Chapter 44 Deep connections
Chapter 44 Deep connections
“Sink into the deep.” My favorite song. Mal’s strong voice hummed the melody that encouraged more than one sailor to dive into the waters for her and her sisters to devour them. That was how I found her. “Your soul is mine to keep.”
A shiver rolled over me with the memory. I’d been searching for a sufficient meal when I’d heard that song. It was strange that it didn’t pull me to her like I was accustomed to mermaids doing, but it lured me in, nonetheless. Instead of making my mind blank, it went into overdrive. I needed to meet the siren attached to that voice. Man after man jumped into the water from a large navy boat just to get a glimpse of her; not caring that their comrades never came back up. Each man was ripped to shreds in seconds while the sea’s rage ended them. But I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.
She had noticed my stare and grinned, and that was it for me. I knew she was mine without me even smelling her.
“If you come to play with me.”
This crazy bitch was the most beautiful thing in the world. Below the sea and on land. We weren’t moving towards a resolution yet. I wasn’t too
worried. We were old. Things didn’t fix or break in a single moment. But I needed to take on a more active role.
Before anyone else fell for this crazy mermaid’s call.
I
walked through the woods to Kaylen’s and crossed paths with Phio. A smile pulled at my lips before I could try to fight it off. “Hey there.” “Hey.” His eyes softened as they roved over me. “Headed to see Gillie?” “Yes. Guppy went fishing with Kam, so I’m checking on her.”
He turned on his heel and offered his arm out to escort me. “It won’t hurt my feelings if you don’t take it, but I wouldn’t be a gentleman if I didn’t offer it.”
“Since when are you a gentleman?”
He flashed me a crooked grin at my insinuation. I slid my arm through his, and his soothing energy muted the burning fire that spread up my arm. Some people were worth burning for. Frankly, I never minded a little pain, anyway. “Do you know Kam very well?”
All these years, we never spoke about him. I avoided the subject of Kam completely, and he followed my lead.
“Since we were kids,” he said. That didn’t tell me a whole lot. As far as these primordial beasts were concerned, everyone was a kid. Kam was somewhere around a hundred million years old, maybe older, since sea creatures weren’t the best at keeping up with time. He still called his oldest son a kid, and Akie was only a couple hundred years younger than Kam.
He smiled when he realized that wasn’t sufficient for me. He lifted his pant leg. It was covered in serrated teeth marks that I would recognize
anywhere. One big fucking shark. “We’ve had more go rounds than I can possibly count.”
Kam was covered in scars. How many came from Phio? “He’s a dick like that.”
Despite the clear tension between these two men, Phio wasn’t holding anything against Kam. The dimple in his cheek as he smiled spoke of easy amusement. “I don’t fault the beast for trying to survive when surviving was next to impossible. It may have felt personal back then, but it wasn’t.”
“Then why are you two ready to swing your dicks around anytime you two look at each other?” It didn’t make sense. If they were comfortable with their past, why were they so hostile?
“Because of you.” He stopped to face me. His face grew dead serious in a way I’d never seen before, revealing that he was a deadly predator. “Have you ever heard of the Oceanic Death?”
“I’ve heard it whispered among old men.”
“Everything started dying. Hardly anyone in the ocean survived, and the effects rippled across the land. Ocio was in mourning. I guided my pack along the shoreline into unsafe territory, hoping to catch my starving kids something to eat. I caught Kam’s paramour, a selkie, and he almost ripped my leg off to save her.”
I’d heard about this event. I just didn’t know Phio’s name was attached to the incident. Kam had felt bad for the father with the three hungry kids.
“He let my daughter die to save his paramour with his entire pride as a beast.” Yet he wasn’t angry. There was a grim understanding in his eyes. “Because that was what he was supposed to do. He was supposed to protect the mother of his pup. It hurt at the time, but I respect him for it now.”
He spoke these old truths that hurt with worldly knowledge that I may never feel. Old beasts saw the world in a way that was so different from me. They called me an ancient, but I had nothing on this primordial being.
“Yet, he allowed his mate to be so neglected that she attacked her own son.”
I gritted my teeth together and averted my gaze to the tree that Gillie was growing next to Kaylen’s house. I remembered how I snapped, the fear in Kaylen’s eyes, and the way Phio fought me off to protect Kaylen.
Gentle, soothing fingers caressed down my arm. The balm of who he was cooled flames of agony. I jolted when his other hand grabbed my face to make me look at him. “You are an amazing mother.”
The demanding command in his voice made all my insides quiver and flutter. His approval made something curl comfortably in my chest. It wasn’t a new feeling, but it was certainly more intense than it had been a couple of weeks ago.
A beast that wouldn’t promise forever and fail to deliver, but one who would laugh with me in the meantime. A beast that I’d flirted with for decades but never opened the door for even when I really wanted to fling that door open, and let him erase the last couple decades of memories that haunted me.
His dark brown eyes hypnotized me in a way that made my heart race. I was stuck in place by the weight of the desire in his gaze. Like he was seeing all of me. Like he understood how strong and tired I was. The fingers on my face traveled to the base of my skull to grab my hair.