Page 58 of Beneath the Mountain Sky

So loud.

So dark without the moon.

I squeeze my eyes closed, simultaneously trying to force the vision of the dream to come back with clarity while not wanting to remember that fear I felt.

The frantic panic.

It consumed me in the memory.

A kind of all-out terror I’ve never experienced before, even during everything I went through with Mom, never knowing if I would find her dead or if one day she would not come home.

Nothing compares to what I felt during that dream.

What’s starting to seize me again now as the flashes return.

So vivid.

I can feel the bite of the rocks. The scratch of the branches. Hear the crunch of the twigs under my bare feet and my own panting breaths as I race through the forest along a narrow trail.

It’s so real.

Only Killian’s firm grip on me and his familiar touch remind me I’m safe in the cabin with him. He keeps running his hand soothingly along my back, keeping me grounded. Keeping me here while allowing me to explore there.

“I was trying to run, but it was so hard…”

I fell.

Several times.

Stumbling over fallen logs I couldn’t see in the near pitch black that overtook the thick trees.

But I didn’t dare move out of them to where the flashes of lightning could make it easier for me to see—because it would also mean it would be easier to be seen.

That thought makes me clutch my chest.

It feels wrong.

Empty.

Like something’s missing that should be in my hands, that should be pressed to me.

“I think I was carrying something. Something important. And then…” A sob works its way up my throat as the visions from the dream flash again. Something jerked me backward, stopping my progress. My scream. “And then someone grabbed me.”

I open my eyes and find Killian watching me intently, his beautiful gaze filled with so much concern.

And anger.

Red.

Hot.

Fury.

His Adam’s apple bobs as he tries to tamp down his rage so he doesn’t scare me. Because he never directs it at me. Even when he feels like he’s out of control, he can rein it in around me. Find his center. But now he trembles as if he’s on the verge of losing it. “That’s all you remember?”

I nod.

He presses his lips together, brows drawn low in contemplation. “It might not be a memory. There isn’t anything you just described that you couldn’t have picked up based on the information I’ve told you we’ve found. You might be piecing together all of that subconsciously and forming it into a dream that you are mistaking for a memory.”