Page 268 of Nobody's Girl

“Eden,” she says.

It’s my mate! She’s alive! It was all a dream!

I sit up. “There’s still time.”

Alyssa looks at me quizzically. “Still time for what?”

I shake my head to clear it before I grab her and pull her to my bare chest. Burying my face in her honeysuckle-scented curls, I breathe her in. “Alyssa, you’re in danger. We need Kyle here to help keep you safe. Laura, too. She’s key in keeping you safe as well.”

Alyssa frowns. “Laura? She doesn’t even know what we are, Eden. How can she help? And about Kyle. Well, things have been so much easier to take since he left. Unless it’s absolutely necessary, I don’t want him around. It’s just too hard,” she says as she drops her head.

She’s been doing that a lot since Kyle went back to Cloudcroft. The inner confidence she gained when we first transformed into the Phoenixes seems to have left her.

I reach out and take her delicate chin in my hand, making her look at me. “They love you, Alyssa. It would devastate them both if something happened to you. With their help, nothing will.”

“Eden, you need to show me your dream. I can’t make a decision like that without knowing what might happen to me.”

Now it’s my head which drops. “Alyssa, it’s hard for me to talk about it without getting upset. I don’t think it’s a good thing for you to see. That’s why I took so long in the shower this morning. I had a hard time getting control over my emotions. The idea of losing you is …” I trail off.

I can’t let myself think like that!

Alyssa walks to the chair where I threw her little summer dress right before I devoured her. “I’ve heard enough, as you’ve been talking in your sleep and even sleep walking, to know something happens to me. There’s a doctor you talk to, so it’s not good.” She pulls it over her head, then makes her way to the dresser.

Finding my shorts on the floor, I pick them up and put them back on. “More than hurt, Alyssa. You don’t make it.”

She stops looking through the drawer she opened and looks back at me. “I don’t make it? What could happen to me? It just has to be a dream, not a premonition. It can’t be my death. Not so soon. Longevity was promised to me. What about that?”

“Alyssa, the dream is too real, too vivid. It continues when I fall back asleep.” I explain.

She turns back to the drawer, pulling out a lacy pair of white panties. “What if you’re wrong and we get Kyle and Laura over here for nothing?”

I give her a frown. “I hope I am wrong, but I have to follow my heart on this. I can’t just do nothing and let this happen to you. I have an idea that might help you to come to grips with this. If you die, Alyssa, you know I’ll be dead within a day of you. Kyle may follow as well. We’ve never understood how his connection to you will be affected if you pass before he does. Is that what you want, for us to leave this earth, never having accomplished more than one task on this planet?”

She pulls on her panties and I nearly lose my train of thought. Her voice makes me look up at her eyes. “How do Kyle and Laura fit into stopping whatever it is that’s going to happen?”

This is where she’ll really fight me!

“Okay, here it goes. I’ve dreaded telling you this, Alyssa, because the answer is …I don’t know.”

Her slim arms rise up into the air as she shouts, “What? You don’t know? Are you crazy?”

“Something in my dream is why I say that, although I don’t know why. I say to myself in the dream, ‘If only Kyle was here. If only Laura had been with her.’ That’s why I think they’re key players in keeping you alive.”

“Crap, I hate this!” she says as she slips on her sandals. “I don’t know why he’s putting us through this. Why, Eden, why?”

I slip my T-shirt over my head and go to her, holding her to me. “Please don’t do that, Alyssa. Don’t question. It serves no purpose. For what reason, we may never know. It’s just something which needs to be done. Learn to have faith. Hasn’t anything we’ve been through brought that home to you yet?”

Laying her head against my chest, she wraps her arms around me and says, “What’s so wrong with me that I keep questioning everything over and over again? You’re right and I know it, but I can’t stop myself. In the very beginning, I had so much faith. I’ve lost my confidence as well as my faith.”

I rock her in my arms and place a kiss on top of her head. “You’re hiding from the pain, princess. You’re hiding from who you really are. Since Kyle left, you’ve changed back into the girl you were.”

Her body shudders and she whispers, “I miss him like you can never understand. Only I don’t want him around because it’s so damn hard. I hate myself for wanting him. I love you so much and I don’t understand how I could want you both.”

Her honesty fills my heart. “I know you love me, precious. Kyle is your primary protector and you two have to learn how to live with that. The attraction will have to be dealt with. You both are hiding from it right now and it’s not helping it go away.”

She looks up at me with those sapphire eyes, batting her dark, full lashes. Unshed tears make them glisten as she says, “I suppose you’re right. I’ll call him and tell him about your dream and the crazy man. I don’t know if Laura will want to come or not.”

“Bet she will, princess,” I say with a knowing smile.