CHAPTER 43: CHAPTER 43: THE JOLT

The void embraced Mailah like cold water, rushing up to meet her with a sound like breaking waves. She felt herself dissolving, her consciousness scattered like drops of rain in an ocean storm.

Then, like a fish breaking the surface of a deep lake, she gasped.

Air flooded her lungs in a painful rush that felt like swallowing fire. Her body convulsed, every muscle seizing as if she’d been struck by lightning. Water—or something that felt like water—seemed to pour from her mouth and nose, though when she tried to wipe it away, her hands came back dry.

"Easy, easy," a voice said, warm and reassuring and blessedly real. Gentle hands pressed against her shoulders, easing her back against what felt like silk sheets. "You’re safe now. Just breathe."

Mailah’s eyes flew open, and for a moment the world spun around her like a carnival ride. Colors bled into each other, shapes refused to hold their proper forms, and the ceiling above her seemed to pulse with a rhythm that matched her racing heartbeat.

She was back in the master bedroom—the real one, she realized with a shock of recognition.

Gone was the impossible perfection of the dream resort. This room, with its burgundy silk sheets and heavy wooden furniture, felt solid in a way that the dream realm never had. Real. Permanent.

"There we are," the voice continued, and she turned her head to see Dr. Soren Morrison sitting beside the bed, his hair catching the soft light from the bedside lamps.

His face was kind but concerned, the expression of someone who had been watching over a patient hovering between life and death. "Welcome back to the waking world, Mailah."

She tried to speak, but her throat felt raw and damaged, as if she’d been screaming for hours. When she finally managed to form words, they came out as barely a whisper.

"How long was I...?" she rasped, her voice sounding foreign to her own ears.

"Three days," Soren replied, reaching for a glass of water from the nightstand. He supported her head with one hand while helping her drink with the other, the cool liquid soothing her parched throat. "You’ve been unconscious for three days. We weren’t sure if you were going to wake up."

His face creased with concern as he continued, "I tried everything I could think of to wake you up. But you were too deep, too thoroughly ensnared in the feeding trance."

Three days. The number hit her like a physical blow.

In the dream realm, she had experienced what felt like weeks. But here, in the real world, only three days had passed.

As her vision cleared and the room stopped spinning, she became aware of something else—an emptiness beside her in the massive bed. The sheets were cool to the touch, undisturbed by another body’s warmth.

"Where is he?" she asked, struggling to sit up despite Soren’s gentle restraint. "Where’s Grayson?"

Soren’s expression became carefully neutral, the practiced mask of a doctor delivering difficult news.

"Don’t worry about that right now," he said, his tone professionally soothing. "What’s important is your recovery. You’ve been through an incredible ordeal, and your body needs time to heal."

"But where is he?" she insisted, panic beginning to claw at the edges of her consciousness.

The last thing she remembered was the look in Grayson’s eyes as he pushed her from the cliff. "Is he okay? What happened?"

Soren’s hands were gentle but firm as he eased her back against the pillows. "Mailah, please. You need to focus on getting better. Everything else can wait."

The evasion sent alarm bells ringing through her mind. Something was wrong—she could feel it in the careful way Soren avoided her eyes.

"I feel terrible," she admitted, her voice barely above a whisper. It was true—every part of her ached with a bone-deep exhaustion that went beyond mere physical tiredness.

It felt as if something vital had been drained from her very essence, leaving her hollowed out and fragile.

"That’s to be expected," Soren said, his professional demeanor softening with genuine compassion. "What you went through—the prolonged feeding—it takes a tremendous toll on the human body. Your life force is severely depleted."

He reached for his small leather bag beside his chair, withdrawing what looked like a crystal vial filled with liquid that seemed to glow with its own inner light. "This will help," he said, uncorking the vial with practiced ease. "It’s a restorative elixir—something my kind has developed over centuries of dealing with supernatural trauma. It will begin to replenish what was taken from you. But the healing process will take time."

Mailah accepted the vial with trembling hands, noting how the liquid inside seemed to pulse with warmth against her palm.

"What exactly was taken from me?" she asked, though part of her already knew the answer.

"Your essence," Soren replied simply. "Your life force, your spiritual energy—whatever you want to call it. Incubi feed on that energy, and the process leaves their victims... diminished. In severe cases, it can be fatal."

Fatal. She thought of Kieran’s golden eyes, his casual reference to her as ’food,’ the way he had spoken of draining her completely without a trace of remorse.

"How close did I come?" she whispered.

