by Zoe Chant
“See, you’re getting it,” she said breathlessly, smiling up into his face. “But you’re supposed to let me go, now.”
Wrench realized that he hadn’t let go of her to return to the dance position. “Do I have to?”
“Salsa is about the courtship, not the catch,” Lydia said with mock reproach.
He was bending to kiss her when someone behind them cleared their throat.
“Sorry to break up the moment,” Travis said apologetically. “But I also know that it’s all moments during the honeymoon, and we’ve got some work to do.”
Wrench froze, but Lydia rose up on her toes and brushed her luscious lips against his. “I have to go lead a mediation class anyway,” she said regretfully.
Wrench knew what he’d be spending the next several hours meditating about.
Chapter 30
Lydia was toweling her hair off after her shower, listening to Ally prattle about… she honestly wasn’t sure what most of it was actually about and had to keep reminding herself that Ally didn’t have anyone else to talk to. It was unending, though, and breathlessly exciting to the little girl.
“And I had to EAT the lunch ANYWAY because otherwise I would have had to buy HOT LUNCH and… UNCLE WRENCH!”
Wrench had stopped at the buffet on his way up to Lydia’s courtyard, and he had a tray with two plates heaped in food. “Told ‘em I was bringing you a picnic,” he said sheepishly to Lydia as Ally squealed over the offerings.
“I’ll get a PICNIC towel!” Ally suggested, disappearing swiftly into Lydia’s room. “We can sit in the GRASS!” she called from inside.
Wrench grimaced in what Lydia had learned was supposed to be a smile and put the tray on the small table by the house. He looked like he wanted to bend down and kiss her, and she tipped her face up invitingly, but he hesitated, and then Ally was back with a beach towel, spreading it onto the grass imperiously.
“You sit HERE, Uncle Wrench,” the girl directed. “I’ll sit next to Lydia, here. There are only two glasses of lemonade!”
“I have a bottle of water,” Lydia chuckled, realizing she was going to have to steal her own kisses if she wanted them.
We want them, her swan assured her with a sigh of regret for the missed opportunity.
She settled into the place that Ally pointed out for her once the food was laid out to the girl’s satisfaction, and raised her bottle of water to toast with. “To picnics,” she said.
“To PICNICS!” Ally agreed. She turned and did it again with Wrench. “To PICNICS,” she repeated.
“To family,” Wrench said, and he tapped his glass against Lydia’s bottle with a thoughtful look.
Ally fell into her food, while Lydia and Wrench did the same more sedately and reminded her repeatedly not to talk with her mouth full.
“But I think of things to SAY when I’m eating,” the girl protested, around a bite of sandwich that Lydia wasn’t even sure she could chew.
Then Ally’s mouth fell open and she struggled to say something, eyes wide in alarm.
“Swallow first,” Wrench growled good-naturedly.
Lydia glanced at him, then screamed, “Look out!” as the snake behind him coiled up to strike.
Chapter 31
Wrench dived to one side at Lydia’s shrieked command without hesitation, and heard the snap of strong reptile jaws just missing his neck.
He rolled to his feet and crouched, facing the giant cobra that had been lurking behind him.
The thing must have been seven feet long, its muscled body a hand span in diameter at least. It hissed, showing wicked fangs, and flared its hood in anger at its missed prey.
Ally had apparently managed to swallow, because her scream was clear and high and loud.
Wrench was shifting without conscious thought, clothing ripping from his panther’s sleek body as he twisted to charge at the snake, snarling in challenge.
The snake moved in impossible ways, slithering out of reach of Wrench’s grasping claws and somehow coiling itself to strike again at the same time.
Wrench dodged its snapping jaws and lunged forward to try to bite at its hooded neck.
Again, it wasn’t where he was expecting it to be, and his teeth closed on air as coils of thick scaled muscle tangled his feet. He snarled and spun, and suddenly Ally was dashing forward wielding a fork like a weapon, whooping in challenge.
“Ally, no!” Lydia cried, and then she was shifting into a tornado of black wings and wading into the fray.
The snake seemed to be everywhere, its snapping fangs seeping poison and its scaled body looping underfoot.
Lydia hissed back at it, trying to get between it and Ally while the girl bravely tried to stab it with the fork clutched in her hands.
Wrench finally got claws into the snake, flexing wickedly into its flesh, and it gave a weird shriek of pain as it moved lightning fast to bite deep into the offending paw.
Wrench howled in agony, poison burning painfully into his blood.
Lydia beat at it with her wings and stabbed with her hard beak, and it let go to hiss and finally retreat, leaving a trail of blood.
Ally screamed again.
