My nostrils flare. I cannot see where the blood is coming from. She doesn’t look like she’s badly wounded, but even the slightest scratch is unacceptable.
“Come here, mate,” I say. A tentacle sneaks along the ground toward her.
“Fuck off,” she hisses, batting me away with the driftwood.
Vasz rises to his haunches to snap at my limb in warning. “Vasz,” I growl.
“Fuck off.”
My brows hike up to my hairline when he places himself between me and Cindi—or his pile of coconuts.
Disregarding him, I meet Cindi’s wide stare. There are deep bags beneath her eyes, and her hair stands up at odd ends, tangled and nest-like. “You’re hurt.”And you need rest.
“You’re right. I am,” Vasz responds instead. He holds his paw out, dipping his head in earnest. “Yes, you may treat my wound.”
“Fuck off, Vasz.” I test the words.
They have a nice ring to them.
He whips a wounded glare my way, snapping at me when I push him aside to get to Cindi.
She smacks my arm with the wood. “Don’t touch me.”
“Don’t touch her,” Vasz echoes.
“I will throw out all of your coconuts,” I threaten.
He gasps. “You wouldn’t dare betray our friendship like this.”
I lower myself to look him in the eye. “Try me.”
“You can talk to it?” Cindi’s bewildered attention flicks between me and the walking, talking irritant. “Can it…understand me?”
Vasz snorts in answer, and her jaw drops. “That’s incredible.”
I swear on Yannig’s grave that Vasz preens, batting his eyes and rumbling what I could only describe as a giggle before he straightens. “I am,” he agrees, a cocky tilt to his voice. “Isn’t that right, Ordus?”
Goddess, give me strength.
“Leave. Now.” He snarls when I pick him up by his stomach and deposit him next to the pool. I almost lose part of a limb to his teeth. “Go.”
His harrumph is loud enough for even Cindi’s human ears to hear. His own points to the ground as he skulks toward the water. “If you asked, you’d know the human tried to climb out of the tunnel as I was returning with my gift, so I bit her. Just a little nip?—”
“You—” He jumps into the water and swims away before I can catch him. “Did Vaszeline hurt you?” I ask, getting as close to Cindi as I can before she hits me with her little stick.
My stomach sinks as my mate gawks at me like I sprouted suckers on my face. A stone lodges in my throat as I await her rejection.
“Did you just call that thing Vaseline?”
Jealousy spears through me. Why is my Cindi asking about the creature and not me? “Vaszeline, yes.” I force the words out even though I don’t want to be discussing any males with my mate—even if that male is part dog. “But it’s too difficult to say when angry, so I call him Vasz,” I continue in the hopes civility will encourage her to speak more.
I like the way she sounds when her words aren’t barbed and made to cut.
“Like…” She blinks at me, then the water Vasz escaped through. “The petroleum jelly?”
It’s my turn to gape at her. “No,” I say carefully, so as not to offend her by sounding like I am questioning her intelligence. “Like Vaszeline.”
It isn’t the name I would have chosen for him; rather, it’s one he chose for himself. When I found him starved, battered, and injured, attempting to hide beneath a coconut, he was curled up around a plastic jar with the nameVaszelineon it, a name the Witch must have given him.
