Control (Dark Romance)

Chapter 55

Nikola's POV

A dream within a dream. That's what waking to Hagen feels like.

It's almost too perfect with the early morning light pouring in from the ancient windows, illuminating our reflection in the opposing mirror in its near-angelic lighting. It's not the full image— only our torsos are on display— but I can see our hands still intertwined, and how Hagen's body remains affixed to mine. We're joined in every possible way, glued together, but that's not even the most harrowing thing. It's the fact that just as tightly as I cling to Hagen, he clings to me.

For a moment, for a very long moment, I simply stare at our reflection. I don't move, too terrified of shattering such a beautiful thing to risk it, but I have to breathe. That slight movement scares me too until I watch our breaths come and go together. We breathe concurrently, chests rising and falling in perfect succession, so perfectly tuned.

Hagen was mine. Truly.

This was neither fantasy, nor fiction. This was not a fleeting affair or a moment of peace found as we wafted through our past to find our future. This was real.

Hagen was mine.

My eyes fall shut as I sink into the crook of his neck. It only takes one inhale from my body to unwind, relaxing as my lungs fill with the calming spray of saltwater on the wind. It almost sends me back to sleep, but why would I want to return there when this was my reality?

There was a period of my life when I used to prefer being asleep.

To be specific, it was the majority of the year when I was eight years old. That year, my parents struggled more than ever to get me to do anything, because whenever I saw the opportunity for it, I would seek slumber out.

It was an escapism. Though my life was wonderful in a large number of ways, there was one bad thing— terrible really— that remained ever-present, and that was the fact that Hagen hated me.

It was one grievance in the grand scheme of things, but it was Hagen, and that made it everything. So I slept, because at least in my dreams, I could pretend that he did not hate me.

I imagined varying lifetimes together, ones where he never pushed me away, and we remained friends who only grew closer as the years passed. I imagined others where he was the one who loved me too much and would be as incurably captivated as I was. I also imagined ones where one day, somehow, we'd be friends again— before mates, before linkers— just friends.

Those dreams were the ones that hurt the most because when I inevitably awoke, as all creatures were forced to do, and found it had only been a dream... it felt far closer to a nightmare than anything.

It's different now, though. Sleep seems like a punishment when even the best of my dreams are a disappointing echo of reality.

Here, Hagen slept soundly beneath me with his mouth wide open and his expression comically blank. I feel my lips pull into a smile as I part the hair from his temple so that I can press my lips to the skin there. Like this, he was a stark contrast to what he'd been the night prior.

My smile spreads as I recall it— Hagen's squirming, his blind allegiance to mirror my every step, his frustration at being denied, and then his eagerness at being handled. I thought I knew everything about my mate— every nuance and hidden version— but I'd been wrong.

An unchecked Hagen was like nothing I'd ever imagined.

He was as abrasive as he was honest, as shameless as he could be, boyish and as loving as he was stubborn. He was everything I ever wanted, even before I knew what I needed in a man grown, and in the face of it, my love only grew to know him.