CHAPTER 67
Seconds passed, then minutes. Nothing seemed to be happening at all. Every tick of the clock was agony and eternity for Damien. And then all of a sudden, Sarah started screaming and thrashing… her fragile body straining against the bonds. Her eyes were still closed but tears flowed down from the corners of her closed lids. Such agony contorted her face that he couldn’t stop the shudders that raked his own body.
He lurched forward; Valiance and Raegan flanking him. The healer had already warned them about this. Sarah's human body would not take kindly to the dragon blood at once. It'll treat as something foreign before it realizes it was there to help and it was a part of her. Unable to do anything to ease his mate's pain; He put his head on her belly and let the tears he’d been holding in; flow. He felt Raegan and Valiance take Sarah’s hands in each of theirs and talking to her. Raegan was crying while begging to God to spare her friend. But he couldn’t hear her words against the white noise his brain had become.
He willed her to come back to him… just come back to him. He had never felt such terror in his long miserable life… not when his mother had died leaving him and his father devastated, not when his father followed his mate in the afterlife and not when the curse had bound him and his brethren for a sin they hadn’t committed. This agony was soul deep. He sought the fragile tether of the mate bond inside him. And even though the other end of it was still lost in the dark - unclaimed; he tugged on it with all his might.
Her cries stopped and her body stilled. His head snapped up. Raegan’s face had gone pale as death and Valiance was now holding her in a strong embrace to support her. The healer came forward and put each of his glowing hands on Sarah’s forehead and heart.
“She is pulling through. Her conscious mind is trying to break the surface. Be her anchor. Talk to her. Help her come back”.
And it was Raegan who started talking first because he couldn’t. And perhaps she knew that words had failed him or perhaps she hadn’t even seen him struggling. But she started talking to Sarah and the heeler continued pouring his healing light in her.
And then the most beautiful thing happened, as if finally his suffering had ended. Sarah took a ragged breath and then another and another like she’d been starved of air for a long time. And then slowly; her eyes opened. Someone gasped… maybe Raegan or maybe he himself had, and then Raegan launched herself at her friend.
Sarah opened her mouth to say something but only a wheeze came out. The healer rushed towards his potion’s tray and grabbed a small cup with a greenish liquid inside.
“She needs to drink this now”, he said politely and Raegan backed up, helping Sarah sit up. Sarah took the cup from the healer’s hand and threw back its contents like a shot – and immediately started retching. Raegan handed her a glass of water to wash down the taste of the medicine and it was then that Sarah's eyes found Damien. All this time he’d been standing there; stunned out of movement. The fear of almost losing her still fresh in his wildly beating heart. She smiled and it was sunshine after a dark and deadly storm.
He didn’t even notice when everybody else filed out.
“How are you feeling?” he rasped out. What else could he say? That he loved her and he was terrified that he would lose her? Even if that was precisely what he wanted to say… it was the only thing he was unable to confess. Words choked down in his throat as if a hand had squeezed them to death.
“I’ve been better”, she replied in a weak voice. All this time her eyes hadn’t left his and something had changed in them – something about the way she was looking at him made his heart thunder – but not with fear this time. With hope. A tentative, small, fragile hope.
“When I fell, I woke up in a strange place,” she started, now looking at the glass in her hands, “It was dark – so very dark and cold there. I thought I was dead and that was my hell – alone, in the dark. I called out to anyone and everyone but no one was there except me”. Her voice trembled. “I remembered everything and I remembered how I fell, so naturally I thought I was dead. It took me a while to understand that I was no longer among you. And in that place – in that hell, I had no regrets but one…” she looked up in his eyes then, “You”, she whispered and the sudden rush of hope nearly drove him to his trembling knees.
“What are you saying?” his own voice was barely above a trembling whisper – full of fear and hope.
“What I’m saying Damien is that I regretted letting my fears win and stop me from telling you how I feel. I regretted not liberating you of your curse or atleast trying… if you had let me. I thought I had squandered my chance and that I won’t ever see you again. And I thought that was the reason of my being in hell” she let out a long breath and looked at his frozen figure again. “So I think what I’m saying is that now I know what I desire. And I’m asking you if you want the same?”
He closed his eyes against the onslaught of emotion and she spoke again.
“Of course you can’t answer that. Raegan told me enough about the curse and how she broke Val’s. So, Damien Priamos, can you please pass me a knife?” she grinned.