Page 118 of Wicked Tides
“Looking after her.”
“I’mlooking after her.”
The corner of my mouth lifted. “Yes, you are.”
Realizing Meridan was feeling uncomfortable with me present, I stood from the stool and took a step toward her. Her ice-white eyes looked up at me, unyielding.
“Do you truly think me a threat after I carried her back here?”
“No.” Her gaze dropped for a moment to peer at Dahlia. “Not in the way you’d think.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing,” she avoided, skirting past me to put the water bowl down beside the bed.
Sighing, I headed for the door, feeling sleep clinging to the back of my eye lids.
“It might not be real, you know,” she blurted out, stopping me in my tracks.
“What might not be real?”
“What you’re feeling for her.”
“You don’t know what I’m feeling for her.”
She rolled her eyes toward me as if to call me an ass. “I smell it on you. I hear it in your pulse. You humans are so revealing.”
I turned toward her, taking a deep breath in preparation for the things she was about to say. By the looks of her, she was wondering if she should.
“She has been in your dreams,” she said. “She has seen your deepest fears. She’s been visiting your sleeping mind since you took us prisoner.”
“Since when can you do that?” I raised a brow.
“Not us. Her. She ate of your flesh. You’ve been attached to each other since you were children. It’s been a rumor that our kind can do it, but we do not often leave men alive after having a bite. So the things you are feeling, perhaps rethink them.”
My chest clenched, a sense of betrayal swelling inside.
But did I ever fully trust them enough to justify feeling betrayed?
I crossed my arms over my chest and glared, jaw clenched.
“Why would you tell me this? You’re putting her and you in danger by confessing something like that. If it’s true, I could have your heads.”
Anger coiled in my gut at the idea. To think I had protection against their words only to fall victim to an equally violating manipulation made me sick. I looked at Dahlia laying there on the cot, unmoving and vulnerable.
“I could kill you both,” I said under my breath.
“I am telling you because I’ve watched her try,” Meridan continued.
“Try what?”
“Try not to care for you.”
Those words caught me off guard more than the news of her invading my sleeping thoughts.
“You’re talking in circles.”
“I hate it. I hate to see her head turn from me, but I am speaking the truth. I have no reason not to. I just wanted you to know because somehow she’s grown affection for you. Or whatever equivalent emotion we possess. Enough that she’s making stupid decisions.” She lowered her eyes to the wash bowl where she was rinsing strips of cloth. “And the more she cares about you, the more she will put herself in harm’s way.”
