Chapter 21
Leaf
She’s gone.
There’s no sign, no trail, it’s like she just disappeared into thin air. Something inside tugs and pulls, twisting painfully, driving me to the edge of sanity.
I grip my hair and yank. Kit rubs his cheek on mine, his claws slipping deep into my shoulder to keep balance, but it doesn’t distract me like it normally does.
“We have to find her,” I snarl at the Sirens.
“Yes, I agree with you. It's just…how?” Lirin says with quiet exasperation. “I have no idea how to track her, what to even look for, and she has years of remaining on the run and not getting caught. How do we find her when she doesn’t want to be caught, Leaf?”
Ronit growls and rubs his hand across his face. “She’s a target for Deux, so whatever we do, we need to do it fast, and get her back to safety.”
“Is she really safe with us?” I ask spitefully. “Brio got hurt, and she almost died trying to save him. I wonder if we are the reasons why she is running.” Just saying those words makes me feel all kinds of panic; those are dark ocean thoughts. We don’t voice them out loud.
“We fight him better together. We need to figure it out. But that can be sorted out later, all that matters right now is finding her,” Reed snarls, and to my quiet pleasure, he looks the most distressed with her absence. Does Reed care more than he pretends?
Canto is quiet. “I’m going to look.”
“I’ll come with you,” I say immediately.
“No, I’m going alone.”
I growl, and everything in me wants to body slam him into the wall and start a fight that will collapse this building.
“Fine, go.” Ronit waves his hand and stands up, walking to the front of the house.
It’s got polished floorboards with really comfortable furniture. It’s not a house for show, this one is for comfort, and the view of the ocean feels like it goes on forever. The house is on a cliff, but there’s a staircase down to a small beach. A private beach.
“Why would she leave?” I ask, and my skin prickles, then spikes painfully. “Ow! What is this?” I growl.
“The curse kicking in. She’s been gone for about nine hours. But it’s decided that’s enough time,” Brio says, sitting up. “She was dreaming, did anyone else see her dreams?”
I choke. “I’m sorry, what? You can see her dreams now?” The more I learn about the Sirens, the more interested I am in them, but sometimes, the things that they can do surprise me.
Sometimes I miss the simpler world of us fighting endlessly.
But then I remember Mei.
Brio swallows hard. “In her dreams, she was dreaming about me as a child and dancing with me while I sang to her, and then it changed, and we were drowning her, and she was letting us.”
There’s a heavy silence where Ronit folds his arms over his chest, refusing to look at us. “Do you think she believes that?” He asks with no inflection in his voice.
I honestly don’t see how it could possibly matter.
“Maybe, I mean it would feel like that if it were me,” Lirin says. “She’s losing her whole self to us and this world.”
“How so?” I challenge, outraged. I shift my weight and stalk towards him. He raises an eyebrow but doesn’t back up. Not even when I grab his throat and squeeze. “Tell me, Siren, how am I making my beloved drown.”
“Because we keep almost getting her killed,” he says and tugs at my wrist until I let go.
“Oh, yeah, there is that.” I have all this rage in me and nowhere to direct it.
Brio is still pale, but I saw Ronit check his chest earlier, and he’s got no wounds, not even a scar.
“Why can she heal you so you have no scars, but her body is covered in them?” I ask in irritation.
“Because she can’t afford to use her healing magic on herself. It makes her vulnerable,” Ronit says without looking at us.
A part of me wants to go to him, stand beside him, absorb the still, confident comfort from him. Have him say something to make it all better.
Ronit is my alpha, though I’m not sure I will ever tell him.
“Yet, she saved me,” Brio murmurs.
“You are special,” Lirin teases, but his teasing is so contrived we can all hear it, even me.
“Enough!” Ronit says darkly. “We’re not looking for her. Canto can go, but we’re going to respect her desire to try and outrun this curse. If she can’t do it, she will be back, but we’re not going to force her. Not after yesterday.”
He’s right, I know he’s right, but the bite mark is throbbing painfully. I rub it, feeling it ache.
“What’s wrong with your finger?” Lirin asks. “Did Deux get you? We need to clean it up.”
“No, it’s not from Deux,” I say hesitantly.
Ronit turns around really slowly, but the whole room turns ice cold.
“How did you get the wound on your finger?” He asks in a dark voice.
I glare at him, furious at his tone. “She bit me.”
Ronit’s eyes flare wide, his mouth drops open, but it’s the sizzling strike of his temper filling the room with his scent that has me growling and preparing to shift shape.
“Did you bond her?” Ronit asks in a low voice.
“Bond?” I ask in confusion.
“Oh, jeez, he doesn’t even know what it is,” Lirin says and flings himself onto the couch. “Did you bite her? Did she bite you?”
I snarl, not wanting to give that information, but my temper rises to match theirs.
“You did!” Reed says in horror. “Leaf, you don’t know what you have done.”
“She is mine!” I bellow.
“No-” Brio protests.
“She has always been mine,” I snarl, and the Sirens finally remember who I am. My coils are everywhere, and I snarl and bare my teeth in their direction.
I am Leviathan, and she is mine.
The tension in the room goes up and falls away. They aren’t scared of me, but they are wary.
“Perhaps we can find a solution, but none of it matters while she’s not here.”
***
Five more painful hours pass until the moon is high in the sky, and I feel like I’m about to go insane. Canto returned and is sitting on a chair, staring at a wall.
We aren’t speaking, and they aren’t speaking to me. Apparently, the biting was something wrong. But how could something so wrong feel so right?
A tug inside wakes me from the doze I’ve slipped into, and I find myself walking to the front of the house.
The rain is pouring down in sheets. Lightning and thunder are ripping around the world, battling out their roaring fight for supremacy, but at the bottom of the stairs, staring at me in a ruined black dress she was carefully put in is Mei.
