Chapter 15
Lirin
Ihold her in my arms while the Grim destroys what is left. It’s not until I move up out of the hole we’re in that I see the extent of what she has done. My strength is coming back slowly but steadily.
Canto whistles low in his throat.
I hug her more tightly to my chest, feeling how slight she is. She’s fragile like a bird, with hollow bones or something. How did she kill this many creatures?
Puppy whirls and changes back into his human form. He wraps us in shadows and drags us away.
I’m thrown out of the shadows and into a familiar beach house.
“Now that you are all here, let’s discuss this,” Diablos says in a deep, pissed-off voice.
“Get out,” Ronit says as he comes towards me. He looks down at Mei and then, to my absolute surprise, he brushes her hair back from her face and lifts her out of my arms. He goes and sits on the couch, just holding her and almost daring anyone to say anything.
“You left-”
“GET OUT!” Reed howls. “This was you and your stupid deal. You said get rid of it. Everyone went in and couldn’t get out. You and your lack of information almost got us all killed.”
“You should have spoken to the neighbours, you should have-”
Reed rushes him, but Wilder steps in front of him, and if there’s anyone we would fear, it’s Wilder. He is a legend among our kind. Especially while we are less than what we should be.
“Oh, relax everyone,” I say lightly. “We went down and got stabbed by the thing in the dark.” Memories of flashing pain and my body feeling like it’s burning up from the inside slam into my head.
“You got stabbed?” Puppy asks with a growl and looks at Diablos in accusation.
“Well, it was dark, and it was a big…thing.” I shrug.
“To be fair, I don’t know what it was. It just hurt and uh…
then we woke up in Nightmare,” I turn and look at Brio, winking at him, “haha, we got an excursion, and you didn’t.
And it was hot, and there were bodies everywhere, and Mei was killing things, which was disorienting.
But it took a moment for the tingles to go before I could even move. ”
I look back at Mei, who is absolutely filthy.
“She saved us, I think. No, I know. She stayed, and she could have let us die, but she stayed.”
Why did she stay?
Reed startles hard and looks at her like he’s seeing her for the first time.
“She dragged you both out of the tunnel. It was collapsing,” he murmurs.
“She dragged us?” Canto says sharply.
“Yes, out of the tunnel. She was in the basement, just behind me. I was going to drop Ronit and Brio off and go back for you, but the house caved in,” Leaf growls and kneels in front of Ronit, reaching out to lay a hand on Mei’s filthy hair.
I turn and remember we have an audience.
“What was in that house?” Diablos asks Puppy.
“I don’t know. A demon thing,” he says dismissively.
“Beetle,” she says.
I move closer so that I can see her.
“A what?” Stix asks sharply.
“It was a beetle. It’s dead. I took care of it.”
“You killed a beetle, dragged their sorry asses out of danger, saved them from a collapsing house, and then stood guard fighting off an army of monsters just to keep them safe? Why?” Stix growls, his eyes staring at her in a way that makes me want to rip them from his head.
Mei struggles up, her lips thinning into a straight line. “Diablos, go and annoy your mate, I want to sleep.”
“Bath first,” Ronit growls.
She whines.
The room goes electric. I turn on the invading alphas with a feral growl in my throat. I open my mouth and let out a single note of pure and deadly intent.
They all disappear.
“Lirin?” Mei calls.
I gasp and struggle to rein it all back in. What the hell was that? I look down at my skin and see the bioluminescent stripes pulsing upon me in my rage.
“Alpha?”
The word stops me dead. It’s like a chain between me and her. I can’t move, I can’t go anywhere, I can’t see anything else but her. Turning to look at her, my knees bend so I can kneel by her. She can’t see it, but I can’t do anything else.
“Are you injured?” she asks. “Did you get hurt?”
What is this? Am I injured?
“No, I am fine.”
“You should have the site of that bite cleaned-”
“Ronit,” I growl, standing up.
He hands her back to me, and I walk down the back of the house to that room I spent most of my time in. I tear my clothes free, ripping them off, and then I carefully rip off hers before I walk down into the lukewarm water.
She tenses, but I just hold her. It takes me a while to get her clean, but I am methodical, but by the time I’m done, she is a purring mass of putty and almost asleep.
I step out of the pool and carry her to her room, but I stand on the threshold, staring in.
Instead of going in, I snatch up one of the jumpers that Reed has been wearing lately and a pair of Canto’s shorts, covering her up.
I turn back and bring her into the lounge where I sit on the couch. Ronit passes me a blanket that I tuck around her.
The others arrange themselves around us.
How many times is this strange monster going to save my life? I sigh heavily and look up at the ceiling. I can’t hate her anymore. I can’t even pretend. I don’t have it in me.
“Do you remember when we first became Sirens, and we were so angry? I was actually convinced that there was no one who was as hard done by as us, but I think I may be wrong. Mei is skilled. She is vicious, fast, and deadly. She could have killed us at any time.”
“Where are you going with this, Lirin?” Brio asks in exasperation.
“Why didn’t she kill us? If she hates us enough to kill our mate and set our world on fire, why didn’t she kill us when she had all those chances?”
It’s a question that doesn’t seem to have an answer, and I don’t really expect it to. The sea air is comforting, and the monster in my arms is soft.
She is mine, I think absently. My monster. Diablos can’t have her.
Where are these thoughts coming from? Why am I feeling so possessive?
I remember the way she looking the last time I saw her, so small in the dark, fighting to swim and evade the creatures of the deep.
“Lirin,” Reed snaps. “Put her down and take a walk.”
