Chapter 24
Mei
Iwalk straight inside and stop in the middle of the room, my mind too full of what has happened. Even navigating the furniture right now is too much. I want to scream and cry. My lungs feel too big, my head feels stuffy.
I couldn’t see the people, but I could smell the decay, their individual scents.
The terror they felt clung to their frozen skins.
I could tell their ages by how they smelled.
Their pain had soaked the woods, the screams echoing still in the air.
The pain was a blanket as thick as the snow we walked through.
It’s like the trees and the snow took their cries into themselves and just howled around, amplifying them and replaying their last moments.
This is my fault.
A hand grabs my arm and spins me around into a hard chest.
“Leaf, not now,” I grumble, lost in my despair-filled thoughts.
“It is not your fault.”
I clamp my mouth shut, willing him to be quiet, to go away, to do anything but reveal my thoughts to the Sirens.
“He’s right,” Lirin says softly. “You aren’t responsible for the actions of monsters.”
“I am a monster!” I hiss at him. “Look at me. I am like him. We are the opposite sides of the same coin. He is going to keep hunting me until he kills me. Deux never gives up, he never stops, never sleeps, never lets his prey escape. This is a hunt.”
“So. What?” Ronit says and stomps past me. He goes into the kitchen and starts opening and closing cupboards.
“So what?” I shout, incensed. “So, he will kill everyone. You, me, them.”
“So.”
I twist around to where I know the rest of the Sirens are watching.
“What do you mean, so?” I growl when I realise I’m getting no help.
“If he kills us, he kills us. We don’t know if death is the end, but we do know that it comes to all who live. Perhaps his death will come first, perhaps we will perish.”
“He’d make you suffer.”
“But I have lived so many interesting years. I have done amazing things, I have seen things no other has seen, and I have loved my pack with all that is in me.” Ronit’s loud words cut off my argument. “I have lived an honourable life up to this point. I am not afraid to die, Mei.”
The silence is deafening, and something cold and lonely falls in my stomach and keeps going.
“I don’t want you to die.”
The sentence just slips out, small and broken and not at all like me. The vulnerability in it has me ready to run from them, but Brio slides his hand around mine.
“We don’t want you to die either, Mei. So, let’s try this together.”
What am I hearing?
“I thought we were enemies?” I blurt out, clenching my fingers around his as if to stop him from escaping. “It’s just, I know we were getting along, but we…it’s temporary, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps we all misunderstood each other a little bit,” Brio murmurs.
“Maybe we are, maybe we aren’t. But I don’t want to be your enemy anymore,” Reed says gently.
I vividly remember his kiss and feel my body heat.
“So, just like that, we’re friends?”
“How else shall we do it? Do you want to cut our hands and do a blood oath, or shall we braid each other’s hair and talk about our feelings?” Ronit grumbles, but I think I can hear satisfaction in his tone.
“It wouldn’t hurt you,” Lirin says to Ronit.
“Shut up, Lirin.”
Friends? With the Sirens? Is it possible?
“Leaf?” I whisper.
“They are fun when they are playing. I have always been friends with the Sirens, even when they haven’t been friends with me.”
That distinction makes my heart ache.
“You understand that Deux will come for me and that he will try to kill you for helping me?”
“Yes,” Canto snaps. “We know that, Mei. But now he’s made it personal, so we’re going to want to take him down just as hard.”
“This is crazy,” I say and lift my hand, but Brio still has hold of it.
“You should eat,” Ronit says grumpily. “I’m ordering food. What does everyone want?”
There is a silence, so I fill it.
“Cheeseburgers?” Ronit and I say at the same time.
Ronit’s laugh is husky and slams into me. A sound I want to hear again and again.
“Cheeseburgers it is.”
That easy. I don’t trust it. I want to trust it, but it’s so hard. Brio drags me down into my nest.
“We had all your clothes replaced.”
I turn, but we’re too close, and when I tilt my head up, my lips graze his. He doesn’t leave it like that but moves in, pressing me against the door frame, the soft skin of his lips brushing in the lightest caress over mine. I gasp and clutch at him as slick pools between my legs.
The heat sizzles through me, hotter than ever, and a whine tears out of me before I can stop it.
“Omega, you smell incredible.”
“I don’t.”
“The only omega I’ve ever smelled that I haven’t wanted to rip apart,” he continues in a dark, hungry voice.
“I could get drunk on the scent of you, lost in you. You’re my favourite flavour, the drug that will lead me into addiction, the song I can’t stop singing.
And I go happily,” he murmurs against my lips. “Happily.”
Most of what he’s saying doesn’t make sense, but I can’t get enough of him. Butterflies explode in my stomach, leaving me bereft and dizzy when he pulls away.
“I’ll send Lirin to help you with your clothes.”
I grab for him, but he moves stealthily away, leaving me weakened and leaning up against the door frame wondering what is happening with my body, and how do I even make it stop.
Lirin whistles as he appears. “Come on, Mei, I had the lady do something that will help you.”
I follow him into my nest, and he shows me the door to the closet.
“What is this?”
“This is for all your clothes.”
“All my clothes? What all? I only have one dress.”
Lirin clears his throat. “Yeah, we took care of that. It’s just not right for you to not have options. So, all these are your clothes.” He picks up my hand and guides me around the space. Five feet by three feet. All full of material.
“I can’t, I mean, what am I supposed to do with…” I trail off because I feel lost.
“You pick what you want, Mei. No one is going to force you to do anything. And you are far too beautiful to allow anyone to tell you what to do. Now, all these clothes are on hangers, and the hangers have buttons. See.”
He makes my finger press down on a button on a plastic stick he calls a hanger.
“Grey skinny jeans,” The mechanical voice says.
