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He said there would be nightmares.
Lydia could handle it, but there were things worse than nightmares. There was waking up in a cold sweat from dreams she couldn't remember and feeling dead leaves in her hair that weren't there she went to pull them away. The holes in her memory scared her more than anything she could remember.
"I need to get away," Lydia said one day to Allison. "I'm only here because I've wanted to be here. I could have graduated last year if I wanted to."
Allison's eyes went wide. "You're going to graduate now?"
"I'm already accepted to three colleges and I can start in January." Lydia stirred her latte with the little wooden stick. "They're all on the east coast."
"You're really leaving," Allison said. "Leaving-leaving. With everything that's going on, you're just going to go. Everything crazy that's happening to you, Lydia, it isn't going to stop if you leave."
Lydia shrugged. "I know, but there have to places where there are less dead bodies for me to stumble upon. Beacon Hills is just going to be blood and death for me. And I get why you want to be here, with all your hunter stuff and your boyfriend stuff, but I don't have any of that."
"You dated a werewolf, too," Allison pointed out.
"Yes, I did. And I was bitten by one and then he semi-possessed me after he died and then used me to come back to life. And now..." Lydia took a deep breath. "He won't get out of my head."
Allison reached across the table and took Lydia's hand. "Are you still having nightmares?"
Lydia hadn't mentioned the nightmares for weeks now. She didn't want Allison to worry about her, and she didn't want to be someone who needed to be worried about. Besides, what could she say? She's having nothing-dreams, but she's pretty sure they have something to do with Peter Hale?
"It's like an echo," Lydia said slowly. "I can still hear him, even though I know he's gone."
"Are you sure he's gone?" Allison asked.
"No. And that's why I have to get away."
College wasn't anything like high school, and that was exactly what Lydia needed. It was challenging, interesting, but sometimes it was annoying to not be the smartest person in the room. She missed her friends, but there was Skype and for some reason, Stiles liked to send her Beacon Hills postcards.
For a while, the empty space went away, but the dreams didn't.
"You're running away from me," Peter purred in her ear.
Lydia looked around the room. It was her dorm, but instead of a pair of twin beds with a wide night stand between them, they were in a huge king sized bed made up with crisp white sheets. Books didn't line the shelves, but black candles that gave the room a warm glow.
"Is this your dream or mine?" she asked. She pulled the blankets further up her chest, just to make sure she was covered. She knew she was naked under those sheets. And so was he. "I think it's yours."
"This is your room," Peter replied. He latched one finger at the top of the blankets and tugged them back down so just the very top of her breasts were exposed. "How would I know what this looks like? I'm three thousand miles away."
"You're in my head," Lydia said. She reached up to grab the blankets again, but he snapped his hand around her wrist.
"You're wasting your time, Lydia. You don't have anything I haven't seen." He leaned in closer and pressed his lips to her neck. "The harder you try to get away from me, the easier it is for me to get to you. And the more you fight me, the more you want me."
Lydia shuddered. He wasn't wrong about that, as much as she wanted to deny it. "You're just a dream," she whispered.
"Do you really think that?" Peter asked. His hand slid beneath the blankets. He touched her breast first, pulling her nipple between his forefinger and thumb. Lydia gasped and he chuckled. "I'm a far cry from all those boys you've been having."
She rolled her eyes and smiled at him. "Oh goody, you found a nipple. If this is my dream, then I know what I like."
"Then you're going to love this," Peter said. He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her on top of him. She could feel his dick hard against the inside of her thigh. It was right there. "Take charge, Lydia. That's what you want, isn't it? To be in control? Take it."
"You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
A slow grin spread across his face. "You better believe it." He brought a hand to her hair and brushed it away from her face. "You'll like it, too. I promise."
It wasn't his promise that made her do it, or the control or taking charge. She just wanted to do it, and she did. Nothing ever stopped her from doing what she wanted, and she wasn't going to start now.
Peter groaned when she pushed onto him. "You feel better than I ever imagined -- and yes, I imagined."
