He exhaled, his warm breath stirring my hair. He'd been... holding his breath. Waiting for the blow, as he so often did. "One hundred seventy-seven days left," Dain responded, his voice as quiet as mine.

"Plenty of time," I said, trying to keep my tone light, though my mouth trembled with sorrow and fear. I felt like I was being torn in half. Somewhere along the way, Dain had become a fixture in my life, and I didn't want to lose him—but if I chose him, I would lose my family and friends, all the people on the other side of the veil who were mourning me. How could I possibly hope to make that decision? How could I ever be happy with the outcome? There was unbearable grief down both forks of the road, and only one hundred seventy-seven days left to decide.

26. A Momentary Interlude

Chapter 26

A Momentary Interlude

Dain healed at an astonishing pace, and I didn't know if I would have believed it without having seen it with my own eyes. For about twenty-four hours he was on a fuckton of oxycodone. The next twenty-four hours was about half that. He didn't need any to make it through day three, though I gave him some to help him sleep that night. Day four, and the bandages were off, and though he didn't want me in the room when the healers were fussing with him, he did unlace the neck of his shirt and pull it to the side to show me that the gruesome wound was nothing worse than a gnarly-looking scab. We went riding together on the fifth day, and with a soft kiss on my forehead, he sent me back to my own rooms to sleep.

We both had nightmares that night, sleeping alone with danger fresh in our minds. I found myself standing at the adjoining door, my forehead against the wood and my face damp with tears, longing for the ease of rest that had come from having Dain spooned around me.

It was a weird way to feel. Taking care of Dain – living with him, feeding him, sleeping next to him – had tugged us together more than I'd expected, narrowing our space in the soulmate bond. But separating from him did something to me, too. I felt dislocated and almost dazed, like I'd staggered back from staring over the edge of the Grand Canyon and suddenly the vast vista of it opened up in front of my eyes again. We'd been walking to the edge together again, acting like family or trueloves instead of friends.

Friendship had never felt like this, though. It was easy, comfortable, and deeply enjoyable, but it never felt like we were about to plunge over the edge, like Zhiolas over the waterfall. That troubled me, as I curled back up in my bed alone. Why was I more willing to be his family than his friend? Sexual attraction couldn't explain that.