“I’m Ben,” he said by way of reply as he took the cup from her, “and I guess you know Nic.”
She gave a last sniff and nodded. “I do.”
“These two are Marlin and Joe.” He pointed first to a wiry man sporting long blond dreads and colorful board shorts, and then to a shorter, unsmiling man with warm brown skin and black hair. “I’ll get you something to eat.”
“Thanks.” She pushed herself back against the headboard.
Nic sat cross-legged nearby, Rianna asleep in his arms. His wavy dark hair was longer than it had been four years ago and he’d grown a mustache, but the rest of him was exactly as she recalled. Same hard, sculpted face. Same stormy green eyes, a few shades darker than Rianna’s. Same powerful, rangy body.
He’d wrapped Rianna in a wool blanket and was holding her as if she were the most precious thing on Earth. Cassidy’s heart turned over. She’d wanted this so badly. Rianna deserved to know her daddy.
Rianna moved in her sleep and he crooned something soft in Portuguese. He’d been born into Maryland’s Rock Run River Fada Clan, but the founders of Rock Run had been from Portugal and the clan still spoke Portuguese at home in their caverns along Rock Run Creek. Nic spoke perfect English, although with a faint accent. But when they’d made love, he’d murmured to Cassidy in Portuguese…
His gaze turned to Cassidy and hardened. “What’s going on? Why were you out in the ocean in the middle of the storm?”
She tucked the sheet closer around her body. Fada were casual about nakedness, but she felt too vulnerable with a group of men she didn’t know.
Nic wouldn’t let them hurt you.
She knew that in her bones. Nic do Rio would protect her to the death. It was why she’d run to him.
“Cassidy?” he prompted. “What are you doing in America? Why would you need to hide out for a few weeks? And why did Rianna ask me to stop the bad fae from getting her?”
She held up a hand. She was tired and her chest ached from swallowing what felt like half the Pacific, but he deserved answers. “I’ll tell you everything. But first, is she okay?”
She touched her daughter’s back. She would’ve demanded Nic hand her over, but Rianna looked so comfortable.
“Yeah.” Nic gathered the girl closer. “I checked her out. She’s fine—just worn out and in need of a few good meals.”
Cassidy nodded, aware of Nic’s Gift for healing. She moistened her lips, trying to think where to start.
When she glanced up, Nic’s gaze was fixed on her mouth. A hot, hungry look. Their gazes snagged, but Cassidy jerked hers away. She wasn’t here for that. She needed somewhere to hide with Rianna, and that was all.
She looked around at the other three men. “Can we have some privacy?”
Nic held up a hand. “They can stay. If I’m right, you want protection, and we’ll need them, too.”
Cassidy rubbed her forehead. Her brain felt rusty; she was so damned tired and weak. But she wasn’t sure Nic knew what he was saying. “Do they know about—?”
“Yes. We don’t have secrets from each other.”
Cassidy’s brows shot up. The Nic she’d known had been so close-mouthed that even she hadn’t known he was a sea dragon until almost the last day.
“If you’re sure….”
“I am. They’ll guard Rianna with their lives.”
“Hell, yeah,” said Marlin while the other two nodded.
“Okay, then.” Cassidy glanced at Rianna again to make sure she was sound asleep. The three-year-old knew something was wrong, of course, but she didn’t need to know the nightmarish details.
“Rianna’s a sea dragon,” she said in a low voice. “And she’s right. Some bad fae are after her.”
“No.” It wasn’t easy to startle Nic, but his eyes went wide. “It’s not possible. Sea dragons—”
“Are incredibly rare,” Cassidy finished. “And they jump generations. The odds of you fathering another sea dragon are a million to one. But you did.”
Nic’s strong throat worked. He smoothed a hand over Rianna’s head.
“I didn’t know myself until a couple of months ago,” Cassidy said. “She’s young, and she hadn’t shifted yet.”
The men nodded. Fada rarely shifted before their first birthday, and with some, it took several years.
