Chapter 17 #3
Brooke accepted the saucer, licked it, closed her eyes as if she was savoring it, and then opened them to say, “Think in your head, ‘I will keep your secrets,’ while you consider everything you’ve learned tonight about shifters and vampires, and you understand that the promise applies to anything you learn about supernaturals in the future as well.
Drink the wine, and then think all of it again. ”
Gears handed me the wine glass, I did as Brooke said, and… I’m not sure what I felt. Not a click, but maybe a slide of something inside me? I didn’t think it was physical, exactly, and yet, maybe it was since I fucking felt it, and since whatever it was had made the hairs on my arms lift.
Brooke took the glass from me and passed it to Gears, then handed me a small notepad and a pen, and I had no idea where they came from, but I accepted them.
“I’d like you to write that your boyfriend is a shapeshifter.”
I frowned at her, but I wrote, My boyfriend is a s…
And I couldn’t write the h.
When I tried, my fingers lifted the pen away from the paper while I made the motions of writing.
I stared at the incomplete word, and my pulse started to race.
“Excellent,” Brooke said. “Turn the page and write that you met an actual vampire.”
This time, I could only write half of the ‘v’ before the pen lifted, and fear began to take hold inside me. This, more than anything, made everything real.
I tried to breathe through the terror, but it threatened to take me over.
My hand had refused the orders my brain sent to it.
The words I intended simply would not form.
She’d somehow made the words in my oath fucking real.
An icy chill spread from my core outward, until even my skin went cold, and my breath went as shallow as it does when he first tightens the cincher.
“I’m here,” Magnum said from beside me, and his arm came around me. “It’s a shock, I know, but it means you’re safe. It means the magic took hold, and that means you still have your freedom.”
But my freedom wouldn’t have been in jeopardy if Magnum hadn’t put me into this position! Fuck!
“He wanted you to know what he is,” Brooke told me.
“You only know a small portion of him. A shifter’s inner animal is a large part of who they are.
Also, shifters have better senses than humans, and he’s felt from the beginning that he was forced into dishonesty by omission with you.
He hasn’t liked that. He wanted to be honest with you, and this was the only way. ”
“I’m glad you aren’t shying away from my touch,” Magnum said from beside me. “I can scent fear and anger, but also a little shock.”
I could only stare at him, too many thoughts going through my head to zero in on a single one.
But then two thoughts came into focus — Brooke was defending him based on what she saw me thinking.
I’d been pissed that he put me in this position, so my freedom and/or memories might’ve been at risk if I hadn’t been able to do the oath correctly, and she’d responded to my thoughts, explaining why he’d put me into the position.
I went stiff in his arms at the same instant I realized Brooke was aware of every fucking thought I had, so I blanked my mind and pictured the damned asteroid-field thing from Star Wars.
It’s a meditation trick, to blank your mind, so maybe it would work for this.
I could be angry with Magnum later, but for now, I relaxed back into him but couldn’t help the next thoughts that went through my head — Magnum hadn’t wanted to hide his true nature from me, and this had been the only way to tell me.
I blanked my mind again, because whatever was between Magnum and me was private.
Personal. And this woman in a child’s body didn’t need to know anything about our relationship.
I wasn’t going to sort through any of it while Brooke was still inside my head, watching.
It was an invasion, kind of like raping my mind, so I locked it down and left it for later.
“Let’s get us back to land,” Magnum said, and he stood and walked to the captain’s chair.
“How soon until Squatch can come back?” I asked, not because it was important, but because I wondered how long he’d be trapped.
“He can come back anytime,” Kitty said, “but he’ll be beyond starving when he does, so he’ll let me throw a couple of steaks on the grill before he changes back.”
I turned to Magnum. “When do I get to see you as a turtle?”
“Now if you want, or we can do it later.”
“Will you be… dangerous? Is there a chance you’ll bite me?”
He shook his head. “I’ll know who you are, just as Squatch knows who we all are.”
He leaned in and kissed my forehead, pulled the fabric all around the steering wheel away, and he drove us back to the docks while I sat and considered the fact he could scent my emotions, and realized this was how he’d always known so much about me.
It wasn’t him knowing me; it was him reading me based on things I didn’t know.
Did this mean our relationship wasn’t as magical as I’d thought?