Lydia laughed. "Of course you did." She rested her hands on his shoulders and threw her head back as she writhed with him. She hadn't imagined it, but if she had, she thought it be something a lot like this. His palms, slick with her sweat, all over her body, his teeth raking over her neck, and her nails digging into the taught muscles of his arms.
When she came, she didn't cry out or even gasp. It was like a simple fact.
She fall back on the bed and she looked up at Peter's smiling face. "What?"
He rested a hand on her stomach. "She's going to be such a beautiful baby."
Lydia woke up with a gasp. She was in her dorm, in her twin bed, wearing her pajamas, with her roommate fast asleep on the other side of the room.
It had just been a dream. She honestly didn't think it was anything more than that, but that didn't stop her from going to the student clinic in the morning for Plan B. Just in case.
Lydia knew these woods, but she was certain she'd never been there before. She sat down on the ground, on the dead leaves with snow still caught inside of them, and wrapped her arms around her body.
"Are you cold?" Peter asked. He began to take off his coat, but Lydia shook her head. He was only wearing a thin V-neck sweater under it, but he must have not been cold, because his feet were bare.
"I'm fine," she said. She wasn't fine, but it wasn't because of the weather. "Is this where I was? When I was in the woods?"
Peter shrugged and sat down next to her. "I don't know. I was dead then."
"No, you weren't."
He smiled and touched her hand. "Do you really want to know what happened? Maybe you're better off not knowing."
"I left to get away from all those things I don't know," Lydia snapped. "And you're still here."
"Was leaving such a good idea?" Peter poked her hard in the arm. "Has it been doing you any good? Is it easier to go through this alone? I'm the only person you can talk to. How would you explain to your new college friends that you're a banshee?"
"I don't have to explain it."
"Because you don't know what it means."
He was more right than Lydia wanted to admit. "Don't you have something better to be doing? Because if not, your life is really sad and you wasted a lot of time coming back for this."
"I don't think of it as wasting time," Peter said. He leaned in close to Lydia's ear and she could feel his hot breath against her skin. "I think of it as a slow burn." His voice was low and gravelly, like a growl.
Lydia pulled away from him and got to her feet. She dusted the leaves from the back of her pants and she didn't look back at him as she walked away. "This isn't even a nightmare," she muttered. "This is just boring."
"Go home, Lydia!" Peter called after her. "It's time to go home! You can't run away forever!"
"But I can wake the hell up."
Lydia had plans to go back to Beacon Hills for the summer, but it was easy to convince herself to not go anywhere near there. She went to Europe instead, and then back to school in the fall.
"You'll have to face this sometime," Peter had said in her dreams while she was in Spain. "You're going to have to go back and face me."
"What if I don't want to?" she asked. "What if I'd rather just keep doing it like this? I'm not losing time, I'm having a life. The worst part of it is you popping up in my dreams. Who cares?"
"You care," he replied. "Do you want me haunting you forever?"
"Haunting? Does that mean you're dead? Because that would be really great."
"You'd like that wouldn't you?" Peter asked. He slid his warm hand up her thigh and under her skirt. "I die and everything gets tied up in a nice, neat bow. It's not that easy."
Lydia moaned as he toyed with her. "How do I get rid of you?"
"You'll just have to ask nicely."
No matter how she protested, her parents insisted she come home for Christmas. It didn't matter, she thought. The dreams weren't getting better. They were just as vivid as ever, and Peter just as smug.
"So," Lydia said, sitting with Allison at the same coffee shop where she had told her she was leaving, "Allison and Scott, senior year. How's that going?"
Allison grinned. "Pretty good. What about you? College boys?"
"They're kind of like high school boys," Lydia replied with a shrug. "I only thought they were different because I was in high school."
"And your dreams?" Allison's grin had faded and her eyes were concerned. "Did leaving help?"
"No. Yes. I don't know." Lydia paused. Allison was the only one she'd admit all of this to, but it was still hard to say. Lydia liked easy confidence and anything else was hard. "He's still here, isn't he?"
