Page 18 of The Midnight Order (The Thorngray Vampires Duet #1)

Lowell

Her tossing and turning is incessant. She doesn’t sleep talk, which would be helpful and let us into what hell she’s suffering. She cries out in little strangled moans now and again, however.

I find her struggle unsettling.

Recalling what the others told me, I get up from my chair and cross the room, sliding into bed beside her and looking for the best way to soothe her deeper into sleep, where the nightmares can’t reach.

She’s on her back, her body on top of the covers as if she’d fallen asleep unwittingly. The scent of lavender wafts from her breath and beneath her skin, likely from the cup on her nightstand, and I wonder who gave it to her.

Probably Corvin.

A whimper rips from her throat, and she turns into me.

Instinctively, as if I were made to do so, I wrap an arm around her and pull her to me, shushing her softly as I tuck her into my body.

I fit around her like a glove, and she snuggles into me, a soft moan leaving her throat as she slides a hand up my chest.

“There you go, little lamb,” I whisper, “I’ve got you.”

This seems to rouse her as she gasps and pulls away from me, looking up with sleep-filled eyes as her heart speeds. “Lowell, what are you doing in here?”

“Keeping away the demons,” I reply without thinking. It feels like that’s what I’m doing.

“What?” she breathes.

“You fight your sleep. You cry out and toss and turn. You said I couldn’t sing to you, but the others suggested I hold you to help you sleep.” I hate that I sound like I’m explaining myself, but I got caught in her room again, which she doesn’t seem thrilled about.

“Why are you worried about it?” Her sneering words are accompanied by her searching eyes over my face.

I lift my hand and run the back of my index finger down her cheek. “Because something draws me to you, and I don’t enjoy seeing things I care for in pain.”

Her breath hitches as I drop my hand to the mattress between us again.

“You don’t know me.”

“I want to. Very much so. More than anything I’ve ever wanted before.”

She says nothing.

She doesn’t have to.

The cadence of her heartbeat says it all for her.

“You should get back to sleep. I can go back to the corner if you’d like to pretend I’m not here, but when you stir again, I will hold you.” I don’t mean it to sound like a threat, but it comes out as such.

She flops onto her back, glaring up at the ceiling with such disgust that I’m concerned the thing might topple down over us. “I won’t be able to sleep again now.”

“Well, as long as you’re up.” I stand, slipping back into my boots and straightening my back out. “Get dressed. I’ve got something to show you.”

“It’s three in the morning.”

“Good. You can tell time; I was concerned you couldn’t.” My joke falls flat, and she deadpans at me.

“Where could you need to take me at three in the morning?”

I turn and lean over the mattress, boring my gaze into hers like a laser beam. “You’ll never find out if you don’t get dressed. And wear sensible shoes; it’s a bit of a jaunt,” I add as I rush from the room, slamming the door behind me with a grin on my face.

Her curiosity is what I counted on when I formed this plan, and it hadn’t failed me.

She’s beside me within five minutes as I open the front door and lead her to the sprawling front lawn.

“Why are we walking?” she finally asks by the second mile down the road.

“You can’t sleep. Exercise should fix that problem. Two birds, one stone.”

She huffs. “It’s cold out.”

“You’re very whiny tonight.”

“You’re vulgar.”

“Not vulgar. Honest. People always mistake honesty for unkindness, but that’s your sensitivity to the truth, which is not my problem.”

She’s struck speechless, and I look over to ensure she’s still beside me.

“You’re not wrong.”

“I know I’m not.”

Her laugh carries through the misty, early-morning air as she shoves her hands in her hoodie’s pocket.

“We’re going to my aunt’s place?”

Part of me wants to prod her about her aunt not truly being her aunt, but I don’t want to cause her alarm in the middle of the night, so I decide against it.

Besides, Jasper is probably the best male for the job when it comes to that subject.

I’m a bit too rough around the edges regarding things like that.

“We are. I need to show you something.”

“What? The hole in the porch? I know, I fell through the damned thing.” She scoffs.

“I know. I was watching.”

She gasps. “When are you not watching?”

“You? Never. I felt your disturbance when you rolled through the wards, like the drop in pressure before a hurricane hits land. The question is how anyone can look away from you. Those are the untrustworthy.”

Her mouth gapes open. “You’re very confusing.”

“Really? Why?” I feel like I’m an open book, more so than the others, so her words have curiosity racing through me.

“I thought you were the scariest one. I was worried about your portion of the test.”

“Mm, well, you should still be worried about my part, but not for the reasons you’d think.”

She quirks a brow but seems to denote the sad tone of my voice and doesn’t press further.

When we finally get to her aunt’s house, she stops dead in her tracks. “What the hell?”

The brand-new porch stands out starkly against the night. The moon casts over the new beams, bright with their disuse and sanded finish, causing them almost to glow.

“Who?”

“Jasper. Some was Asher, too.”

