A mellow hum of delight escaped past the boundary of my lips as a foreign feeling lightly nudging against my neck awoke me. The time that had passed was full of forgotten dreams, all long gone to the human mind. My eyelashes fluttered mindlessly as my subconscious encouraged the perplexing movement with open arms. My bottom lip falling open slightly.

There was a soft pressure resting against the underside of my left facing jawline, and my stomach flickered with lively butterflies as I felt a gentle caress hover over my round cheek; a solid form faintly skimmed my eyelashes as they relaxed under the call of sleep.

The familiar sensation introduced itself the same way as he usually would; demanding and overflowing with an unignorable passion.

A quick spark of lightning darted across my neck as I felt a hot sliver flick at the curve, skimming the nerves, and my hand naturally darted up to touch the foreign feeling. However, instead of coming into contact with what I thought would be my most recent wound, my palm felt the warmth of another's chiselled cheek and the corner of someone else's full bottom lip as they continued without pause to place open-mouthed kisses along the area.

Well, it's not exactly rocket science, there's only one person it could be.

Just as I felt the bridge of Morpheus' nose shift across the edge of my jaw to push at the lobe of my pierced ear, I heard something new. And, even though it was nearly buried beneath the overpowering murmur of a throaty purr, it was still catchable.

It was the quizzical and continuous click of the door trying to open, followed with a clipped knock as though the visitor stopped themself just before they would have begun pounding at the wooden board that was separating the two of us from those who wandered the hallway outside.

My eyes widened at the realization of the intimate moment; the action that I was embracing with loving arms, the idea of rejection eliminated from my mind at the sense of contentment, and the growing anticipation to be undisturbed. Despite the euphoric feeling of calm claiming my physical and mental form, I was abruptly turned to be wide awake and hyper-aware of my surroundings.

Again, the click came, but this time it occurred after the sound of the knob being unlocked flooded the room.

The current of wind crowded the room with a whoosh, and the door whirled open with a signature resonate sound, the sudden changes would have surely achieved perfect silence if I hadn't been paying as much attention as I actually was. The action was followed with a low buzz of disapproval emitting from someone else.

"I will not warn you again. You cannot lock the door. And, you need to leave the bandage on, please and thank you," a feminine and snarky voice accompanied the racket of the door rasping open, pure annoyance dripping off her tongue as she scolded the man who was taking up all the space on the extremely cushioned yet flat bed. "Honestly, out of everybody in this entire manor, and it's you I have to worry about."

A reverberating growl ascended throughout the room, leaving a thick darkness to envelop us in a lover's embrace, the guttural sound being pronounced into my ear and sending shivers across the bits of my body.

As a result of my own withstanding shyness and possibly shame, my body jolted up in an attempt to pull the covers above me and hide underneath them, but it only resulted in starting a stinging agitation that began to rush my upper body. The undeniable mortification was now replaced with a truncated spasm of pain that was paired with a tight-lipped groan racing to slip out, but the atypically rough skin of my peony pink lips were sticking together like glue with insistent impact.

It was merely a moment of confusion, yet Morpheus tensed up beside me anyway as though I was in the process of evaporating. There were no complaints as his touch was like medicine to my aching body, so when he grabbed a secure hold of my right hip, the pain subsided once again and was substituted with a dull twinge.

He then reacted excessively harsh, as predicted.

"Get out." I felt a prick of something sharp gently poke at the plump flesh of my hip as Morpheus tightened his grip on me. "You are upsetting her, and to be honest, your presence irritates me."

"Get out? Me? Me! I'm the qualified human doctor!" She wailed plainly, her voice high as she was clearly already fed up with Morpheus' maddening antics. "And, I'm certainly not the one who has been moaning at her neck for the past hour! Do you think that that is not irritating?"

"You wish you were." He bit back immediately, a short laugh hanging onto the end of his words. His sneer increased with each second. "And, how long did being human last? I could smell the type O consume the air as soon as you stepped in. You are not so human anymore."

By now, my eyes were more than wide, and rather permanently pinned open. My mind was occupied with rambling thoughts that echoed, repeated, echoed, repeated, echoed, repeated, and so on. 'Who is this? Morpheus? Moaning at my neck? My neck? Was Lyonechka right when he said Morpheus was deprived? Touch deprived? Who is she? A doctor? Human? Not human? What happened? Bandage?'

My head shook the thoughts away.

If it was possible to be the human version of 'ugh', I would be it.

"Now-" the woman, a complete stranger to me and an archenemy to Morpheus, let out a breath of air to pacify herself, "-I did not come here to tell you off for the thousandth time, even though I really could. Instead, I came here because I sensed a different pattern of movement in the patient's breathing."