I step down, afraid that if I rush to her, she will disappear. This is the only creature in all the worlds that can make me feel fear.
She doesn’t move, and when I wrap my arms around her, she still doesn’t move. She just lets me hug her and leans forward, pressing her face to my chest.
“I didn’t know where else to go,” she whispers, and then to my utter despair, the Healer, the witch, my beautiful omega slumps like she’s given up completely.
I lift her into my arms and carry her into the house.
“If you can’t fight, I will fight for you.
I will be your teeth. If you can’t see, I will be your eyes and guide you.
If you can’t get up, I will carry you, you weigh little, and I am strong.
There is nothing I won’t do for you, Mei.
You just need to tell me, but don’t leave me again.
I will come with you. You just need to ask.
I’m your Leviathan. The world and all the others can burn, but I am just for you. ”
She lifts her cold arms and wraps them around me.
I can feel the stares of the Sirens. They feel the same as I do, they aren’t ready to admit it, but they are hers as well, they just don’t know it yet.
I will make them know it.
Lirin walks into the bathroom and starts the shower. I carry her in, dressed, and just hold her until the trembling stops.
She’s exhausted and numb, her scent keeps spiking, hot and sweet, and her temperature seems to be fluctuating up and down.
Is this a heat?
I stroke her back and realise that if I want to be a good mate to her, then there are things I need to find out. Can I ask the Sirens? Will they give me the right information?
Reed holds a towel out, and she walks into it. He takes his time drying her off, wiping over those shimmering runes, then he guides her to a dark room.
She stands there at the edge of the threshold.
“What is it?” she asks tonelessly.
“It’s a nest, Mei.”
Her body stiffens, but then her scent gets really sweet, and she creeps inside, feeling the material-covered walls and then the bed in the middle. Kit walks in, jumps up, and curls up on the pillow. That seems to break her from her frozen pose, and she climbs up, too, curling up in a ball.
“No one will enter your nest unless you invite them,” Reed says and looks at me pointedly.
I wait for Mei to say something, but she doesn’t.
Reed tilts his head, and I follow him back out to the kitchen. He makes me a hot drink and slides it across to me.
I accept the offering, noting another connection between us all. I slide him a biscuit and watch with deep satisfaction as he takes my offering.
“Sometimes, omegas, in order to feel safe, need to have their own spaces where they control everything.”
“I’m not going to hurt her,” I protest.
“It’s not about hurting, it's about feeling out of control.”
“Is she feeling out of control?”
“There’s not much she can control right now, Leaf, even her reaction to us and to you seems to be out of her control. She’s not in her home, this world is different and hard to navigate, she’s being hunted.”
I growl at the mention of that monster.
“So, we give her some space?”
“Yes, right now, so she doesn’t run away again, we stay here where she knows that if she needs us we will be right here, but we do not encroach into that room unless she says the words.”
I growl.
“Leaf, did you have sex with her when she bit you?” Lirin asks as he walks into the room.
I cock my head to the side. “What’s sex?”
“When you get aroused, you have a dick between your legs, right?”
“Dick?”
“Your maleness,” Lirin says and leans on the counter beside me. “Third leg.”
Oh. “Yes.”
“Did you put it in her?”
I snarl.
“That’s sex. Did you have sex with her, Leaf?”
“So what if I did?”
Lirin sighs heavily. “Changes things. It’s going to have to change things.”
Reed is watching me closely, what they are saying isn’t making any sense. Changes what things?
“Did you get stuck together, too?”
I growl in warning. It’s private.
“Shit, fucked, knotted, and bonded,” Lirin says and hides his eyes behind his hand.
“She is mine.”
“Yeah, we heard you, old boy. She is yours. There is no refuting that fact, especially not now.”
Ronit walks into the room and pauses. “Leaf, let’s talk.”
I follow him to the window where we stare out at the ocean.
“Do you know what an alpha is?”
“I think so.”
“Let me tell you again. An alpha is a type of male who is born different. He’s stronger, more aggressive, and he becomes unstable as the years go by.
Alphas are dangerous, and generally, they have one person in the world who can calm them.
Years ago, there were omegas everywhere, but those days are long gone, and now the only place you can find them is here. ”
“Okay.”
“Mei is an omega, and you and the rest of us are alphas. Mei is starting to awaken, and as she does, she will go into what is called a heat where she will want to breed, to have sex, and be knotted. It can be very painful, but it’s also a very vulnerable time.
There are lots of issues associated with an omega coming into heat, but the most important one to you is that your temper will get worse, you will want to touch her, protect her, destroy anything and anyone that makes her unhappy.
You need to lock it down and use your brain and fight your instincts.
” Ronit turns to me and glares. “No heat.”
I shake my head, ignoring his last two words. “This all sounds intense.”
“It is, and it will affect all of us.”
“Because you are her alphas, too,” I say confidently.
“No, we’re not, and we can’t be. But we are alphas, and just being near her will call to our natures, imploring us to go and take her.”
I don’t like the way he said that or the way he’s trying to distance himself.
“You say she’s not yours, but when you look at her, your eyes glow, Alpha,” I say the word, but I don’t expect the reaction he gives me. The pure, unadulterated hunger.
“Don’t,” he snarls, “call me that again, Leviathan.”
“Think about it, Ronit, she needs us. She’s a match, I’ve watched you fight, I’ve seen your strength. You are weak here, and I don’t know why, but in my oceans, she is your match.”
He stares at me like I’ve grown another head.
“Are you done?”
“No, I’ll be done when we’re all in that nest, and she’s safe, with all of us keeping her that way.”
With that, I prowl away, frustrated and worried about what tomorrow will bring.
I know what I want, and I’m going to fight for it.