Allison nodded. "He's around. I can kill him for you, if you want."
Lydia took a sip of her latte and shook her head. "It's a nice offer, but I think I'm going to have to face this one on my own. And I am going to have to face him. I don't think there's any other way. But that would be a nice Christmas present."
"Are you sure?" Allison asked with a smile. "Because Peter Hale's head on the platter is the gift for the girl who has everything. And I was just going to get you a gift card."
"Cute," Lydia replied. "Anyway, I was thinking about going over there this afternoon."
"Do you want me to come with you? Protection or something?"
Lydia thought of the dreams. She still wasn't sure if they were all in her head or if he was part of them, but if it was the latter, she didn't want them thrown in her face in front of Allison. "I'll be fine. What's he going to do? Bite me? That didn't work so well last time."
Allison didn't look convinced, but instead of protesting, she said, "Call me when you're done so I know you're still alive, okay?"
"Will do."
After they finished their coffees, Lydia and Allison went their separate ways. The low hum of the caffeine buzz was exactly what Lydia needed to drive to Peter's building and make herself walk up the stairs to the loft.
She knocked on the door and when it opened, there was Peter, in his green V-neck sweater and jeans, with bare feet. Just like he'd been in so many of her dreams. In the ones where he was wearing clothes.
"Lydia," he said smoothly. "What a pleasant surprise."
"Is it?" she asked.
"I heard that you'd moved," he said. "Please, come in."
She walked in and as she moved past him, she could smell his aftershave and his soap. She'd been so close to him in all her dreams, intimate, and he smelled exactly the same. A shiver went through her at the same as a spark of arousal.
This wasn't a dream, she reminded herself. This was real. Wasn't it? It was hard to tell. She'd been in the loft in her dreams, too.
"What can I do for you?" Peter asked as he closed the door.
"I want to know what you did to me," Lydia said. She turned around to face him, and he was smiling, smug and knowing. "There's all this empty space, time I can't account for. I know it has something to do with you."
He walked slowly down the stairs until he was only an arm's length away from her. "What makes you think I can help you with that?"
"You used me."
"I did what I had to do to survive, little girl. It's done and it's over."
"Maybe for you," Lydia said, trying to keep her voice steady, but failing. "But I still live with it every day. You did this to me and I want you to undo it."
Peter studied her carefully, lifting his chin, and the sun pouring through the window caught his face at such an angle that she could see every line around his eyes and every individual hair on his chin. "There's not a reset button, Lydia. What's done is done."
"I want my life back."
"I can't help you with that. Is that all you came for?"
Lydia didn't move. "I want you out of my head. When you climbed in there, you left something behind and I want it out. I don't know what I have to do, but I will do anything."
"Anything?" His eyes flashed. "What are you willing to do?"
"I'll cut you out."
Peter smiled again and took a step closer to her. "And here I thought you liked our visits."
Lydia's eyes widened. "So, they weren't just dreams."
"They were dreams," he said with a flourish of his hand. "They were just dreams we were having together. Times and places we made together. Choices you made, that I made. We're bonded, Lydia. I had to drag someone into it, and there you were. I knew when I bit you that you were different. The low-level psychic abilities you possess made you perfect for what I needed. What we're experiencing now is just the residual effects."
"Will it go away?" she asked.
"Someday, maybe. Maybe not. I don't know a lot about it."
"And what if I killed you?'
Peter shrugged. "Possibly. You might never get rid of me. But why would you want to?" He took a step closer to her, invading her space. His voice lowered as he continued, "I know you like it, Lydia. Your passion gives you away." He wrapped an around around her waist and pulled her flush to his body. "You can keep trying to walk away from me, but I'm not going anywhere."
Lydia reached into her back pocket and pulled out the knife Allison had given her in the coffee shop parking lot. She didn't think. She sank it deep into his side.
He gasped and took a step back, but he didn't fully pull away from her, his hand still outreached toward her. "Do you think this is going to kill me?" he asked, amused, but through ground teeth.