“We were playing in the estuary. The Shannon Estuary,” she added for the benefit of the other three men. It was at the mouth of the Shannon, where the big river emptied into the Atlantic. “She likes to ride on my back when I’m a dolphin. She slipped off, but I wasn’t worried. She’s a good swimmer, and I was right there. But a motorboat went by and before she could get back on, the wake smacked her in the face. She got scared and shifted.”
Ben returned with a plate of food—fish and salad wrapped up in a large piece of fried bread. “Thank you,” Cassidy said as he set it on her lap. It smelled delicious. She eyed it longingly and tried to ignore her growling stomach.
“Eat,” Nic told her. “We can hear the rest after you get some food in you.”
She was too hungry to argue. She lifted the fried bread and took a bite. Meanwhile, Marlin passed around cups of red wine, and then took a seat with the other two men on the edge of the futon.
The food was delicious. Cassidy tried not to stuff it into her mouth, but she’d been hungry for too long.
While she ate, she took in her surroundings. The cavern was huge, a good forty feet in diameter, with a saltwater pool on one side, and an arched entrance to another cave that appeared to be a living room. The walls were a rough, dark gray basalt except where someone had carved out shelves. Three fae lights floated near the ceiling, casting a soft aqua light over the sparse furnishings.
Cassidy glanced at the pool. She’d learned the value of an escape route over the past few weeks. “You can reach the ocean from here?” she asked Nic around a mouthful of food.
“Yeah, but this is my quarters. Our main entrance is down that passageway.” He indicated a door in the outer room.
Cassidy set down the fried bread wrap. She’d only finished half, but her stomach felt uncomfortably stretched.
“I didn’t realize it at the time, but the men in the boat must have seen Rianna’s sea dragon. Word got out, and suddenly, it was like that summer you were in Ireland—‘scientists’ were everywhere. Some were human, but I’m sure some were fae pretending to be scientists. A couple of our own people disappeared. The alpha put the Shannon base on lockdown.”
“Does Gallagan know?” Chas Gallagan was the Shannon alpha—and Nic’s grandfather on his mother’s side.
“Your granddad? No.” She stared down at her plate. “Not that I don’t trust him, but there are a couple of men I’m not so sure of. You know how people can be about sea dragons.”
“I know,” came his grim reply.
“I suppose you do.”
Sea dragons were universally feared, even by the fada. Very few alphas would tolerate a clan member more powerful than them, and it didn’t help that sea dragons tended to be cold, ruthless creatures.
Humans were even worse. They hunted and killed dragons on sight—or chained them with iron in secret labs for “study.”
But worst of all were the fae, who would do almost anything to obtain a dragon’s heart. When consumed, a dragon’s heart increased a fae’s natural magical Gifts by five or ten times. Fortunately, dragons had a natural immunity to fae magic; otherwise none would ever reach adulthood.
Joe turned his cold black eyes on her. She’d bet good money he was a shark. “How do you know they’re after her?”
“I’m a Gifted tracker,” she told him. “But my Gift is a wee bit unusual—instead of tracking others, I can sense danger to me or the clan. The Shannon alpha uses me as an early-warning system. I knew those ‘scientists’ were really fae.”
She turned a stark look on Nic. “They’re wanting my baby’s heart.”
Chapter 6
“What?” Nic snarled, anger a live wire i
n his veins. “The devil they do.”
The other three men made shocked sounds. “Like hell,” Marlin growled.
Nic’s grip tightened on the small, trusting weight in his arms. Everything in him revolted at the idea of anyone harming a little girl.
His little girl. His daughter. He was still trying to wrap his mind around the idea that he had a child.
Cassidy regarded him with shadowed eyes. She had dark blue irises, the color of the deepest ocean. That summer with her, Nic had believed he could drown in her eyes, and die a happy man.
“I can’t protect her,” Cassidy said, “and she’s too young to protect herself. Yes, she has a dragon’s natural immunity to magic, but you know that if they get hold of her, they’ll just kill her. They don’t need magic to do that. They can put her in an iron cage and starve her.”
Iron was poison for the fada and fae. An iron cage would weaken Rianna and steal her ability to shift. Once Rianna died, they could cut out and preserve her heart.
