‹ Prequel: Bound to You

Blanket of Fear

Chapter Twenty-Eight

As Zacky walked up to the bedroom to see if Eliza was in there, he tried to come up with reasons to stop himself from trying to talk to her. He knew that he needed to; that it would be best for both of them if she decided to open up to him, but he also knew that what she had to say could break her. He knew that it was hard for her to open up to him, and trying to pressure her might break her will. He didn’t want to do that.

He walked into the bedroom to find her sitting in the window seat, a John Grisham book open on her lap and her eyes focused idly on the outside world. He wondered what was going through her mind, and why she wasn’t concentrating on her book. He walked softly over to her and then pulled up the chair from the vanity before sitting next to her, grabbing her free hand in his and bringing it to his lips to press a soft kiss to the skin there. She looked up, almost startled that he had walked into the room, and gave him a soft smile that appeared almost sad before she returned her gaze to the trees outside.

“What’s going on in that head of yours, Eliza?” Zacky asked her, rubbing his thumb back and forth on her skin. She sighed, and then tore her eyes off of the trees again so that her eyes could meet his.

“What do you mean?” She asked him, shifting her body so that he had her full attention. She let her book fall closed, and she pulled him up so that he could sit next to her on the seat. He let his arm loop around her waist as she rested her head on his shoulder. It wasn’t the most comfortable position in the world, but this was where she felt the safest. With Zacky, she knew nothing could really hurt her. He would do anything to keep her safe. He loved her, and she saw that. And that was what made her feel guilty for not telling him what she knew he wanted to know.

“You’re thinking about whatever that nightmare was about,” he whispered into her ear, letting his hand trail up and down lazily on her arm, his finger pad tracing whimsical circles into her skin. Eliza shivered at the touch, but she didn’t acknowledge that he was right. She didn’t want to. She couldn’t. If she let him know what the nightmare had been about, it was going to give him more to worry about, and he already had too much on his plate to deal with.

“I don’t want to talk about it. It was just a dream,” she muttered under her breath, hoping that Zacky would leave it at that and not push her for an answer that she didn’t want to give. Instead, he just turned her so that she was facing him a little more, so that his eyes could seek hers out.

“You can let me in,” he whispered, pushing some hair out of her eyes. He didn’t say anything else, but leaned in to brush his lips over her lips softly. He knew that it was going to take a bit of persuading to convince her to see that he could be trusted with this secret. She sighed, and then opened her eyes so she could look up at him.

“I…I can’t put that on you,” she muttered, letting her hand come to a rest on his cheek. “I don’t want you having to think about it,” she whispered.

“Eliza, look at me,” he murmured, lifting her chin so that she couldn’t look away from him. “It won’t be burdening me. I’m worried about you, baby. Please, just let me in.”

He watched as she put the guarded look back in her eyes, and a quick look into her mind told him that she was protecting whatever the nightmare had been about. She sighed, and then closed her eyes, letting a few stray tears fall out. “You need to promise me that you’re not going to do anything stupid, Zack. You…You just can’t,” she whispered, holding on to his hands and squeezing them before she landed a soft kiss to the corner of her mouth.

Zacky had no idea what she was hiding from him. He had no idea why a nightmare was worth hiding so much, or why she was trying so desperately to stop him from finding out. But he knew that it was worrying her. And if it worried her, then it was important that he find out what it was.

He nodded his head and returned her kiss before he lifted his head to look at her. Eliza didn’t say anything else as she allowed her eyes close, and Zacky did the same. He kept her hands in his, not letting go of her. He wasn’t going to let go of her while she showed him her nightmare.

When the nightmare finally ended, his eyes widened at first in shock. He had seen clearly who the woman was in the nightmare; had seen what she had been about to do. Like Eliza, he found himself almost frightened about the realness of the dream. It felt like it had happened at one point—or that it was going to happen. But most importantly, he had seen that someone he considered a close friend—someone he had trusted his life with for as long as he had known them—was capable of murder, if only in Eliza’s nightmare. And with such emotion and feeling behind that vision, he had no doubt that at least parts of it were real.

He felt hurt. He felt betrayed. And most of all, he felt threatened. And that was not something that he would stand for. He had always lived his vampiric life under the motto that threats had to be eliminated before they could eliminate you, and as much as it hurt his heart to think this way about the person he’d considered a friend, he knew he couldn’t change that policy now.

“Zack,” Eliza pulled him out of his thoughts long enough to press her hand on his shoulder, giving him a small, reassuring smile. He could tell that she was far from feeling reassured, but he wasn’t going to remind her of how much her gut was telling her the vision was more than just a random nightmare.

“I can’t let her do anything to you, Eliza,” he whispered in a pained voice, bringing his hand up to touch the side of her face before he leaned in to brush his lips over hers. “I don’t want to even think of losing you; not even for a moment.”

“You can’t hurt her,” Eliza repeated, her lips turning into a thin frown on her face before she grabbed tightly onto his hands, giving them a squeeze as she met his gaze. “She has a family, Zack. She has someone that loves her, and people that need her. You can’t take her away from them without a good reason.”

“So you’re saying that what you just showed me…That isn’t a good reason?” He asked her, wondering where in the hell she was coming up with her line of thinking. This was more than reasonable cause for him. It frightened him that he could lose Eliza, and fear wasn’t something that he was used to feeling. It wasn’t something he wanted to feel.

“Not to them, it won’t be,” Eliza murmured softly. “You see how they treat Leigh with her visions and her nightmares. Hell, you treat her the same as they do. She’s an outcast; she’s a criminal in your eyes. I don’t want them to do the same thing to us; to you. They won’t trust you to get them through this if they know anything about this.”

Zacky kept a thin frown on his own face. He didn’t like what Eliza was telling him; not one bit. But what he hated the most was that she was right. He knew that, if anyone else got a whiff of this nightmare that she’d had, they’d say it was some cause of something Sean may have done to her. They would oust her. They would stop talking to her, and it would only further cause them to drift apart. And in times like this, it was deadly important that they stayed as close-knit as possible.

“I won’t say anything,” he finally sighed, pushing his hand back through her hair as he let his head come to a rest on her shoulder. “But you’re staying by my side from now on. I don’t want you being by yourself. I don’t want her to have any opportunity to hurt you,” he whispered, wrapping his arms tightly around her waist. Eliza just returned his hold. All thoughts of their argument were gone, and she just wanted to feel him hold her.

Zacky knew that times like this would be coming to an end sometime in the very near future. They would have to brace themselves for an all-out turf war with Sean, and there was no doubt in anyone’s minds that not everyone was going to walk away. People would be hurt, some would die. And even though he didn’t want Eliza anywhere near that danger, he knew that now, things had to change. They had to find a way to alter the plan, because there was no way in hell he was going to let her be away from him with the person that had haunted her nightmare without him there to protect her.
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I have an amazing story that one of my friends is writing that I think all of you will enjoy. It's called What We Did For Love. It's an amazing, amazing story, and I know she would really love some feedback.

Also, I have started a new full-length story since some of my stories are coming to an end. This one is called More Than Words, and it is a Zacky story.