Chapter 49 #2
He locked the thoughts away for another time, and they lay side by side for what felt like an hour, listening to the activity throughout the ship and the waves outside the windows.
Rowan wondered if John had been able to placate the crew enough that they wouldn’t have double mutinies on their hands when Yves resurfaced from his injuries.
What worried him most was the betrayal on Logan’s face.
Fox and Henri would probably feel the same way, but they hadn’t been on deck to see it with their own eyes.
They were Rowan’s closest friends in the world, more like family, and Rowan hated keeping secrets from them.
But this hadn’t been his secret to tell.
Yves shifted and Rowan realized he’d been drifting off in his own thoughts.
He opened his eyes to see Yves on his side, gazing at him with two fully human eyes.
Rowan stroked his hair back from his forehead.
The skin there was as unblemished as always, the bullet wound fully healed, as if it had never been.
“Are you back?” Rowan asked quietly, almost afraid of the answer.
Yves nodded, not taking his wide, dark eyes from Rowan’s face. He leaned close hesitantly, seeming pleased when Rowan didn’t pull away, and planted a soft kiss on his lips.
“I’m sorry,” Yves said when he pulled away.
“For what?”
“For making you watch me die. For almost letting you get hurt. For…” His brows furrowed in concentration, as if trying to remember what had happened between getting shot and now. “For…acting like a fool.”
“We’re both fools, remember?” Rowan murmured.
“I never wanted you to see me like that.” The words were so reminiscent of their wedding night that Rowan shivered.
“I will see all of you, and love you all the more,” he whispered, tucking a strand of onyx hair behind Yves’s ear. “You should know that by now.”
Logan’s hands shook. Nia still lay on the deck, covered by her pelt and bracketed by Zanta and Henri. He wanted to go to her and wrap her in a hug, but it wasn’t his place. She’d almost drowned, and she needed the people she loved around her. That wasn’t him.
Was it a miracle that she’d survived? Or had her pelt brought her back somehow?
Logan’s head whipped around, immediately finding Rowan and the Demon locked in an embrace up on the quarterdeck, Shaw dead at their feet.
Dread curdled in his gut. Shaw had shot the Demon in the head.
The hole still dripped in his forehead. On top of that, he’d been underwater for almost as long as Nia. How the fuck was he still alive?
The Demon stumbled, Rowan caught him, and John—who had just arrived on the Sweet Mercy—rushed up the stairs to help.
Rowan dragged the Demon down the stairs and toward the captain’s quarters.
Dread spiked, spurring Logan after them.
He didn’t know what he intended to do, but the urge to not allow Rowan to be alone with that monster overwhelmed him.
When the pair reached the door, Rowan’s one blue eye locked on Logan, then he turned away, disappearing with the Demon.
John stopped Logan in front of the door, the barest flash of relief showing on his face.
“Let me through,” Logan said, through gritted teeth. He needed to get to Rowan, protect him from whatever the Demon was.
“Leave them.” John squeezed his shoulder. Logan knocked his arm aside, and tried to sidestep him, but John got in his way again. They eyed each other. Either John was taking this in incredible stride, or he’d already known what the Demon was.
“You knew,” Logan accused. John grabbed him by the arm and hauled him into the shelter of the quarterdeck wall slightly tucked away from the rest of the stunned crew.
“It was not my secret to tell.”
“How long?”
“What?”
“How long have you known he’s not human?
” The words stuck in Logan’s mouth like bitter tar.
A few months ago, he wouldn’t have been able to wrap his head around this.
He would’ve tried to chalk it up to a misfire of his own perception.
But now he’d seen Nia transform into a Selkie before his own eyes, and if something like a Selkie could exist, why not a darker, more insidious creature?
“Since the start of the season,” John answered.
So the Demon had kept it even from his closest confidant. “Did Rowan know before today?”
“Since the wedding.”
Fuck, Logan had half hoped that Rowan hadn’t known, or had just found out, or…
something. He didn’t want to believe that his best friend would keep something like this from him for over a year.
Rowan had known, and John had known, and they’d kept Logan in the dark.
That meant John already knew about this when they’d slept together at the Teeth.
Somehow that made Logan feel even worse. What else were they keeping from him?
“How did you get here?” Logan asked. He didn’t know why.
John had saved them. But the Sweet Mercy looked practically as new as the day they’d stolen her, while every other ship that had sailed through the Storm Ring was battered and broken.
Logan wasn’t naturally the suspicious sort, but something about that seemed wrong.
John shrugged. “The Storm Ring seems to be mostly legend and tale. The section we went through was nothing more than a mild squall.” He seemed to catch himself, noticing how the rest of the ships were damaged. “Though that doesn’t seem to be the case for you.”
“No,” Logan huffed. “It was the worst storm of my life.” But the anomalies of the Storm Ring didn’t explain why John had sailed through it in the first place.
How had he known they would be here? Logan’s eyes caught on the battered navy uniform John always wore.
A symbol of the life he had left, a symbol of their enemy.
Logan tried to step away, nausea rising in his throat, but John hauled him into a tight hug. Logan froze, brain stuttering, warring between betrayal and confusion. John had never embraced him like this, just holding him in a completely nonsexual way.
“I’m glad you made it through,” John murmured. Then, “We need to keep it together till they get back.” He released him, but lingered with his hands on Logan’s arms for a moment. Logan searched his expression, finding only determination. No trace of the earlier softness.