The way her eyes travelled slightly over my own answered an unspoken question that I carried, which was whether or not she knew I was awake, and it was proven quickly that she certainly did know. I shifted my vision towards the blank ceiling. Though I found it odd how she still wasn't making a move to speak to me nor was she walking towards me as a regular doctor would, I figured it was for the best as my oddly sticky hands clamped together on impulse. Maybe she noticed my apprehension and took it as a sign to keep her focus on Morpheus, who seemed to listen intently in spite of his unfair attitude.

"Yes, she is awake." Morpheus slid up on his single elbow and leaned over my face with a look of adoration in his eyes, successfully blocking the stare-off that I was having with the ceiling. It appeared as though they had both found comfort in the fact that I was up and, from what I could tell, well. His tone invited her opinion with his next spectacle, "Although, she appears to be a bit out of it. Is that normal?"

"Considering she's mated to one of you, yes." She smirked at her own joke, snickering to herself before she continued, "I'm just kidding. But, yes. It's completely normal for someone who has been going through as much trauma as she has been in such little time to start to feel this way. She's only human, and a bite to the neck will not be easy to tolerate."

Morpheus' upper lip vibrated almost imperceptibly, and the eyes that were once gazing into mine narrowed as he turned to study the side of my neck. He furthered his actions, lessening the space between us as his eyebrows pulled together in worry instead of hatred, and he switched back to me. "My mate, are you feeling okay?"

My top lip lifted to match his expression, failing as it revealed a sliver of my two front teeth. Sarcasm swished around in my mouth before I sighed in response, "Never better."

I even straightened my hand to give an enervated thumbs up, but he took it as a request to hold it, and his fist covered my lone thumb until it was functionally missing.

It was then that she spoke to me.

"Emery, it is truly amazing to see that you're up and responding. I've heard so much about you in the short amount of time that I have known Johnny. I wish that we would have been introduced in a much different way, but life tends to throw us for loops sometimes." The woman stepped closer towards the bed, her thin body dressed in a tight ensemble of black and not the stereotypical white coat, it somewhat worried me, but she did carry an aura of knowledge and attentiveness that I recognized. She looked to be only in her early twenties, but in this world, it seemed that anything could be possible. "My professional name is Doctor Fernsby, but I would much rather it if you called me Vakerie. None of my friends refer to me as my surname."

I nodded, watching as she smiled warmly at me, and noting how the paleness of her cheeks was unwavering.

Vakerie advanced closer, outstretching an arm towards me, and inquired, "If you don't mind I would like to walk you through your wounds, perhaps the presence of your mate has been hiding the true severity of them."

"I can inform her," Morpheus interrupted. The highlighted nature of his voice was one of guilt, and it became sharper as he added faintly, "She is my mate."

"Very well." Vakerie retracted her touch, suddenly rippling with an identical aura that Morpheus was giving off. Sorrow. "Be sure to come get me when you're done. I will try to not overhear in the meantime."

As soon as the door closed behind her, it was like she was never there at all, and the once quietness of the room turned scarily eerie. Morpheus finally spoke up after tortuously endless minutes of listening to the same fictitious sonances that my head tried to execute, "Will you forgive me?"

Surprisingly, no reason came to mind. "For what?"

It was at that very moment that I was able to observe things that I simply didn't before. Morpheus seemed to avoid looking away, and even his larger body had started to work around my own; it did not matter which way I moved, although there was not much movement being made by me anyway. All this seemed unimportant once I noticed the features of his face were now dull, his eyes no longer bright as they were being pulled down with an unspeakable weight. Ironic, for someone who had been sleeping for most of their life. The striking confidence that could lure in the deadliest of snakes was finished; dropped of all effectiveness, power, and prestige. And, while there were moments in the past where he seemed remorseful, he represented nothing but it now.

"Everything."

Morpheus tilted his head as he looked at me, searching for a reaction to appear, whether it be good or bad. If I had to guess, then I would have thought that he believed I could barely remember what had happened, but I did. There was no sound that came from him after, merely the wave of his heart beating, for it was so strong that even my ears could hear it. Soon, it would have shaken the entire manor. I drowned the noise out with a trail of naive questions, "What are my wounds? Are there many? Are they that serious?"

His hand tenderly moved to run along the edge of my neck, "There is extensive bruising on your back. It will be sore, however, thankfully that will heal effectively with time."

There was more. I knew there was more. "And?"

"I bit your neck, Emery." Morpheus was not one to use my name.

I didn't want to respond, for I knew it was going to be a word of forgiveness.

"I can fix it," he murmured, moving in closer as he grabbed my face with his massive hands. "I swear I can."

"Please, let me fix it."

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