65

I wake up startled, with the remnants of a nightmare taking my thoughts.

I take my hands to the painful point in my temples and massage it, taking a few seconds to control unregulated breathing. There is not enough light for me to see more than the shadows and contours of the furniture in the room, but I know that Hunter is next to me, especially because of the heat that his large body spreads through the silk sheet under us.

I light the lamp and swing my legs out of the bed, casting a dislike look at the numbers in red flashing on my alarm clock. It’s four hours and two minutes in the morning. I must have been frightened by the shrill sound and been prevented from turning it off by the torments in my dreams. I'm two minutes late to start my usual routine, and the simple delay once again wakes me up without a drop of good humor.

I grumble a bad word before the first twenty steps around the room, bumping into the wheel of one of my bags with my little finger.

We arrived from a trip las