Chapter 12
It’s almost two in the morning when Sebastian joins me back in the main cabin.
I snuck in here as soon as I heard him and Phoenix going at it through the thin walls.
Despite my physical exhaustion, I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep, not while my mate is still gone, not alone in that tiny room.
Not while my best friend and love of my life got railed right next door.
As Sebastian steps closer, I’m struck by the scent of Phoenix on him. Papaya and vanilla mix with Sebastian’s limoncello to make something refreshing and sophisticated that makes my mouth water. He’s got that post-sex glow. His hair is a mess, glasses slightly smudged, shirt wrinkled.
For a brief second, my cock reacts, thickening jealously in my shorts.
Sebastian is a handsome man, and I get the impression that not many people get to see him disheveled and relaxed like this.
It stirs something low in my gut. It doesn’t help that he showed me just how smart he is earlier while we were diving into the books and papers I brought. I’m a sapiosexual at my core.
“Hey,” he says, oblivious to the direction of my thoughts. He doesn’t look surprised to see me out here. “Care if I join you?”
I want him to join me on my lap, or maybe on his knees so I can come all over his face and really smudge up those sexy little glasses.
What the hell? Where did that come from? Must be the bonding sickness. Sexual neediness is a symptom, right?
I clear my throat. “Sure.”
Sebastian takes a seat across from me. Something in my chest aches at the distance. Sticky with sweat and overheated, I still shiver, muscles stiff and sore. I take off my button-up sweater and lay it on the empty chair next to me.
Sebastian watches me carefully. “You okay?”
“Yeah, fine.” The chilly night air coming through the open window brings me some relief as I push a book his way. “Have you looked at this one yet? It’s the diary of an old pirate. He says he spotted merfolk on one of his voyages, but some of it doesn’t make sense.”
Sebastian flips to the front of the book. “Let me take a look.”
We work quietly for a while, my head throbbing less than it did before he joined me.
“So where did all of these come from, anyway?” Sebastian asks, gesturing to the papers and books scattered around.
“Some of it is from my own collection over the years. Some were left to me.” I clear my throat. “Okay, not so much left to me as I rescued them from potentially being trashed.”
He sits up straighter, giving me his full attention, though he doesn’t speak. It’s rare to find someone who doesn’t feel the need to fill the void with chatter. He’s giving me room to work out what I want to say without pressuring me.
“Ironically, much of it was originally Madison’s aunt’s.
” That gets an eyebrow raise from him. “April was a brilliant anthropologist, convinced Ocearus and merfolk were real and not myths. The whole department wrote her off, but she never let it stop her.” I chuckle, thinking about my mate.
“Guess that’s where Madi gets it from. She’s just as determined and twice as stubborn. ”
I sit back in my chair, taking in the way Sebastian studies me. “Before you ask, no, April and I were not romantically involved. I’m not replacing her with Madi in some strange way. I just respected the hell out of her. We were not only colleagues, but friends. When she died in a cave in…”
I close my eyes to recenter myself. April died while seeking Ocearus, and it hits a little too close to home that my mate went missing while doing the same thing.
“The university was clearing out her office, and since April didn’t have any children, they were going to shove it all in storage where it would gather dust, or potentially be discarded. I couldn’t let that happen, so I took it all myself. I didn’t do much with it, but now it seems like kismet.”
Sebastian leans back, staring out the window into the darkness. “She’s going to be okay, Hunter.”
Gods, how did he know that’s where my mind went?
“Well, we’ve gotta find them first, and I have no idea where to start.
” My fingers card through my hair as I sit up straight, pulling the pirate’s journal toward me.
“I feel like this one has the most potential. It’s almost like it’s alluding to a code or some secret message, but I can’t quite find it. ”
He hums, staring at the text in front of him. “Have you tried a black light?”
My brows furrow as I attempt to figure out why he randomly came up with that.
“In the deep sea,” Seb continues, “there’s a phenomenon called bioflorescence.”
“Like, the bioluminescent algae in some lakes, you mean?”
“Sort of. But bioflorescence requires an external light source. The human eye isn’t advanced enough to turn the scant bit of ultraviolet light into something they can see. Did you know the peacock mantis shrimp have up to sixteen color receptors in their eyes? Humans only have three.”
I laugh. “I actually did know that. Phoenix wouldn’t shut up about it for a while. It’s not something I think about regularly, though.” But his suggestion gets my brain going. “They can detect light we can’t, including…. ultra violet. Fuck, that’s brilliant.”
“Look, I don’t know if it’ll work,” Sebastian hedges, “but it’s worth a shot. There has to be a black light flashlight somewhere on this ship. I prepped it for anything my firebird could need.”
The beta shoves out of his chair and starts digging through drawers. “Ha!” He holds up a small black item in triumph. There’s a new glint of excitement in his eyes. He flicks off the lights in the cabin before making his way back to the table.
We can barely see each other, only the glow from the moon washing the room.
He turns on the flashlight with a sort of reverence, like this could change everything.
And it could, but I don’t want to get my hopes up only to have them dashed like a ship on the rocks in a storm.
The beta flips the journal open to the first page and shines the flashlight on it.
Nothing.
I release a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. He flips through a few more pages, but nothing is lighting up.
“I knew it wouldn’t be that ea—”
“Hunter.”
That single word from Sebastian cuts me off. When I look at the book, swirls of color are lit up along the page like neon lights. They look like runes, but none I recognize. “Holy shit.”
The room is still with anticipation, the only sound the waves outside and our heavy breathing. He turns the page, and this time it looks like writing, but in a language I can’t read. It’s when he flips to the middle of the book that my heart clenches, and I feel like I may have a heart attack.
A map.
The page in normal light is a map of the world as we know it. But under the black light, new locations pop out. Several of them in the ocean. Each is labeled in that language I don’t understand.
“Fuck! Seb, this is amazing!” Then my mood plummets. “But we can’t read it. And Madi and Caspian don’t have time for us to sail to every one of these places to check.”
Sebastian starts flipping back through the journal, past pages we’ve already seen, until he stops on one and runs his finger along the text. I follow along, and my breath catches. I swear I’m going to actually fall into cardiac arrest if this rollercoaster of emotions doesn’t quit soon.
I lean closer to get a better look. “A cipher. It’s a fucking cipher.”