Eternal [HS]

Chapter Forty-Nine

THE AFTERMATH OF WHAT HAPPENED in the human realm was somewhat worrisome, but it was mostly peaceful.

The worry she felt stemmed from doting over Harry after he fell completely unconscious from the wolfsbane he was fed shortly before they came to rescue him. It was as if he was only holding out long enough to make it back through the gate because he instantly began to fade away into sleep in her arms. He told her the directions to his second house—the one he almost sent her to to protect her from Sacrosanct that no one else knows about—then slumped over against her.

It terrified her to watch him pass out when he never slept or went unconscious like this for the entirety of their relationships. Vampires never sleep, and while it was odd to get used to him always being awake, the sight of him lying still in the back of the truck sent her into a panic. With no breaths to take, his chest didn't rise and fall. With no heartbeat, there was no pulse to feel on the inside of his wrist. He seemed as dead as the other two people lying beside them.

The only reason she stayed sane was Mitch. He slid open the back window to the front seats and talked her through it, asking her the directions to the safe house and keeping her as occupied as he could to prevent her from losing it. He was her guiding light through the darkness as she held Harry and stared down at his closed eyes, and she hasn't forgotten that.

They drove and drove for what felt like days, even though it was only a little over two hours that passed before they arrived.

She sat against the side of the trunk and cradled his head in her lap. Soft brunette curls slipped through her fingers as she ran them through his hair, stroking the wet strands away from where they were sticking to his face. He looked so beautiful. He always looks beautiful, but something about watching him in such a state of rest made him especially captivating. In fact, the sight of him had her in such a trance, it took Mitch knocking on the back window of the truck to get her to look up and see where they were.

Her head popped up from where it was tilted down over him to get a glimpse of the sprawling lakeside property at the end of the dirt road they traveled down.

As per usual in this world, there was no warm outpouring of sun, but it did seem brighter. Perhaps it was just their victory and narrow escape from death flooding her mind, but she felt as though the storm clouds parted and brought down a subdued shaft of sunlight on their new home—a safe haven from any remaining Sacrosanct members that would attack their house when news of Adeline's disappearance breaks.

They carried him inside first and set him down in one of the bedrooms upstairs. Through all of this, he did not wake, and she was still changing him into dry clothes when Mitch left to retrieve things from the old house.

Suddenly, she was alone.

Harry may have laid on the bed she sat at the edge of, but she was utterly alone with nothing to do but think about what happened. The faces of both people who died in front of her, one an enemy at her hands and one a friend at the hands of a Sacrosanct sentry, appeared in front of her as if they were standing at the end of the bed. They continued to follow her everywhere no matter what she tried to do to distract herself.

It began with doing every possible task she could think of to take care of Harry while he was unconscious. Between wanting to escape her thoughts and worrying about him, it snapped her back into the mindset from when she used to take care of patients at the hospital. She made sure he was in clean clothes, a comfortable position, fed him, and laid with him, brushing his hair to keep any knots from laying on the pillow all day out. Other than that, there wasn't much else she had to do except lay there and spiral down a dark path inside of her head.

There was nothing to stop the tears from building and building before they spilled out over the brims of her eyes and dripped down her cheeks onto the pillowcase.