Peekaboo
Elara
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I remembered something very clearly just before the world went black. I remembered seeing him, and those ventral golden eyes of his filled with beastly rage. I remembered seeing something—seeing something like him ripping off his shirt and the beast from nightmares taking over. The only thing that did strike me in my mind was the thought: This is really a fantasy world.
I heard it then—the flesh tearing, bones snapping, snarls, whimpers, one man begging, please don’t kill me, and then the sound of something tearing. Later, I felt some soft human hands, different from the beast’s that I had seen earlier, and it felt like something slightly itchy and sticky on my side that had been exploding with pain earlier. It soothed me only slightly, but after that my world was completely gone, and now I floated.
At first, I recall it being something like the way space was described: dark, endless, and I was weightless but cold. So cold, but I couldn’t warm myself. I wanted to desperately too, but alas, I could do nothing. I dared to reach out in my mind, hoping that perhaps I’d communicate with someone—after all, I was in a fantasy world, and just about that would be believable, right? Wrong.
It was like that one time when I was younger, when I went and gone just—but the only difference was now that I was cold. Soon, I began to warm up, and then I heard soft thumping sounds and then soft voices—male voices—but I could hardly make out any words. Eventually, I was left alone, but I was much warmer now, though still wallowing in my own memories. Memories I’d rather forget. Memories of my childhood. Memories of losing my parents.
They were the best until they were no more, and it was just me again against the world.
I didn’t know how long I was unconscious. I didn’t know how many days, minutes, or even months had passed. Either way, I knew I was still alive. Ever so slightly, I would feel my fingers move, twitching by themselves, and sometimes I did try to open my eyes, but to no avail. My eyelids felt glued shut.
Ever so slightly, I would feel a tug in my mind, pulling me in some direction to stay in my memories a little longer, even though I didn’t know what that meant. This particular memory was of my dad. I remembered he had golden hair and bright blue eyes. I don’t remember the question I asked, but he knelt in front of me, smiled that familiar warm smile, and shook his head.
“Look, peanut, it’s not like that.”
He shook his head with a smile on his face that caused my young self to fume in anger. Why couldn’t he give me what I wanted? I thought, balling my hands into fists.
I remember tearing my face away from him and looking off into the distance, where I saw someone—a woman. She stood in a canopy of trees far from the acre we lived on. I didn’t recognize her. That wasn’t how my mom looked, nor any candy that walked the track from her house to ours.
This woman wore a white gown with a white veil over strange hair. She leaned against one of the trees as though she owned it, then shook her head. I looked back at my dad and found him gone. I looked towards the house, and the house wasn’t there. I let out a gasp, raised my hands up to my face, and I wasn’t a child anymore—I was myself, my adult self.
I looked back at the woman, but the tree was gone behind her. She just stood in the middle of nothingness, tilted her head to one side, and pulled off the veil, revealing hair the color of the moon. Quite literally, she had black soulless eyes, the color of nothing, a small nose, and wide full lips. She was less of beautiful and more of inhuman—more ethereal.
Who are you? I opened my mouth to ask, but my lips couldn’t move.
“It must be curious,” I heard her voice in my mind. My eyes widened in response.
“Yes, I can do that. Calm yourself. You’ll wake up soon—at least if you call ‘soon’ a few days. But really, a few days is like a blink in the eyes of my kind.”
If she could ask questions in my mind, then perhaps I could do the same.
Who are you? I pushed the thought to her as though I was pushing a basket on water.
“That’s not so important as what is happening here.”
She gestured around us, her soft, cute voice soothing me to some extent.
“Then what is happening here?” I pushed to her. “Why can’t I wake up?”
She smiled. “Because you’re in a coma. You’ve been hurt quite badly, you lost quite a lot of blood, and you would have died save for the intervention of you-know-who. She smiled cryptically. That’s why you’re here. It’ll take you a while to heal, you know, because of what you are or otherwise.”
I shook my head. I could shake my head. What does that even mean?
She smiled again. “Some things are not meant to be known yet. If they are, you will when you’re ready. You’ll know them. Until then, well, it’ll help if you live in your memories a little longer. Perhaps we should watch it together?”
“No.” I answered a little too quickly. There are many things I don’t want to see, many things I don’t want to relive. I’m not interested.
If I could turn away from her, I would, but unfortunately, I was stuck staring at this strange woman. Maybe she was a spirit, I thought. Being in a fantasy world was bad enough—now I was believing in things that were supernatural. Anything goes, I suppose.
“I’m not a spirit. I’m a little more than that. A little greater, is that, but by far.” She shrugged in a most Barbie-like manner.
I don’t want to watch anything. I just want to wake up. I don’t mind silence.
“Very well.” She tilted up her chin. “Silence it is.”
Soon I was literally alone. The silence she promised then became too deafening, but I asked for it. I’d live with it. Slowly I could move more than just my fingers. I could move my wrists, and then my eyes could open just a little bit. I could see things, albeit blurry. It was white and with funny shapes.
What was that?
It took me blinking several times to realize I was staring up at a ceiling. A very different one from the one I had grown accustomed to in the cell. I remained that way, it felt like a day or two, still feeling the throbbing in my side and then some in my face, my knees, and my back.
“It’s easy enough,” I heard a muffled voice. “I’ve the best warriors you have guarding her. All of them have their loyalties sworn to you. You don’t have to worry. You can leave her with me.”
There was silence and then what sounded like a growl—an animalistic, deep sound mixed with something more. If I was awake, I would reel backwards and maybe run away. But now I was scared, even lying down.
“No,” I heard the growled voice say. “Not when they want to kill her.”
“I thought you said half of them, so your council is divided. Well, next time you won’t go around telling everyone that you wish to dismiss the old ways and accept a human as your mate.”
Silence followed, and then another growl.
“What would you have me do? They would kill her, and by no stretch of any imagination whatsoever would I let that happen. I’d sooner kill them before they let it happen to her.”
This was definitely him. I didn’t know where the second voice belonged to.
“I’ll watch her. I am, after all, the one who treated her, and I do deserve some accolades, so I would like it if you, you know, pat me on the back or something.”
I didn’t hear any pat on the back. But I did hear the door close. There were some footsteps that drew closer to me and then a dip by the side of the bed.
“I can hear your heartbeat,” the voice said. “And I know you’re awake. You can hear us, or at least you’re conscious of your surroundings. Don’t worry, you’re safe. I’m quite interested in knowing the outcome of this experiment of mine. I wonder what’s going to happen to you now that you have, well, alpha blood in your veins.”
My eyes snapped open. So much light flooded in, but I didn’t care. My eyes slowly and painfully adjusted, and I found myself staring at an apple-red-haired man with deep tanned skin and vivid green eyes.
He smiled. “Well, if I’d known that would wake you up, I’d have said it sooner. But you’re not ready to sit. You might start bleeding again. You’re human.”
He gently pushed my shoulder until I lay on the bed. The only thing that opened, apparently, was my eyes. My mouth, however, refused to move. They remained glued shut.
“Sleep,” he said. “Rest, heal. Take your time. You’re human, after all. Your life is not yet forfeit.”
Despite how calming his voice sounded, I was not calm in any way. The only thing that resounded over and over in my mind was that, for some strange reason, he had accepted me as his mate—or whatever.