Nic felt his eyes flash a dragon-gold. “Over my dead body.”
Marlin crossed his arms over his chest. “And mine.”
“And mine,” echoed Joe and Ben.
“We’re all in this together,” Marlin added. “Nic’s ours, which means you and your daughter are, too.”
Cassidy bit her lip. “Thank you. I’m so sorry to bring this on you.” She gave the three men a wobbly smile. It wasn’t lost on Nic that she didn’t include him, but then, he didn’t deserve her smiles.
“Who is it?” He wanted names. As far as he was concerned, they were dead men.
“That’s just it. I don’t know.” She passed a hand over her face. “There are four of them. They have the scent of a fae, but I can’t tell which kind. They’re disguising their scents somehow, and using a glamour to hide their true faces. They could be sun fae or ice fae, or even night fae. If I had to guess, though, I’d say ice fae.”
A chill slid down his spine. “They followed you to California?”
“Yes. My first stop was Maryland. I was hoping you’d be at Rock Run, but once I got to the States, I could tell you were further west.”
“You saw my family?” Nic’s oldest brother Dion was alpha of Rock Run, and his younger brother and sister still lived there as well.
Cassidy shook her head. “I remembered what you said—that no one at Rock Run knows about your sea dragon. Once I knew you weren’t there, I kept going. We took a bus.”
“From Maryland?” That would’ve taken days, cooped up with smelly humans.
“We didn’t come straight here. I was trying to lose them. A couple of times, we hitchhiked. By the time we got to California, we were worn out—and Rianna had gone too long without being in the water.” Cassidy finished her wine and set the cup on a nightstand. “We went up to Chicago first, and then across to Denver and then Utah and Nevada. It was so dry—we barely made it to Lake Tahoe in time. We spent a few days in the lake, but like me, Rianna needs sea water, so as soon as she was strong enough, I set out again. When we finally reached the coast, I realized you were somewhere out in the ocean. I just didn’t have the strength to keep going, so I checked us into a motel in Ventura.”
“I wish I’d known you were that close. I would’ve come to get you.”
“Yeah?” Her head tilted in disbelief.
He scowled. “Of course I would’ve.”
She shrugged. “Well, I didn’t have a way to contact you.” Water fada couldn’t use cell phone except for brief periods—something about their bodies shorted out small electronics. Most clans had a landline installed in their base, but there was no way Nic could run a landline ten miles offshore.
He grimaced, accepting the blame. If he hadn’t ruthlessly cut off all contact with Cassidy, she could’ve left him a message at the fada bar in Ventura.
“Anyway, they found us this morning.” Her hands curled into fists. “Thank the Goddess I sensed them coming. We barely got away. They shot at us, the bloody bastards—the bullets went right by us. Scared the shite out of Rianna.”
Nic’s claws pricked at his fingertips. With an effort, he willed them back. He was coldly furious, but he had to save his anger for the men who dared hurt what was his.
“And your leg?” he prompted Cassidy.
She rubbed the rough red scab. “A fae ball. That was in Ireland. They almost caught us the night we sneaked out of the base. That’s when I knew for sure the fae were behind—"
Rianna chose that moment to wake up. She tensed until she saw Cassidy. “Mam!” She leapt off Nic’s lap.
He itched to hear the rest of the story, but he couldn’t help smiling as Cassidy wrapped Rianna in a hug.
“You’re okay?” she asked.
The little girl sniffed. “I was a-scared.”
“I know, alanna. But you’re safe now.”
Nic exchanged looks with his men. From their frowns, they were as outraged as him.
Outside the storm still boomed. From time to time, a lightning bolt hit the island hard enough to shake the caverns. It was fixing to be one of California’s rare but powerful storms.
“Even if they knew where your woman and the girl were headed, there’s no way they could get through this storm,” Joe said to Nic. “A boat wouldn’t get a hundred yards in this, and no one but you could swim in it now.”
Cassidy looked up from where she was murmuring to Rianna. “They can’t know where we are. Even I didn’t know. I just followed the bond west.”
