Chapter 26
CLEMENTINE
“Pretty sure drinking will make me bleed more.”
“You just turned down a five-hundred-dollar whiskey.” Sev pours the amber liquid from the glass he held out to me into the one he’s already filled for himself. He sips the double with a contented sigh while relaxing into his Adirondack chair.
Meanwhile, I try to sit as still as possible, worried one wrong move will upset the bandage my savior tied around my reopened wound.
Sev, he said his name was. One more person from town I don’t remember, but I would hazard he wasn’t here when I was.
The guy stands out. More likely, he moved here in the time I was gone.
I washed up on his property, apparently having swum all the way to monster territory. Turns out, I’ve been away from Lake Galen long enough to lose all sense of direction.
“Why are you bleeding on my shoreline?” he asked when he came upon my prone body, not seeming too concerned about my wretched state.
“Seemed like,” I gasped out on ragged breaths, “a fun … Saturday night.”
He snorted, then leaned in closer, his focus on my wound.
I would swear from the way his nostrils flared that he was sniffing me, but I doubted I smelled like anything other than lake water and blood.
Still, after his cursory inspection, he scooped me up like I was some fucking damsel and carried me to his mansion.
Here, he deposited my limp body in this chair, where I’ve stayed.
Sev seemed unconcerned by my nakedness when he returned from inside, using a silk scarf as a bandage for my side, then helping me into a gaudy purple robe with tassels on the sleeves and shimmering thread depicting swimming fish.
Not my normal style, but I appreciated the rescue and told him so.
“You know, I don’t normally assist others,” he confessed, standing over me. “I find charity tiresome.”
“Why did you help me?” I asked, immediately regretting the question because it sounded like I would understand if he reconsidered.
“I’m bored.” He tilted his head, studying me. “Who are you?”
“Clementine Divos. You?”
“Sev.” And that was all he gave me before heading back into his house and returning with the alcohol.
“There’s an Officer Divos,” Sev says, voice only mildly curious.
“He’s my brother. Could I use your phone to call him?” I grimace, knowing the almost-drowning incident is going to be fuel to my brother’s anxious fire.
Turns out, I’m not healed after all.
It takes a decent amount of willpower not to let hopelessness crush me flat at that realization. I’d just started thinking about the future. Planning for it.
But, once again, I’m on my way to dying.
“Council Member Abadi will alert him you’re here. I called him.” He takes another long sip of the alcohol I’m starting to regret refusing.
My body hurts.
“How did you come by that little nick on your side?” Sev asks, minimizing my pain by a thousand.
A petulant part of me wants to ignore him, but he did just save my life.
“A hunter. Cut me with a dagger. The Council knows everything, and they’re on the lookout in case he shows up in town.” Which I really hope never happens. “Any reason we’re sitting outside?” The cool night air raises goose bumps on my arms.
“Stranger danger.” Sev bats his eyes at me, as if attempting to appear innocent. Impossible. He’s entirely too handsome for that with his waterfall of golden hair and sculpted abdomen. “This could all be a ploy to infiltrate my home.”
“Huh. You got some good stuff in there?”
He smirks, but his eyes are sharp with warning. “Of a sort.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“Curious about me?”
“Just trying to pass the time.” But also, yes. I could swear the underlying note to this mythic strums with potential danger. And yet he helped me. Saved me.
Sev hums in the back of his throat. “I had this house built … hmm … time tends to elude me. Twenty years ago? That sounds right.” The monster stares up at the stars as he talks. “Sometimes, I’m here. Sometimes, I’m not.”
I frown. “I lived here nine years ago. I feel like I should have at least known about this house.” Glancing up at the mansion, I try to discern which is bigger—Sev’s home or Town Hall.
“After an attempted robbery, I adjusted the wards. My home is less noticeable unless you know to notice it.”
Sounds like a riddle.
“Tell me, Clementine, do you have any unmated mythic friends?”
I blink at him. “Are you … asking to be set up?”
He shrugs but keeps his attention fully fixated on me.
“Sorry. I don’t.” Sev frowns, and I add so he doesn’t think I’m blowing him off, “I’ve been living on my own among humans since I was eighteen. If I met any other mythics, I didn’t realize.”
He sighs and sinks further into his chair, his chin tilted up, attention back on the stars. “Was too much to hope for, I suspect.”
“There’s got to be some singles in town, right?” I’m not used to being a wingwoman, but chatting with Sev about the dating scene is something to take my mind off the pain of my reopened wound.
The next sip he takes is more like a life-sustaining swallow. He licks a stray drop of whiskey off his lips, and then, with a forsaken tone, he claims, “None of them are perfection.”
I snort. “Oh gods. Is that what you’re looking for? Perfection?”
He frowns at the sky. “What else should I expect my mate to be?”
Sev is powerful. I can tell simply from being in his presence. He has this air to him that exudes a sense that he’s seen so much of the world that none of it truly affects him anymore.
My guess is, he’s a long-lived mythic, much older than his thirty-something face appears to be.
