#Chapter 136 – Left Behind

Lila The first thing I felt was heat. Not warmth—heat. Stale and thick. It was so how I forgot how to breathe. My skin clung to the sheets with sweat, my limbs heavy as soaked wool. Every part of me pulsed with fatigue, even my bones. The taste in my mouth was bitter, metallic, as if I’d bitten down on a coin in my sleep. I blinked against the low light. The curtains were drawn, but not tightly. A sliver of evening sun painted a line across the floor, bleeding gold into the shadowed chamber. Outside, I could hear distant voices. I reached instinctively for him, but Damon wasn’t here. My hand fumbled across the bed, fingers dragging through cool linen where his body should have been. No indentation. No scattered coat or tossed book. No faint echo of his scent on the pillow beside me. The bed had been empty a while. I sat up too quickly, and the world tilted—slow and wrong. My vision pulsed at the edges. The pounding in my head spiked, and I pressed a hand to my temple