Chapter 14 #2
I pulled my thoughts all the way back. The fucking bond lurched in my chest, angry that I shut it down. We had a ton of skin-on-skin contact lately, so it was only a matter of time before I felt the effects.
“M-my eyes are f-fucking up h-here,” she tried to growl, but her shivering made it come out more like someone riding their bike over a rumble strip, all choppy.
“Did you know you had scales?” I asked, completely ignoring her attempt at a glare. “They’re faint, but beautiful.”
The rose on her cheeks deepened at my compliment, and the sweetness of it was a complete contrast to her fist hitting my ribs. Gods, her knuckles were sharp.
“I’m aware. But they’re my scales, buddy. Mine. And I didn’t say you could drool over them.”
Her finger poked me repeatedly as she told me off, and I hoped I looked like I was listening intently because the entire time I was actually fighting back a grin.
I missed her sass. Another shiver interrupted her next round of criticism, and I was pulled back to the task at hand.
She was still sitting in soaked clothes, and I had a feeling removing the rest of them was going to be tricky.
“Not to interrupt,” I said, leaning forward. “But I need to get your bottoms off now. Is that okay? I promise not to peek.”
Her eyes flew up and locked onto mine. Exhaustion lingered just on the edge, but this undressing game and my gentle brushes on her skin were enough to taunt our bond once more, and this time I swore there was an answering heat on her end.
The adrenaline from its pull wouldn’t fuel her for much longer.
“H-how are you not going to p-peek?” she asked, then pulled that full bottom lip between her teeth with worry.
“By being very, very careful,” I swore.
My hands were rooted to the countertop on either side of her thighs, waiting for the slightest signal of a green light; every muscle tense. This moment was important. Move too fast and I’d lose her trust. Move without permission and… well, that would be stupid.
When she finally nodded, I went slowly but efficiently.
Dipping under the towel so that she remained covered, I hooked my fingers under the waistband of her shorts and panties. She lifted, and I pulled them off in one go. They landed next to her shirt and bra with a wet plop . Gripping her waist, I picked her up and set her on her feet.
Pulling the dry shirt over her head, I let her handle the rest. She did a little shimmy and somehow managed to get it to wiggle down at the same time as the towel.
The soft cotton fell to her knees, covering all but some faint scales on her calves.
They were fading, though, as her skin finished drying.
She looked utterly kissable, and it was both a novelty and a curse that I got to see her like this and do nothing about it. Unable to help myself, I picked her up—my new favorite thing—and carried her back into the bedroom to tuck her under as many covers as I could find.
There wasn’t the slightest hint of an argument from her. The biggest sign that her exhaustion had won out and took her fight right along with it. I backed away from the bed one staggered step at a time. I wanted to run forward and dive under those sheets with her.
Step back.
I wanted to wrap her in my arms and pull her to me. To mold our bodies together until we fit like the perfect puzzle.
Another step back, motherfucker.
My hand gripped the doorknob with enough strength to fucking hurt. Just before I all but threw myself into the hall, she called out to me, her sleepy voice muffled under the pile of blankets.
“Thank you, Ez.”
My heart nearly stopped, and a thick knot of emotion clogged my throat.
“You don’t ever have to thank me for taking care of you,” I swore, then gently shut the door before I lost the will to leave altogether.
“I am , Kai, but I’m not sure how much longer I can hold them off.”
Cova’s voice carried from the living room to where I stood at the bottom of the stairs.
I hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but the second I heard my cousin’s name, I peered around the corner.
The siren heir stood on the far side of the room, by the bay windows that overlooked the pool, phone held up to his ear.
His fist was clenched tightly around his cell, and his other hand continually ran through his hair until it stuck out in all directions. I’d never seen him look so normal. The bastard did have emotions.
“Then you hold up your end of the bargain and figure out a way to fix it,” he snarled. “This is exactly how it started before. Go ask your bond how that worked out for her people.”
He hung up the phone as vehemently as one could when tapping a touchscreen.
Still staring out the window, I watched him pull his emotions back, like coiling a rope, until his usual calm I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude was back on display.
Too bad for him, I was about to bring all that anger right back to the surface and poke it with a stick.
I needed answers, and by the gods, he was going to give them to me.
“I see you and my cousin have been talking behind my back,” I said, sauntering into the room and striding right up into his bubble. “I haven’t spoken to Kai in three fucking days, but he has no problem answering your calls.”
