Chapter 9

8 – Kennedy

I’m groggy but I can tell Jeremiah is holding me, my head is tucked into his massive hard chest. Another breath, another hand squeeze. I look over and Rayna, sitting next to Jer, is looking at me with sympathy and I can feel the tears prick behind my eyes. I try to blink them away, but it’s no use. They fall in slow streams from my eyes. I squeeze them shut trying to stem the flow.

“Hey, don’t fight it. Let the sadness go. It will help.” Her voice is so soothing, but I let the tears just flow.

“It doesn’t make it any less embarrassing.” I sniffle and pull my hands from hers to rub them over my face.

“There’s something that makes sense.” I look over and see Ben at the foot of my bed. Even better. “What happened this time? Was there something different about your dream? You yelled for all of us.” He points and I see Tommy and Jason too. “You’ve never done that before p>

“Huh? I don’t know. I don’t really remember.” I lied and closed my eyes again but opened them back up quickly, the image of their dead eyes and bleeding forms is still burned in the back of my eyelids. “Jer, are you sure you want me on this trip? I can’t imagine it’s going to make any kind of good impression on your in-laws to have you running into my room in the middle of the night. I’m a liability that no one will want around p>

I lean away from him when I realize I’m in his lap still curled up with his mate right next to us. I slide to sit next to him bringing my knees to my chest, a massive headache starting.

“With mom gone, absolutely, no question you need to be with me.” I just look at him for a second disbelieving and roll my eyes, then move to get off my bed. “Where are you going?” He shoots up next to me.

“Bathroom, is that okay with you?” I meant it to sound irritated, but it came out defeated. I didn’t wait for an answer.

I took way longer than necessary, but I tried to cool my tear stained face off and calm down a little. I had to fight the bile that was rising up in my throat every time I blinked and saw the four of them broken and bleeding in a destroyed car. When I was done they were all still there, I rolled my eyes again and moved to get some workout gear.

“What are you doing now?” It’s Ben sounding concerned this time.

“I’m awake and I won’t be able to go back to sleep. I’m going to go down to the Alpha’s gym. I promise I won’t leave the packhouse. It’s the middle of the night, get some sleep guys, we have a long drive tomorrow. I should be able to sleep in the car.” I didn’t wait for them to argue.

Apparently the only thing that gets rid of the dreams is a three hour workout. It is six when I finally come up to get food before my stomach eats itself from the inside out.

“They’re getting worse, the dreams. I thought, maybe with time, they would get better.” Jeremiah hugs me from behind, his arms wrap around my shoulders as I stand at the island in the kitchen eating some yogurt and fruit.

“What’s crazy is the dreams are getting more choppy and fragmented, harder to remember, but the feelings are getting more amplified.” I have no idea what is happening, but I do know the change happened when we turned 18, less and more all at the same time.

I said nothing of the sort to Jer though. He would try to pin it on some wolfy thing. He used to do that when weird things happened to the two of us when we were little too. We can seemingly read each other’s thoughts and we can both call bullsh*t on each other without hesitation. I learned quickly that as long as I don’t lie directly to him, I can keep some of my thoughts to myself. Or he just learned that I want to keep things to myself sometimes and he doesn’t ask. I am human, there is no connection between my weirdness and the magic that makes them werewolves, and for some reason it’s something I have to keep explaining to my supernatural friend. We do use sign language to talk without the pack link though. It’s something that Aunt Beth started when I was little and found out about the telepathy stuff. I was so jealous that her and Uncle James could talk to pack members with their minds and that Jeremiah and the guys would be able to do it eventually too. This was a way for me to fit in. Jer and I still use signs, especially at school where kids can be cruel if you are what they consider less than, and I am definitely the bottom of the barrel as far as some of them are concerned.