.
Not a wolf, Knox. His midnight blue eyes were the same and watched her intently, as if he thought she might run away screaming at any moment.
Happiness shot through her because she knew he’d be okay now. She’d found him in their dreams, and he’d come back for her.
“You can touch me if you’d like.”
She jumped. “Knox?”
“Yes. It’s me. You didn’t expect me to be able to talk, did you?”
“Oh, I don’t know, couldn’t be any weirder than changing into a wolf.” She frowned and then laughed when she thought about how funny it would be if he spoke to her as a wolf.
His low chuckle floated through her brain. “We have to have some way to communicate in wolf form.”
“I guess. I’m just awed at all of the things I never knew about lycans. I’ve done so much research, but it seems I really don’t know as much as I thought I did. I got so much wrong.”
“We guard our secrets wel . Our survival depends on it.”
She sucked in a breath when he walked to her and nudged at her hand with his nose. He was amazing. He was beautiful. She’d never seen a golden wolf before, and the contrast the color lent to his eyes was breathtaking. She hesitantly sifted her fingers through his fur. It was soft and thick, and she had a strange urge to bury her face in it.
“You’re gorgeous.”
“Nowhere close to as gorgeous as you are.”
Chapter Twelve
Rose’s cheeks burned when Knox changed back, as he now stood before her naked. The stitches had come out of his neck when he’d shifted, and the injury was nothing more than a passing memory. Not one extra ounce of fat resided on his muscular frame, and she saw that he was big . . . everywhere. She licked her lips as he looked around at the bloody towels and bodies.
“I’m sorry about the mess. I’ll clean it up.”
“What are we supposed to do with the bodies?”
He bent down and retrieved his jeans from the floor, stepped into them, and pulled them up over his lean hips. She wanted to touch him, but now was not the time. How could the need to run her fingers over his skin so effectively block out the carnage in her bedroom?
“They have to be burned and the remains buried so no one will find them.”
“I’ll clean up the towels and blood.”
He went to her, pulled her into his arms, and rested his chin on top of her head. She laid her ear against his bare chest and listened to the steady rhythm of his heart.
“I’m sorry I let you down with Russell.”
She pulled back, looked up at him, and felt sad when she saw the shadow of guilt in his eyes. She laid her palm against his cheek.
“You didn’t let me down. If you hadn’t pulled him off me—and I don’t know how you managed to do so in your condition—he would have killed me. And if you hadn’t told me about the iron, no telling what would have happened. You saved me, Knox.”