He narrowed his eyes but didn’t cede any space to me.
His posture remained rigid, the only sign my presence was annoying him, and I smirked.
With Cova, I learned long ago to read all the minor details he thought himself immune to displaying.
Someone wasn’t as unfeeling as they wanted others to believe.
“Things are getting bad,” he replied as if that was enough of an answer.
I already knew that shit. “Yeah, yeah, it's not a fun day at the rodeo, we know. But are the bulls out of the pen or did the clowns just piss in the buckets again?”
His brows scrunched together to create one giant blue caterpillar. “I have no idea what the fuck you just said.”
Fucking hell, you’d think I wasn’t speaking English.
“How bad?” I asked. It was as plain a question as I could make it, and the bastard still only looked at me. Now it was my turn to glare. “ How bad? ”
He blew out a breath, and the vein at his temple throbbed enough to distract me. That was until he said the three words guaranteed to set me the fuck off.
“She’s in danger.”
There was no need for games or tricky language to understand who he meant. Rani. My bond. The unknowing other half of my fucking soul was in danger. Gods-fucking-dammit. Things were just starting to turn around for her, and now there was a threat coming from the outside?
“Does this have any relation to the djinn attack that happened the night you arrived?” Did their vendetta really go so far as to risk a war with two factions? “Wait. They said something about sirens needing sigils now? That it was a tribunal ruling?”
What the hell had we missed? Being secluded at a fancy beach house for the summer sounded like a great idea when I’d thought of it, but now I wondered if it was the wrong move.
Obviously, Rani needed it, so it wasn’t.
But maybe there was some middle ground option I was missing that could have allowed her the space to heal while still keeping me in the know about what was going on in our world.
Cova’s lips flattened when I said the word ‘sigils,’ and I had a sick feeling that things were more than bad. They were fucked up.
“There’s a band of rogue sirens somewhere off the coast of Italy that have become a major nuisance,” he said.
“How major?”
“They used their siren calls to try and control the Italian prime minister while he was on holiday.”
“Oh,” I replied. “Fuck.”
“Fuck, indeed. I’m still working on finding them, but it’s not fast enough for the tribunal, and they’ve become impatient.
The sigils were their solution. It tracks the location and power usage of every single member of my faction.
Every step. Every fucking sneeze. Every time they speak to a fish beneath the waves, the tribunal will know. ”
This was more than a consequence; this was a gross overstep.
It was downright invasive to have an entire faction’s population monitored like that, and I had a better understanding of Cova’s earlier comment to my cousin.
This is eerily similar to how the tribunal started to slowly control the nightmares… right before they eliminated them.
I wasn’t involved much in politics; my hands were more for the dirty work, but it didn’t take a genius to know the sigils were a suggestion put forth by the djinn.
The vampires were too afraid to go against them, so that was another vote, and the oracles, while technically supposed to be impartial, probably saw this as a compromise.
The sirens and witches obviously voted against it, and Eryn’s parents hadn’t been reinstated as full members yet to have a vote. Gods, my head fucking hurt just thinking about it. There was a reason Kai handled this bullshit and I stuck with the bloody bits.
“What does this have to do with Rani?” She was safe here, locked behind the wards.
“You mean besides her being a siren?”
My eyes narrowed. “Obviously, besides that.”
“The tribunal is pushing for all sirens to receive their sigils. My people have been called to land for the first time in our written history. There’s some concessions, such as newly made members and those freshly bonded, but that will only delay the inevitable.
” He gave me a pointed look. “With regular therapy and training, Rani will regain her health within a couple of weeks.”
I waved my hand. “I fail to see how that’s a bad thing.”
“Use your fucking head, Ezra. Once she’s healthy, there will be no reason she can’t be brought to the tribunal to receive her sigil. The djinn are already demanding it, and I’m not sure how much longer Kai and I can delay them.”
Over my fucking dead body. I wanted her nowhere near that viper’s nest. The djinn weren’t the only danger there; my family was just as vile, just as poisonous.
And the second they found out she was my bond?
All their animosity and hatred would carry onto her.
My soul might be stained enough, but she didn’t deserve an ounce of that.
“She knows nothing about our world or her own kind!” I shouted, as if the tribunal could hear me. “They can’t make her do this.”
“They can, and they will,” Cova argued, resigned. “For all that she was a human only a couple of months ago, she’s a siren now. They don’t care. Sooner or later, she will be brought before them. Whether it’s by force or by choice remains to be seen.”