“They’ve been working on my house?”

“They have been. It’s already been tented, and the porch is fully done, other than staining. I’m going to stain it this weekend if the rain holds off. Corvin has been working on the wiring. He’s great with that kind of stuff.”

“Why?” she asks, turning and foregoing inspecting our craftsmanship.

“Because you’re ours. Well, we hope you will be. It started as Jasper’s way of giving you something back for the way he took you, and then Asher found out and started chipping in. Where Asher goes, Corvin goes.”

“And you?” she breathes, stepping into me, her chest pressing against mine.

Her steady heartbeat against my undead, off-balance races thrills through me like a stab of electricity.

“I’m simple. I’m obsessed with you. I don’t know why, but I am. Whatever makes you smile, I’ll do.”

“I don’t understand any of this. I can’t wrap my mind around any of you or what you are or this town…” She trails off, turning her eyes over the new porch again.

Trailing my lips over her ear, I whisper, “Don’t overthink it. Just let it be. See where it goes.”

“I’m afraid,” she whispers, turning her face and nuzzling her nose against mine.

I’m caught in the alluring pull of her, like she’s the moon and I’m the tide, at her mercy completely, wondering where she’ll pull me next.

“So am I,” I admit. “It doesn’t mean I won’t give this my everything.”

She reaches up, cupping my cheek as she leans her forehead against mine.

The world spins around us for a moment, and we just are.

It’s the most open and raw I’ve ever felt before, and while it’s scary as hell, it’s comforting to have someone who won’t take advantage of me because she has my devotion.

“Tell me about you,” she says, dropping her hand from my face. “I’ve been learning bits and pieces from each of the others, but I know nothing about you.”

There it is.

The truth I can’t give is the one that chokes me each time I try to speak it to life.

“I can’t do that, Silver. Not yet.”

“You said you were going to give this your all,” she points out.

I’m so distracted by the glow of her eyes that I don’t realize that her hand has drifted up the front of my shirt.

When her palm grazes over the scars beneath my shirt, the ones she’ll immediately ask about, I grab her wrist a bit too hastily.

She hisses, her eyes filling with fear. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Don’t.”

“What? I was just…”

“Just don’t.”

Don’t ask. Don’t touch. Don’t look.

“Lowell, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push you.”

“But you did. And the broken don’t like that, Silver.”

“The broken?” she whispers, reaching for me as I back away.

“Come. Let’s get you home and back to bed.” Turning, I storm off, keeping my ears open for her footsteps in time with mine a few feet back, but not speaking another word until we get back to the manor.

She follows me as I trudge into her room, and she softly clicks the door closed, hovering there.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, I drop my head into my hands.

I see her standing before me, stoic and waiting, hopeful of my next words.

“Why do you call yourself broken?” she finally whispers when I say nothing.

“Because I am, Silver. It’s why I watched you from a distance and never approached. I don’t deserve to have my curse broken. Death should’ve come for me long ago.”

“Don’t say that.” She drops to her knees between my thighs, and I look up at her, my hands splaying on the bed as I take in the sincerity in her bright blue eyes.

“Why? Like you said, you don’t know me. For all you know, my words, my assessment is accurate.”

“Living in the city, I have developed a keen sense of stranger danger. I want to think so anyhow. I don’t get any bad vibes from you.”

“With all due respect, Silver, your stranger meter is broken. You’re in a coven of vampires who’ve done far worse things than pick some pockets in the city’s dark.”

“If you think that’s all that happens in the dark of the city streets of New York, you haven’t been there in quite some time,” she says.

“Touché.” Unwillingly, a smirk curls my lips.

“One day, I’ll tell you about me. But that’s the day you’ll look at me differently, and I don’t know if I can stomach that day coming soon, Silver.”

My admission hangs heavy between us, and I don’t think she will speak or move for a while, but she finally gets off the floor and crawls into bed, pulling the covers back and patting the space next to her.

“You want me to stay?” I quirk a brow, kicking off my boots while the question lingers between us.

“As long as you won’t sing me children’s songs and as long as you promise to keep the demons at bay.” She smiles.

I flick my wrist, and the lights in the room go out. I slip beneath the covers beside her.

I hum the tune to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds by the Beatles, and Silver snuggles into my side. My arm comes around her shoulders as she drifts beneath the blanket of sleep, breathing heavily as I stare down every nightmare and fitful dream head-on to keep her comfortable.

Thinking about opening myself up to her entirely scares the shit out of me, but thinking of her never knowing me entirely scares me even more.

I know it’s up to me to complete this and determine whether she’s the key to our freedom, and I also know that it will be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

The keys never get to me, and I was thankful because it’s been centuries since I’ve tasted human blood, and I’m afraid that with one drop of hers, I’ll become who I was before.

That all my nightmares and all my demons will come bobbing back to the surface once more, dragging me back down to a hell I won’t be able to escape a second time.

The question is, is she worth it?