Joe nodded. “As soon as the storm dies down, I’ll change to my shark and patrol the perimeter of the island. No one will get close without me knowing it.”
“Thank you,” Nic said gratefully. He’d gotten to his feet and was pacing the cavern floor.
Cassidy shivered, and he swore under his breath. “You’re still cold.” He grabbed two sweaters from his shelves and handed them to her. “Put these on—both of you.”
Cassidy nodded her thanks and pulled the smaller sweater over Rianna’s head. It was light green and the pup looked adorable, even if Cassidy had to roll up the sleeves multiple times.
Rianna smoothed a hand down her front. “It’s pretty. Thanks, mister.”
Cassidy pulled on the other sweater, a thick blue wool that set off her eyes and made her hair appear even more red. “I’m guessing our things are at the bottom of the ocean.”
“You’re welcome to the sweaters,” he told her. “But I saw where your pack went down—I’ll get it in a minute.”
Cassidy blinked. “You can dive that deep? And even if you saw it go down, the current could’ve carried it a mile along the bottom by now.”
“I’ll get it,” he assured her.
The sweater covered Cassidy to her thighs. Nic felt a primitive satisfaction at seeing her in his clothing, his scent all over her. He fisted his hands to keep himself from reaching out. He wanted to pull Cassidy onto his lap, cuddle her as he had Rianna.
Rianna scrambled back onto her mother’s lap, and Cassidy made a face at Nic. “She’s not usually so clingy, but the poor things had a rough few weeks. And you men are strangers…”
“It’s all right.” Nic’s voice was gruff, and Cassidy flinched.
But he wasn’t angry at her. He was pissed off at himself—because damn it, he shouldn’t be a stranger to his own daughter.
Rianna perked up. “Can you find our rucksack, mister?”
Nic’s eyes met Cassidy’s. He ached to ask Rianna to call him Papa, but he wouldn’t. That was for her mother to decide.
“Nic,” he said at last. “Call me Nic.”
“Thank you, Mister Nic.” Rianna put her mouth to Cassidy’s ear. “I want my Annie-doll,” she whispered.
Nic raised a brow, having heard her perfectly well with his shifter’s enhanced hearing. “Her Annie-doll?”
“It’s her ragdoll,” Cassidy explained. “My aunt Maire made it for her.”
“It’s in the pack?”
Cassidy nodded, and Nic crouched next to
the futon so he was at Rianna’s level. “I’ll get your Annie-doll.”
The little girl lifted her head from where she’d buried it in her mother’s neck. “Promise?”
“Promise,” he replied gravely.
Rianna nodded, satisfied.
Cassidy frowned. “If he can find it,” she added with a warning look at Nic.
Nic knew what she was thinking—that he shouldn’t make a promise to a child that he might not be able to keep. But then, she didn’t know that a sea dragon could pretty much find a needle in a haystack.
“I’ll find it,” he repeated as he rose back to his feet. “Tell me something. These men who are after you—do they have a teleporter with them?” Teleporting was a fae Gift, although fortunately, a rare one.
“I don’t think so. And even if they did, they can’t know where I am.” To ’port, a fae needed an exact location.
The other men stood up, too. “As far as they know,” Marlin said, “you two could be anywhere off the coast of California. The storm should help. No one could’ve followed you in that. Even another fada would’ve had a helluva time.”
Cassidy briefly closed her eyes.
Nic touched her cheek. “You’re safe, querida.” Sweetheart.
They both felt the electricity. Cassidy jerked away.
Nic’s jaw tightened. She couldn’t have rejected him more clearly.
“I’ll go get that pack.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned and strode out of the cavern.
As soon as he was out of sight in the tunnel that led to the main entrance, he halted and bent over, hands on his thighs, sucking in breaths. Seeing Cassidy had been a kick in the chest, but finding out they had a daughter had gutted him.
When he’d left Cassidy behind in Ireland, a huge part of his heart had remained with her. He’d known he’d never mate, never have a child.
To see Cassidy would’ve been a shock in itself, but he could’ve handled it. But to meet his daughter for the first time was too much—and to know they were both in danger was his fucking worst nightmare.
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