Soren was quiet for a long moment, and when he spoke, his voice carried the weight of someone who had seen too much death in his long supernatural life. "Very close. If Grayson hadn’t intervened when he did, if he hadn’t found a way to break his hold on you too..." He shook his head.

The revelation should have brought relief, but instead it only deepened her concern for Grayson. If the feeding process was so dangerous, if breaking her free had required such extreme measures, what had it cost him?

"That’s why I need to know where he is," she said, struggling once again to sit up. "If he saved me, if he went through all of that to get me back, then something must be wrong. Otherwise, he would be here."

Soren’s expression grew more guarded, and she caught a flicker of something—worry? guilt?—in his eyes. "Mailah—"

"Please," she interrupted, her voice breaking on the word. "I need to know. Is he alive? Is he hurt? Did something happen to him because he saved me?"

The doctor was quiet for so long that she began to fear the worst. When he finally spoke, his words were carefully chosen, each one weighed and measured.

"Grayson is... recovering," he said at last, his young face grave with professional concern. "The process of breaking a psychic bond while in full feeding mode—it’s incredibly dangerous for an incubus. It goes against every instinct they have, every drive that keeps them alive. The backlash can be severe."

"What kind of backlash?" she demanded, her heart hammering against her ribs.

"Temporary loss of their supernatural abilities..." Soren trailed off, as if realizing he had said more than he intended. "But he’s strong. He’ll recover, given time."

The clinical tone of his voice did nothing to ease her growing panic. She could read between the lines of what he wasn’t saying—that Grayson had paid a terrible price for saving her, that he might be suffering even now while she lay safe in his bed.

"I need to see him," she said, trying once more to push herself upright. "I need to know he’s okay."

"You need to rest," Soren countered, his hands gentle but implacable as he guided her back down. "Your body has been through an incredible trauma too. You’re severely weakened, and any exertion could set back your recovery by days or even weeks."

As if to prove his point, the simple effort of trying to sit up left her dizzy and breathless. Her limbs felt like they belonged to someone else, heavy and unresponsive. The glowing elixir in her hand seemed to pulse in rhythm with her heartbeat.

"Drink," Soren instructed, supporting her head while she sipped the strange liquid. It tasted like sunlight and honey, like the first breath of spring after a long winter. Almost immediately, she felt a gentle warmth spreading through her chest, pushing back the terrible emptiness that the feeding had left behind.

"Better?" Soren asked, and she nodded, already feeling marginally stronger.

"How long will it take?" she asked. "The healing, I mean."

"If you rest, if you don’t push yourself too hard, and if you continue taking the restorative treatments... perhaps a week. Maybe two." His expression grew stern. "But only if you cooperate. Your body needs time to rebuild what was lost, and that process can’t be rushed."

A week. The thought of lying in this bed for a week while Grayson was somewhere else, possibly suffering, possibly in danger, was almost unbearable.

But she could feel the truth of Soren’s words in her own weakness, in the way her hands shook when she tried to hold the vial steady.

"Will you at least tell me how he is?" she asked, her voice small and defeated. "Please. I won’t try to get up again, I promise. Just... let me know he’s okay."

Something in her tone must have reached him, because his expression softened slightly. "He’s alive," he said quietly. "Unconscious, but alive. The psychic backlash was severe, but his life signs are stable."

The relief that flooded through her was so intense it left her lightheaded. Alive. He was alive. Everything else could be dealt with as long as he was alive.

"Where is he?" she pressed gently, hoping that now that he had started talking, he might be willing to share more.

"In another room," Soren replied, his tone suggesting that was all she was going to get. "Being watched by his guardian."

"Vivienne?," she asked.

Soren nodded. "He’ll recover, Mailah. You both will."

The certainty in his voice was comforting, but it didn’t entirely ease the ache in her chest. She wanted to see Grayson with her own eyes, to touch his hand and assure herself that he was truly going to be all right.

But her body was already betraying her, her eyelids growing heavy as the restorative elixir worked its way through her system.

"I should let you rest," Soren said, beginning to gather his medical supplies. "Sleep is one of the most important parts of the healing process. Your body will use the time to begin rebuilding your depleted energy reserves."

Fear shot through her at the mention of sleep, sharp and immediate. Her hands clenched instinctively around the crystal vial, and she felt her heart rate spike with sudden panic.

"What if I dream again?" she whispered, the words tumbling out before she could stop them. "What if I get trapped like before? What if I can’t wake up?"

The terror in her voice was raw and unmistakable. The memory of the dream realm was still too fresh, too vivid—how easily she had been manipulated and nearly destroyed.