She took a step forward and pulled the knife along his belly, ripping him open, before she yanked it out. "No, but it can't feel good. If you can get in my head, I can get inside you, too."
Peter fell backwards, stumbling before he hit the ground, but he didn't fall before grabbing Lydia's wrist (You're wasting your time, Lydia. You don't have anything I haven't seen.) and pulling her to the ground with him. He plunged her hand deep into his wound. She tried to pull away from him, but his grip was too strong. His insides were warm, wet, and sticky, but not wholly unfamiliar.
"Do you like to play with dead things, Lydia? Is this what you wanted? Because those dreams you can't remember, the ones about the woods, I'm still there. I know you what you did out there. I think you tried to forget for a reason."
She tried again to jerk her hand out, maybe his hand would slip on the blood that was staining his shirt, her clothes, and the floor, but he held on. She looked around and the knife was within reach. "Let go," she said.
"You started this," Peter hissed.
"No, you started this," Lydia said. "When you attacked me. And now I'm finishing it. By cutting you out." She grabbed the knife with her other hand and moved to stab him in the throat, but he knocked the knife away. It went skidding across the floor, leaving a splatter of blood behind it.
"Are you going to kill me?" he roared, his eyes changing to bright blue. He rolled over so he was atop her, and his organs began to spill from the gash in his stomach. "Go ahead and try!"
And that was when Lydia began to scream.
Peter pulled away from her, screaming himself, and clutching his head between his bloodied hands. Even though he was off of her, she continued to scream, louder than she ever had before, until she saw tears streaming down Peter's face.
When she stopped screaming, Lydia got to her feet, her pulse racing hard in her throat. She looked down at her clothed and they were positively ruined. Then she turned her gaze to Peter, and he was still clutching his head and writhing in a pool of blood, moaning and crying.
Calmly, she turned and walked out the door without a word. As she walked down the stairs, she pulled her cell from her purse and called Allison. "I'm alive," she said.
Lydia went back to school in January. After she and Allison burned her clothes, Christmas turned out to be rather nice. Lydia dreamed of the empty, dark place, but when she woke up she was calm. Sometimes, she still dreamed of Peter.
Sometimes, she didn't even mind.
It was cool in the woods. Lydia knew this was a dream as she sat down next to Peter under a huge maple. He was barefoot, like the last time she saw him. This time, she was wearing a coat. She could stay warm on her own terms.
"Look at what you do to me," Peter said. Blood dripped from his ears. He unceremoniously wiped it away.
Lydia smiled. "You were going to kill me."
"Maybe," he replied, but he smiled too. "I still can't hear, you know. Everything else healed up, but you split open my ears and they're not getting put back together. That scream of yours is the only thing I can hear now. It haunts me. You're always in my head this time."
She thought she could hear it, too, somewhere in the distance. The pieces of his mind that he brought along with him. "So, that's why you came. This is the only place you hear anything else."
"I told you it wouldn't be that easy to get rid of me," Peter said. "Try as you might, Lydia, we're bonded. You can't cut me out."
"It's different now." Yes, something had changed. She was no longer the scared girl wandering through the woods. She knew her way around now, and she wasn't afraid of the big, bad wolf.
"Did you ever want to find out what happened in these woods? The things you did, the things you can't bear to remember?"
Lydia shook her head. "I don't need to know. It happened and it's over. I'm not afraid of it anymore."
He smiled, smug. "Wise decision, banshee."
She frowned slightly at him. "I still don't know what that means. I don't even know how I did that to you. What am I?"
Peter took her face in his hands and kissed her forehead. "You'll find out in time." He got to his feet and he walked away, the leaves crunching with each step.
Lydia could have woken up if she wanted to. The dream was over and Peter was gone, for now, but it was peaceful in the woods. She liked it here, and she didn't mind staying for a while. She breathed in and when she exhaled, she could see her breath in the air.
He said there would be nightmares, but she never thought it could be like this.