“Maybe a real-life, living being with flaws,” I suggest. Gods know, I have plenty.
I’m scared of storms, I talk back in the worst moments, and I always forget to clean my shower curtain up until it starts growing its own ecosystem, to list a few.
Griffith is flawed too.
He is controlling, insists on pretending he doesn’t like my dog, and had the audacity to make me fall for him and rethink my entire future.
Damn him.
Still, I find I don’t mind his shortcomings. Not when he has so much good to outweigh the annoying.
“Searching for perfection is the road to loneliness.” A feeling I know well.
I’ve been searching for my own version of perfection. A home that felt exactly right.
But that doesn’t exist. The closest is Folk Haven, which has flaws of its own, but I find I can live with them now for all the good that comes along with it.
Sev tilts his head my way, his eyes dark enough to seem like black holes I could get trapped in. I lean away, and he smiles with a wicked edge, though it soon fades into a forlorn, lost look.
“I know my mate will have flaws. But they will be perfect for me.” Sev throws back the rest of his drink and slams the glass down on a small table between us. “Their biggest flaw is that they are not here.”
“How do your kind identify mates?”
It’s different for most mythics. I know wolves have a scent thing, sirens can sing to the ones they love without confusing them, and selkies tend to get rescued by their mates.
For mermaids, it’s all in the fangs.
“I am the only one of my kind in existence.” Sev straightens, as if he’s conveying proof of his superiority, but I swear I can hear a touch of bitterness in his voice.
A monster. Yeah, that’s hard to nail down. The mixture of two or more mythics breaks established rules. He might find mates like one of his bloodline or both.
Or neither.
Monsters might not have a mate at all.
“Maybe you should just focus on building a love connection with someone you find interesting. Fated mates are overrated.”
A truck speeds down the drive, coming to a screeching halt only a second before Griffith hurls himself out of the driver’s seat and toward me. In response, my canines lengthen, and I curl my lips over them to hide the reaction.
Sev scoffs, and from the corner of my eye, I see him roll his.
“Says the mermaid ready to fang her fated.”
If it were still the two of us, I’d get into a debate.
Point out that whatever fang reaction I’m having, that’s not why I fell for Griffith.
But the wolf in question is already out of his truck, across the yard, kneeling in front of me, his hands hovering, as if he wants to check me for injuries but worries about hurting me further.
This—this—is why I’m gone for him. Not because of some magical reaction pushed on me by the gods.
“Are you hurt?” Griffith asks. “What happened?”
I grimace. “The healing didn’t hold. When I was swimming, the wound reopened.” I part my borrowed robe enough to show the bloody silk beneath. “I washed up on Sev’s property.”
“And I, magnanimous soul that I am, rescued her.” Sev refilled his tumbler at some point and is sipping more whiskey.
“You made her sit outside,” Griffith snarls, “while she’s still wet.”
“I’m a hero.” Sev shrugs. “Not a saint.”
For some reason, I find the pompous monster funny. Probably the blood loss.
“Don’t growl at him,” I tell Griffith, reaching out my arms so he can lift me from my chair. I’m smart enough to know when I can’t walk on my own. “He helped me enough. What I need now is a visit to Madeline.”
As Griffith carefully picks me up, worry tightens my muscles.
“We need to go back to the dock I dived from. Shrimp’s waiting for me.” I’ve never been gone this long. My heart breaks at the thought of my big puppy waiting for me, probably confused and anxious by now.
“Carl has him.”
As if summoned by his name, an SUV comes roaring toward us with a massive, furry head sticking out the passenger window, his tongue flopping in the wind.
“Let it be known, I did not invite a single one of you here.” Sev is once again sunk low in his seat, eyes on the sky.
“Clem!” Carl spills out of his car, Shrimp jumping down after him. Both run up to where Griffith is cradling me, my brother doing his own scan for injuries, Shrimp sniffing every inch of me he can reach. “Gods, you scared me. What happened?”
I give another quick summary as Griffith walks with me toward his truck. He’s in a hurry to get me to the healing witch, and I’m on board with that. Having almost a full day thinking I was healed makes the reopened wound burn even fiercer than before.
Griffith snaps for Shrimp to jump into the cab before me, and then he carefully arranges me in the seat. Once I’m settled, the wolf takes a precious second to cradle my face and brush a gentle kiss against my mouth.
“We’ll figure this out,” he promises, his desperate eyes holding mine.
When he steps away, Carl swoops in to give my hand a quick, reassuring squeeze before he jogs back to his SUV, no doubt planning to follow us to Madeline’s.
As we pull away, I spare another glance in Sev’s direction. He’s still seated on the porch, watching our group leave. I raise a hand in a wave of thanks.
He salutes me with his glass of whiskey before downing the whole thing and returning his attention to the sky. But on the chair armrest, I spy his hand, clenched in a fist. I suspect the monster hides deeper feelings than his nonchalant attitude would lead anyone to believe.
I hope you find your perfection.