Page 111 of Citrine

His body slumps, but he doesn't argue.

He swims slowly at first, but after a prod him with a sharp finger and narrow my eyes, he moves so fast I get dizzy.

I'm still trying to get my bearings when we stop abruptly. I decide to ask him some questions while my heart catches up.

"So you have only seen the weird green guys? No one who looks like me?"

It takes me a long moment to realize he hasn't answered, and when I look at him, he won't return my gaze.

What the fuck. He has seen someone like me.

I break the surface of the water, then give him a piece of my mind. "All of this time telling you what I needed and you just—"

I'm interrupted momentarily as he pulls me back down and I have to switch over to projecting echoes deeper in my chest.

I let out a long string of curses, which sound really weird as a mix of English, Spanish, and whale echoes, and then I get myself back under control again.

He's moved us around so I can see his face, though he's holding both of my hands with his tentacles so I stop trying to scratch him to pieces.

My chest heaves for a moment, and he looks excited by my anger. It makes me want to scratch the smug look right off his face.

"Was it a male?"

He keeps my gaze. Nope.

"A female?"

He looks away. He saw someone and didn't tell me.

I'm going to fucking kill him.

49

Eli

I stop thrashing and whipping Wroahk with my hair tentacles when I hear someone speaking in a gravely voice. A frisson of excitement threads through my chest when I can understand them.

"I know I heard someone speaking, my Ree."

I wriggle around toward where the voice is coming from and see a distorted image of what looks like a black figure riding a giant orange cat. There's no time to puzzle that out before I'm spinning through the water.

He let me go, which means he's about to attack.

Fuck.

It takes me a moment to get oriented and then I swim quickly to the surface. I hear a gasp from behind me, realize I'm facing the wrong way, and use my newly webbed hands to reorient myself.

I only catch a glimpse of what is clearly another woman, though an odd one, before Wroahk shoots up onto the shore, his green tentacles writhing. He snatches the woman off her cat mount. The cat roars in outrage, but she screams at him in the same gravelly language I heard before as Wroahk drags her into the water.

"Wait!" she yells out.

The mount's roar transitions to speech in response. "No."

My mind stutters for a precious moment and then I'm screaming, too. But at Wroahk. "Stop! I'll never touch you with kindhands ever again if you don't stop."

The effect is instantaneous, and he releases the woman in the shallows. The cat had already been diving in for her and it only takes it a moment to pull her back up onto the shore and a short few moments after that for it to have her halfway up a tree.

Wroahk's tentacles are around me and I'm right back to yelling at him in my whale voice as he drags back, the water coming up in waves around me and muffling every few words. "Let me go, you bloodthirsty idiot of a man."

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