I stop the low growling and then hesitantly set her down on the couch where she curls up into a tight ball, and I walk out to the ocean.
I wade in and then dive, disappearing under the waves.
The cold feels so good compared to the harsh, dry heat of the world.
I open my mouth and sing, hearing whales and dolphins echo back.
I look down at my body, at my tail. It’s long, muscular, and powerful but covered in hard, iridescent scales that shimmer blue-green. My fingers are webbed with deadly claws instead of fingernails. I’ve got gills, and my teeth are sharp.
I hate this body. I have spent so many years wishing I could do anything to get rid of it. We have this one chance. We can do it. Except…Mei.
Twelve months with human legs, and if we fail, we return to the Black Death Oceans as Sirens forever. That was the deal we made. To find the Fae who did this to us, who made us into these creatures. A deal with a stranger, someone whose face we never saw.
We have less than two months left.
That desperate deal with Diablos should never have been made.
I scream under the water, letting out all my frustration.
I race for the surface and send myself flying through the air before crashing back down again.
Her face as she glared at the monsters. The exhaustion and determination before she collapsed in Nightmare keep flashing up every time I close my eyes.
“Lirin,” Brio says sharply.
I still, the waves bring us closer together, and I press my forehead to his.
“What’s going on in your head?” he asks.
“So many, many things,” I murmur with a broken chuckle.
He’s silent for a long moment and then lifts his arm and presses his palm to my cheek. “You got really upset over her.”
“She keeps saving me, Brio, and I don’t understand why.”
Brio surprises me by laughing. “Do you not?”
“No, it makes no sense.”
“You’re thinking about it way too hard,” he says dismissively.
“We fucked up, Brio. Like really badly. Any one of us could have died, but she got all of us out. She was smart and capable and not violent or an animal like we’d presumed.
She’s capable of courage, strength, wisdom, empathy, and heart.
Tonight, we all could have died, and she might have died trying to save us.
This place, this world…it’s more dangerous than we give it credit for. And yet, there she was.”
Brio waits for me to finish talking.
“What if she is our mate?” I whisper. I surge towards him. “What if we were wrong? What if it was always Mei?”
He rears back. “We talked about this. You can’t say anything to the others. We don’t know for certain, but what we do know is that she killed our mate or who we thought was our mate and set the sky on fire. That’s enough reason to hate her.”
“But is it?” I stress. “Is defending herself really a reason to hate her?”
“We go back, Lirin!” Brio says sharply. “In two months or less, we will be forced to go back to the Black Death Oceans, and we will never be able to walk again. Fins and tails forever. Those bodies forever. Never leaving that space between worlds. Slaves to the whim of others. Do not forget yourself.”
I shudder.
“Alone, with no one to speak to, doing the forgotten bidding of the Fae lords and ladies who punished us or our new master. What was it you were there for? Oh, that’s right, you dared to say no to a lady,” he sneers the word, “who commanded you to her bed. Your father fought for you and died. We have a chance to escape.”
I flinch. “It was a long time ago, but it doesn’t mean that everyone is the same.”
“No, it doesn’t, but she’s been both good and bad; we don’t know if we can trust her. I caution you to keep your words to yourself. It will anger Ronit and Canto. Reed will be devastated if you betray us.”
I nod my head and splash the surface of the water with my hand.
“You’re right. Nothing will come of bringing it up.
It’s just, tonight, for a moment, I didn’t feel right.
I felt…like I was supposed to be someone else.
Like I was strong and fierce, and I would have died to protect her. It was strange.”
“Nightmare voodoo,” Brio says at once.
I chuckle at Brio’s disgruntled face, but I think he’s lying to himself. I think there’s a lot about Mei that we don’t understand and that maybe we should take the time to learn.
“Come on, let’s go back. I don’t want to have to fight another pointer.”
I follow Brio as we head back through the waves. When we walk into the house, my eyes go straight to her, and is it my imagination or did she just relax a little bit in her sleep once we walked in?
The evil cat has returned, and it has curled up beside her and is purring. She seems to like the sound.
Blood, green, red, and blue drips off her. She sways, but she launches at another monster and shoves her claws deep into its stomach cavity and rips its guts out. He howls, but I can only see her. Her hair glows like golden fire, and she looks like the fiercest thing I have ever seen.
She’s saving me again.
What does it mean?
I walk over and kneel beside her, staring at her face, trying to unpick the puzzle that is confusing me all over. She’s a happy song in my head, a sweet melody, a charming tune. Someone I want to know more about, and I shouldn’t.
It goes against all our plans to become anything, even friends with this monster.
She dragged us out of a collapsing house.
“She will be hungry,” I say to Kit defensively. It’s like those feline eyes are judging me. I sneak Ronit’s black card he got from Diablos, and I go for a long walk.
When I get back, I nudge her awake.
She stiffens.
“Open your mouth, Strega.”
She slowly opens her mouth. I spoon the hot pikelet into her and watch every tiny little micro-expression chase its way across her face. Something in my chest that has been vibrating uneasily loosens and relaxes when she takes the food I offer her.
Bit by bit, I feed her everything I bought until she lets out a contented sigh. She leans forward and hugs her cheek on my arm.
I freeze, staring at the spot that now smells like her. I lift it to my nose and inhale the scent. My teeth ache, and I feel myself getting aroused.
Before I can do anything stupid, I stand up and back away. Then go back out to the beach and sit in the surf.
It doesn’t help at all.
I reach between my legs and palm my hard cock, feeling the knot at the base.
Is Mei an omega?