Chapter 15 - Aris

I hold Linnea in my arms, trying not to panic over the way her body is still trembling, soft earthquakes of tremors shaking through her every couple of seconds like she's remembering something terrible over and over again.

I put a cool washcloth on her forehead and try to comfort her, but she just grips my shirt like it's a lifeline and murmurs into my chest. My hearing is stellar, but I'm pretty sure she's just mumbling nonsense.

"Linnea?" I whisper again, trying to bring her back to herself so I can figure out what the fuck just happened. Of course, I've had great sex before, but I've never had a woman break into hysterics seconds after we cuddled in bed. I run my hand over her forehead and worry, wondering if there's something I don't know about the blood-bond that might have hurt her.

As far as I know, shifters and non-shifters are perfectly safe mating, but I'm not an expert on the subject. All the couples I knew could both shift, and I wonder if I've been too rough with her, not realizing my strength.

When she'd started screaming, I'd broadcasted to the team, telling them everything was okay and not to come to our cabin. If I was a different man, they might have ignored that order, but I felt their trust, their knowledge that whatever was happening, it wasn't at my hands.

Everything okay? Bigby sends as soon as the screaming stops.

Not sure. No idea what the fuck is going on.

Those didn't sound like the good kind of screams, Man.

No, they were not, I say, and then, I'll call you if I need you.

Still exhausted from my days without sleep, I'd fallen asleep almost immediately after we finished. With Linnea in my arms and nothing pressing regarding the mission, my body could finally relax.

Then she'd ripped away from me and started screaming. Because my hearing is so sensitive, it was especially piercing, and a true fearful panic flushed through my body, lighting up my senses. It was like being doused with cold water after a warm bath.

Holding her, I immediately glanced at the various windows and smelled the air—but the only thing there was the familiar mixed scent of my team. Nothing unusual that would make Linnea scream like this.

I said her name, held her tight, whispered to her, and tried to get her to calm down, but nothing was working. After a second, the screaming stopped, but she was still whimpering, crying softly as I held her, her eyes moving rapidly behind her eyelids, her body jerking violently in my arms.

It was like she was having a nightmare I couldn't wake her up from.

Her eyelids flutter, and she looks up at me with tears in her eyes. I struggle to hold myself back from asking her a million questions and instead just wait for her to say something. The intense protectiveness I feel right now is firing on all cylinders, demanding I take out whatever has caused her to freak out like this.

"Aris?" she says, her voice hoarse from the screams.

"I'm here," I say, leaning over to the nightstand and giving her a glass of water. "Can you talk to me?"

"Yeah," she says weakly, pulling herself into a sitting position and sighing. She stretches her body, and I hear several places pop. How much tension was she holding during her episode?

We sit there quietly for a moment, and then she starts to speak.

"I started having visions when I was just a kid. At first, I just thought they were dreams. And then, one night, I had a very vivid dream that my carpool was going to crash on the way to school—I went to that elementary school out of town when we first moved here, and I'd ride with another mom and her kids. The school was girls-only, private, and high-brow. I couldn't explain to my mom why I needed her to drive me, and we fought about it. She finally gave in and drove me to school when I refused to get in the minivan with the other girls. An hour after class started, we got the news that two of my classmates had died in the crash, and the mom was in intensive care."

I'm staring at her, wide-eyed. I've never heard of a shifter having visions like this. Obviously, Linnea can't actually shift—but there must be something in her blood to give her premonitions. She grips her hands around the glass of water, her fingers wiping through the condensation.

"Anyway, they just got more and more intense as I got into high school. They veered away from peaceful things—like I might see that someone in the pack was going to propose or something—and into darker territory. I started seeing exclusively bad things like robberies, murders, assaults, that kind of thing. I hated them. Besides, the only person who believed me was my mom. Even my dad chalked it up to some luck and a very active imagination. He just said I should be a detective because clearly my mind picked up on stuff."

I know I've met her parents at pack functions before, but I can't imagine what they look like. Looking through my memory, I try to pull up an image of them, but I can't. I think of Linnea on her knees in front of me, trying to comfort me about my dad and remember what she had said. I lost my parents, too, Aris.

"I started to suppress the visions as much as I could. It requires constant vigilance, like something you always have to keep in the back of your mind. Like watching a pot so it doesn't boil. Does that make sense?"

"It sounds hard," I say, running the back of my hand over her bangs, which are slicked to her forehead with sweat.

"Sometimes," she says, glancing down at the bed. "But the worst part is that suppressing them gives me these really bad migraines. I would spend days in bed, writhing in pain, just waiting for them to pass. It was hard to decide which was worse—visions of people in terrible pain or experiencing that pain myself. And it wasn't like not having the visions made it so the stuff didn't happen."

"Have you ever tried to stop something you saw in a vision from happening?"

"Yeah," she says, picking at a loose thread on the bed. "Nobody believed me. I had a vision of a forest fire once and tried to alert the park rangers and the fire department that it was going to happen, but when you say, Hey, there's going to be a forest fire somewhere in the country, or even in the world, because someone didn't put out a fire, they just kind of hang up the phone on you. Or, they think you're a pyromaniac."

"Fuck," I say, thinking about how she must have felt.

"Those fires in Indiana two years ago," she says, glancing up at me. "Did you hear about those?"

"Yeah, they were devastating."

"Yeah—and if—I mean, I had a chance to stop them. And I couldn't."

"You know that's not your fault."

"It's just—" she finally rips the thread clear from the duvet and gives me a sheepish look. "It's frustrating because it's like—why give me the visions if I can't do anything about what happens? It's like a punishment for something."

"I'm sure that's not true," I say, shaking my head and scooting closer to her. "Maybe it's just something you need to practice on. Something you need guidance in."

"Maybe," she says, "But who would I even talk to about something like that? Everyone around here thinks I'm a screwball when I bring it up."

"Well," I grin, "I happen to work somewhere with a whole bunch of screwballs. There's surely someone in another department who will know how to help you out."

"Okay." Linnea takes another deep breath, then pulls her shoulders back. "I'm going to tell you about the vision I just had."

"Okay," I say, seeing the pain and fear on her face and wishing there was a way I could take this pain from her.

"There was this big, gray building," she says, her face pinching in concentration. If she hadn't just been screaming in this bed, I might lean forward and tell her how cute she looks, but I don't. I hold those feelings back and listen.