Dark Cravings [Claiming Series, #2]

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Special Note: Please kindly excuse any discrepancies you may come across as you read this book including formatting issues. I hope the power, depth, and beauty of the content outweighs any grammatical inconsistencies or lack of aesthetic quality. Thank you again for allowing me to be a part of your life through my writing.

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Beth awoke at nearly ten the next morning. The digital clock on the bedside table cast a red glow through the room. At least she thought it was morning. It had to be because she couldn't have slept through until the following night. Sitting up, she reached around for the lamp she remembered being beside her. When she flicked it on, it provided minimal illumination.

The room was utterly silent except for her own movements. So silent she thought she must be alone. But when she rolled over to look, she saw Soren stretched on the floor, fully clothes, flat on his back. He appeared to be sleeping.

She held her breath, listening, and realized he truly wasn't breathing.

So it was all true. It hadn't been a crazy dream.

Quietly, although she didn't know why she felt the need for stealth, she climbed out of bed and crept over to him. When she knelt beside him, she put her ear to his lips.

Definitely not breathing. Then she rested her hand over his heart and waited. No heartbeat. None.

She jerked back, partly because she felt she was trespassing, and partly because the reality of her situation came home to her again.

It was real. All of it.

A shuddering sigh escaped her, and she continued to kneel beside him, absorbing the realities she hadn't fully connected with the night before.

Nothing, evidently. Everything had seemed so casual and so muffled that at some level nothing had penetrated. Yes, she'd experienced that thing in her apartment. Yes, she'd seen Soren move so fast he seemed to vanish and reappear, she'd watched him drink blood, she'd seen his eyes turn to chips of black coal.

But something had kept the reality of it all from coming home.

Now, suddenly shaking like a leaf in a hurricane, she wanted to deny it all, to cram reality back into its familiar box and lock all the things that belonged in fantasy, not reality. She wanted to go back to the relative safety of the world she had lived in before Soren, before that god-awful feeling in her apartment. A world where things like this only happened in the pages of a book.

But lying before her on the floor was a man who, for all intents and purposes, was dead. She felt body-slammed as last night rushed home at last to her brain and her emotions. Gasping for breath, she pushed herself back on her hands and knees away from him.

It was all true. All of it was true. And she could no more escape from the knowledge than she could return to her apartment and resume a normal life.

Shock lifted its hazy veil and left her with a world forever changed. For once, with the evidence lying right in front of her, denial wasn't going to work.

She could run away right now. Every cell in her body wanted to do exactly that. But she vividly remembered his warning not to open the door. He had trusted her, and not even fear could make her betray that trust.

But, God, with her brain running in crazy, pointless circles like a hamster in a wheel, unable to find a place to stop and rest in this new world, she didn't know how she was going to handle this.