“Perhaps we can find a solution, but none of it matters while she’s not here.”
***
Five more painful hours pass until the moon is high in the sky, and I feel like I’m about to go insane. Canto returned and is sitting on a chair, staring at a wall.
We aren’t speaking, and they aren’t speaking to me. Apparently, the biting was something wrong. But how could something so wrong feel so right?
A tug inside wakes me from the doze I’ve slipped into, and I find myself walking to the front of the house. The rain is pouring down in sheets. Lightning and thunder are ripping around the world, battling out their roaring fight for supremacy, but at the bottom of the stairs, staring at me in a ruined black dress she was carefully put in is Mei.
I step down, afraid that if I rush to her, she will disappear. This is the only creature in all the worlds that can make me feel fear.
She doesn’t move, and when I wrap my arms around her, she still doesn’t move. She just lets me hug her and leans forward, pressing her face to my chest.
“I didn’t know where else to go,” she whispers, and then to my utter despair, the Healer, the witch, my beautiful omega slumps like she’s given up completely.
I lift her into my arms and carry her into the house.
“If you can’t fight, I will fight for you. I will be your teeth. If you can’t see, I will be your eyes and guide you. If you can’t get up, I will carry you, you weigh little, and I am strong. There is nothing I won’t do for you, Mei. You just need to tell me, but don’t leave me again. I will come with you. You just need to ask. I’m your Leviathan. The world and all the others can burn, but I am just for you.”
She lifts her cold arms and wraps them around me.
I can feel the stares of the Sirens. They feel the same as I do, they aren’t ready to admit it, but they are hers as well, they just don’t know it yet.
I will make them know it.
Lirin walks into the bathroom and starts the shower. I carry her in, dressed, and just hold her until the trembling stops.
She’s exhausted and numb, her scent keeps spiking, hot and sweet, and her temperature seems to be fluctuating up and down.
Is this a heat?
I stroke her back and realise that if I want to be a good mate to her, then there are things I need to find out. Can I ask the Sirens? Will they give me the right information?
Reed holds a towel out, and she walks into it. He takes his time drying her off, wiping over those shimmering runes, then he guides her to a dark room.
She stands there at the edge of the threshold.
“What is it?” she asks tonelessly.
“It’s a nest, Mei.”
Her body stiffens, but then her scent gets really sweet, and she creeps inside, feeling the material-covered walls and then the bed in the middle. Kit walks in, jumps up, and curls up on the pillow. That seems to break her from her frozen pose, and she climbs up, too, curling up in a ball.
“No one will enter your nest unless you invite them,” Reed says and looks at me pointedly.
I wait for Mei to say something, but she doesn’t.
Reed tilts his head, and I follow him back out to the kitchen. He makes me a hot drink and slides it across to me.
I accept the offering, noting another connection between us all. I slide him a biscuit and watch with deep satisfaction as he takes my offering.
“Sometimes, omegas, in order to feel safe, need to have their own spaces where they control everything.”
“I’m not going to hurt her,” I protest.
“It’s not about hurting, it's about feeling out of control.”
“Is she feeling out of control?”
