“You called for us?” she asked Tharion, glancing nervously toward Hunt.
Bryce murmured to Hunt, “Chill the fuck out.”
Hunt stared at each of the strangers, as if sizing up a kill. Lightning sizzled through his hair.
“Hunt,” Bryce muttered, but didn’t dare reach for his hand.
“I …” Tharion drew his wide eyes from Hunt and blinked at the female. “What?”
“Our Oracle sensed we’d be needed somewhere in this vicinity, so we came. Then we got your message,” she said tightly, an eye still fixed on Hunt. “The light.”
Ruhn and Tharion turned to Bryce, Cormac nearly a dead weight of exhaustion in her brother’s arms. Tharion smiled roughly. “You’re a good luck charm, Legs.”
It was the stupidest stroke of luck she’d ever had. Bryce said, “I, uh … I sent the light.”
Hunt’s lightning crackled, a second skin over his body, his soaked clothes. He didn’t show any signs of calming down. She had no idea how to calm him down.
This was how he was that day with Sandriel, Ruhn said into her mind. When he ripped off her head. He added tightly, You were in danger then, too.
And what’s that supposed to mean?
Why don’t you tell me?
You seem like you know what the fuck is happening with him.
Ruhn glared at her as Hunt continued to glow and menace. It means that he’s going ballistic in the way that only mates can when the other is threatened. It’s what happened then, and what’s happening now. You’re true mates—the way Fae are mates, in your bodies and souls. That’s what was different about your scent the other day. Your scents have merged. As they do between Fae mates.
She glared right back at her brother. So what?
So find some way to calm him down. Athalar’s your fucking problem now.
Bryce sent a mental image of her middle finger back in answer.
The mer female squared her shoulders, unaware of Ruhn and Bryce’s conversation, and said to Tharion, “We’re not out of this yet. There’s an Omega on our tail.” She spoke like Hunt wasn’t a living thunderstorm standing two feet away.
Bryce’s heart strained. True mates. Not only in name, but … in the way that Fae could be mates with each other.
Ruhn said, Athalar was dangerous before. But as a mated male, he’s utterly lethal.
Bryce countered, He was always lethal.
Not like this. There’s no mercy in him. He’s gone lethal in a Fae way.
In that predatory, kill-all-enemies way. He’s an angel.
Doesn’t seem to matter.
One look at Hunt’s hard face, and she knew Ruhn was right. Some small part of her thrilled at it—that he’d descended this far into some primal instinct to try to save her.
Alphaholes can have their uses, she said to her brother with a bravado she didn’t feel, and returned to the conversation at hand.
Tharion was saying to the female, “Captain Tharion Ketos of the Blue Court, at your service.”
The female saluted as the people with her opened an airtight door to reveal a shining glass hallway. Blue stretched around it, a passageway through the ocean. A few fish shot past—or the ship shot past the fish. Faster than Bryce had realized. “Commander Sendes,” the female said.
“What mer court do you come from?” Bryce asked. Hunt walked at her side, silent and blazing with power.
Commander Sendes glanced over a shoulder, face still a little pale at the sight of Hunt. “This one.” Sendes gestured to the glass walkway around them, the behemoth of a ship that Bryce could now make out through it.
They hadn’t entered along the flat back of the ship as Bryce had thought, but rather at the tip of it. As if the ship had pierced the surface like a lance. And now, with a view of the rest of the ship expanding beyond—below—the glass passage, what she could see of it appeared to be shaped like some sort of squid as it shot into the gloom below. A squid as large as the Comitium, and made of glass and matte metal for stealth.
Sendes lifted her chin. “Welcome to the Depth Charger. One of the six city-ships of the Ocean Queen’s court Beneath.”
45
“All right, so you’ll be charged with breaking and entering, and probably theft. Tell me again how you think you’ve still got grounds to go after this old creep?” Declan’s boyfriend, Marc, leaned against the couch cushions, muscled arms crossed as he grilled Ithan.
Ithan blew out a breath. “When you put it like that, I can see what you mean about it being a tough case to win.”