Niall looked at the woman frozen in mid-action on his couch. Charlotte wore a pair of jeans and a long sweater, and he was glad to see her out of the wet clothes from earlier. By the way her arm was braced, it appeared she had been trying to get up. Whereas he understood Cait probably didn’t have a choice, he hated that magick was used on Charlotte yet again.

He lifted his hand, pushing the apartment door shut behind him without touching it. Charlotte couldn’t move, not even her eyes, and he knew anything he said or did would not register. To her, she would be locked in a dream. He listened to the door lock latch behind him before moving toward her.

She was beautiful as if carved from a Renaissance master’s chisel. There was a wildness in her gaze that haunted him because he knew he was partly responsible for it. In trying to save her, he had broken her. Her curls wound around her head, frozen like the snake hair of Medusa. It was a fitting comparison, not that she was a monster or hideous to behold, but because like the ancient gorgon, she could turn him to stone with just one look. When Charlotte gazed upon him, spoke to him, he became unable to respond.

Niall took a seat next to her, and leaned his head back against the couch. “I am sorry, Charlotte, that we find ourselves yet again in a magickal circumstance. Ya don’t deserve any of this.”

She couldn’t hear him.

“I love my family, but ya won’t believe the mess they made this time.” For a moment, he let himself imagine she sat next to him willingly, and that this was normal. “Maybe I should take ya away from here? We could get on my bike and ride and…”

What was he doing? This wasn’t a date. Charlotte didn’t even like him. He touched his sore cheek where she’d punched him.

After several long moments sitting in silence, he finally lifted his head to look at her. He placed his hand on her back, between her shoulder blades. The skin had lost all pliability. He patted her a few times, wishing she could feel the comfort somehow in her dreams.

He let his hand fall away from her and leaned forward, bracing his arms on his knees. He let the memories he carried flow through him as a reminder as to why he’d taken them. He made himself feel the fear she had in being locked in a basement prison, the feeling of Iain’s magick entering her by force and those eternal seconds when death had lingered inside of her.

“There is so much work to be done, and all I want to do is sleep,” he whispered. “Sometimes I think about stopping and making someone else deal with the dangers of the world, but I can’t abandon my family or my duty.”

The echoes of screams lingered inside him. Charlotte had been terrified when she watched Erik shift into a half panther, half man. He could just imagine how she’d react seeing his wolf. Niall stared at the tip of his forefinger, letting hair grow over the digit as a nail shifted into a sharp claw. He shook his hand, making it return to normal.

Niall knew what his duty was. He was to protect the MacGregor clan at all cost. He was to fight evil in all forms. Magick needed to be hidden and contained. The easiest thing would have been to let Charlotte fall into her insanity and be dismissed as another sad story in the history of mental health.

He couldn’t do it.

Niall paced the length of his living room. The apartment didn’t feel like a home. It felt like just another room, a place to store his weapons if he ever decided to unpack them from his motorcycle.

“I would take it all back if I could,” he told her, not for the first time. The only time he could manage to get words out around her was when she couldn’t hear them. Niall found himself kneeling before her. He gazed at her face. “I would rewind time if I thought it would help fix your future.”

As badly as he wanted her to speak to him, he was just as glad that she couldn’t hear his words. There was nothing to be gained by her learning the truth—any of the truths. Remembering the pain and fear of the past would not help her. Discovering the knowledge he kept buried would not cure her.

“I would let ya see the truth if that meant ya would look at me once the way I see ya every day.” The feelings he suppressed whenever she was around tried to fill him. He looked around the apartment, trying to reassure himself that no one would ever discover the truth of what he was about to say. The words barely left him in a whisper. “I love ya, Charlotte.”

And that was the truth he tried so hard to hide from everyone. He loved her from that very first moment. It had shot through him like a bullet, and like a bullet the knowledge left a giant hole inside him. He promised himself he would not say the words out loud again even if she couldn’t hear them. His feelings were a burden she did not need. He touched his bruised eye. He saw the way she looked at him.

Niall’s dreams were filled with her. They may always be filled with her, but she deserved more than a man who chased demons for a living. He hated to admit it, but she deserved a man like his brother Euann.

There wasn’t much he could do for her in her current state but wait. Niall lifted her into his arms and carried her to his bed. As the spell wore off, she’d be able to relax. He arranged her the best he could and covered her with a blanket.

“I promise ya, Charlotte, I will find a way to help ya.” He kept his voice a whisper, even as he knew no one else was in the apartment to hear. “And I will keep my feelings to myself. They will never be your burden to deal with.”