I hiss in surprise.
“It’s just a recording. No one is here. It’s just to help you choose. Easy, girl.”
“Choose? I don’t want to choose. You do it.”
Lirin hums and then turns and presses three buttons.
“Oversized hoodie, grey. Sleep shorts, teal satin. Pink panties.”
I gape at him, unable to find anything coherent to say.
“What?” he asks, his joy leaching away.
“What are panties?”
Lirin sucks in air and chokes. I wait, but it takes forever. In the end, Reed comes in and rescues him and me by taking the clothes and guiding me into the nest.
He’s so gentle when he removes my dress.
It shouldn’t be sexy.
He pulls this soft and cool material up my legs, his knuckles graze my outer thighs. I wiggle my hips, unsure of the purpose of them. Then he pulls the satin up against my crotch. Ah, this is the garment that Leaf tore off me that day in the park. Instantly, they are soaked.
Reed lets out a strangled sound.
I exhale a sigh. “It feels so pretty.”
“Like water,” Reed whispers. “So wet.” He clears his throat and stands up, moving away from me.
“Yes,” I pat the material, but he gets me to put my arms up and helps me into a huge, big tent of material. It’s like a hug, and it’s got Canto’s scent all over it. I inhale and let out a rough purr.
Reed stops dead. Hibiscus fills the air, thick and tantalizing.
“Sorry,” I murmur.
“It’s okay. Let’s go.”
“Hey, wait for me,” Lirin shouts.
“No,” Reed snaps. “Stop being so childish!”
“Ouch, that hurts, Reedy.”
There’s a thud of flesh hitting flesh, and then Lirin lets out a wail that makes my ears hurt. I snarl at him, and he stops instantly.
“Sorry, Mei. I was just playing.”
I grumble and walk back into the living space and go to my spot on the couch, only to find Leaf there. He grabs me and pulls me into his lap and nuzzles the back of my hair.
“Leaf?”
“Mmm.”
“Did you choose your name?” I ask him.
“Yes. When I found out the Sirens chose their names, I decided to choose a name for myself, too.”
“They chose their own names?”
“We did,” Ronit says and pulls the coffee table in front of me. He disappears and comes back with a whole heap of bags.
“Why?”
“Because the people we were didn’t exist anymore, the ocean had changed us.”
“Yes, you are more than Fae now,” I say, barely paying attention because the smell of cheeseburgers is far more tempting right now.
The air around us gets tense.
“What do you mean by that, Mei?” Ronit asks and puts a finger under my chin, tilting my head up.
“The ocean, the transformation changed you. You are stronger and more like me, but not. I have seen Fae. They do not have what you have.”
I let out a happy mewl when I unwrap the cheeseburger. The first bite is like magic. I chew slowly, savouring it.
“Interesting that you say that. I’ve often wondered if we weren’t weaker,” Canto says and unwraps another cheeseburger that he passes to me.
Leaf stretches his arm out. “Here, take this.”
Brio takes the food from Leaf. I press my lips together, refusing to give Leaf’s game away. I wonder how many of the Sirens have fallen into his trap.
“Weaker? No way. You are much stronger. And because you are a pack, perhaps stronger than most, with the exception of a pack with an omega. They get a whole lot stronger when they merge with her.”
“What?” Canto says, his voice filled with enough shock that it startles me away from my food.
“What do you mean, what?” I ask nervously.
“Packs get stronger with an omega?”
“Isn’t that why you wanted a mate? To break free of the curse that turned you into Sirens? It wouldn’t have worked. They changed you at a fundamental level, it’s in everything you are. It’s not a curse, it’s more a transformation. You can’t go back.”
“So, you’re saying there’s no way for us to be anything but Sirens?” Lirin asks, and I can hear how upset he is. I want to soothe him and help brush away the pain.
“No, you can keep evolving and keep changing, but you can’t go back.” I wrinkle my nose. “Why would you want to?”
“Because it’s who we are,” Ronit says, but he lacks conviction.
“It was who you were. Now you are something else. Change is life. Didn’t you say you wanted to live?”
He wants to argue with me, but he can’t.
After that, the conversation turns to subjects that are carefully mundane and trivial. I eat until my stomach hurts, then curl up against Leaf’s chest and let my mind drift.
We’re swimming through the deep dark. He sees flashes of colour, flashes of something alive, something in his territory.
He lunges after them, stretching out tentacles and whacking the creature.
But four more surround him. They stab him, and the little, sharp pain is light and an awakening to his dulled mind.
He starts to take in details, looking at them with fascination.
When they leave, he follows at a distance and practices taking their form and sounding out words they make. They clash over and over, and he grows more determined and more amused.
Then they bring me to him, and I see myself falling into the deep, struggling. He lunges for me, but at the last minute, he catches my scent in the air and stops. He shoves up, and the water forces me higher, back into the light.
He doesn’t know what to make of me, but he wants to know. By the time he realises, I’m gone, and the sky is on fire. He stops paying attention to the Sirens and focuses instead on the plan to find me again.
The Sirens disappear, and he hunts the oceans wrathfully, trying to break through, trying to find a way through. His rage creates storms that rage for months.
And then we clash, and I open the world for him. My magic calls him into Earth. I open the doors, not the Sirens.
And my Leviathan surges through the worlds, taking the chance, risking it all. Knowing I’ll be at the other end.
I refocus my awareness, back in the real world again, and stroke my fingers down his hard chest.
He loves me. In the way I loved the Sirens. With sudden, instantaneous obsession. But I wonder if this dragon knows that it’s not just me. He was in love with the Sirens first.
He’s happy. He’s happy here with me and with them.
For him, it's simple: we are together, that’s all that matters.
Maybe that’s all that should matter to me, too.