Wrench tried to turn to follow the snake as it slithered away into the jungle and fell over on his side as he shifted back to human.
Chapter 32
“Wrench!” Lydia cried, dropping to her knees beside him. Ally fell beside her.
“Uncle Wrench?”
“We’ve got to get you to the hospital,” Lydia cried, cradling his bit hand in her own.
“Can’t,” Wrench ground out around clenched jaws.
Lydia thought he was protesting the idea of a hospital, then he followed with a gasping, “Can’t see…” and started seizing violently.
Lydia held onto his shoulders, trying to keep him from hurting himself.
She was losing him.
All she could do was wrap arms around his trembling muscles and watch his skin go a sickly shade of gray.
Suddenly, the sun above them was blotted out, and she looked up to watch Bastian lower himself into the courtyard like a precise reptilian helicopter, churning leaves as he landed.
Saina hopped off his back, dressed in her lifeguard uniform with a first aid kit in her hand.
“What happened?” the siren demanded, bending over them.
The courtyard still felt very crowded, even after Bastian shifted back to his human form and joined his mate.
“A cobra!” Lydia explained, not willing to let go of Wrench even now. “His hand!”
Saina and Bastian exchanged worried looks as they found the twin puncture marks and the black lines that were already obvious up Wrench’s arm.
“I could medivac him to the mainland,” Bastian brainstormed to Saina.
“There’s not time,” Saina replied mournfully.
Wrench groaned. He was drooling uncontrollably.
Ally sobbed.
“What is going on?”
Four heads swiveled to see Scarlet, standing at the entrance to the courtyard. “Wrench!” she said in alarm. “What happened to him?” She didn’t comment on Ally’s presence.
“A cobra bite,” Bastian said mournfully, indicating the swollen limb.
Wrench gave a moan and arched in Lydia’s arms. She clung to him, weeping. “Hold on, Wrench,” she begged. “You can’t leave me.”
“Can you help him?” Scarlet asked Saina unexpectedly. Why would she ask Saina?
“Me?” Saina squeaked.
“You were able to sing the goldshot out of Bastian, can you do the same with a neurotoxin?”
Saina blinked at her. “That was different. Bastian was my mate and my magic doesn’t seem to work on other people’s mates… I don’t know if I can do it with Wrench.” She swallowed. “But I’ll try.”
Lydia had no idea what they were talking about. Singing? Goldshot? Magic? Wrench was writhing in her arms; it took all of her strength to keep him from hitting wildly out and she was barely following the con
versation.
“You can’t leave me,” Lydia repeated, mouth close to his ear. “You can’t go before I tell you how much I love you.”
He was growling incoherently—it might have been her name or Ally’s that he was trying to say, foaming at the mouth.
Bastian was holding down his thrashing legs, Scarlet was kneeling beside Lydia to help hold down Wrench’s arms, and then Saina was singing, softly at first, then with rising intensity.
Lydia felt like she was at the edges of a rushing river, the sound of the siren’s voice tugging at her, trying to pull the very essence of her soul from her body.
Chapter 33
Wrench was adrift in an ocean of the worst parts of himself.
Perhaps this death was for the best, he thought suddenly. If he was gone, the people he loved would be safe at last. He would never have to relive the terrible things he had done, never wonder who had unwillingly suffered from the work that he had taken.
He just hadn’t expected death to hurt this much.
Every nerve ending was on fire, as if he’d been dipped in acid. It felt like his skeleton was being bent into impossible shapes by his spasming muscles. His panther screamed ceaselessly in his head, a harmony to the creak of his bones giving out.
You can’t leave me, Lydia whispered in his ear, and he could feel her arms around him.
They hurt.
Everything hurt.
She’d be better off without him.
You can’t leave me, Lydia repeated fiercely.
It would be the best thing I’ve ever done, Wrench thought, and he let go, ready for the oblivion at the end of the pain.
Only to be yanked back by a thread of music.
The unexpected song, he realized after a moment of agony, had a very specific pull. It wasn’t aimed at him, exactly, but at the thread of poison that had wrapped into every fiber of his being.
It was unwinding, untying, unraveling him to get at the toxin.
It drew the cobra’s venom from his blood, sucking it from his seized muscles.
It felt like having his skin ripped off from the inside, like every vein in his body was being sandblasted from within.
It was almost worse than the initial poison had been.
Finally, it was done, he was free, and he lay a long moment trying to make sense out of the fact that he was still alive.
“Is he dead?” someone asked. Travis. That was Travis’ voice.
Shouldn’t I be? Wrench wondered wearily.
“I think he’ll be fine.” That was Saina’s voice, sounding unusually hoarse. “I probably got the toxins from his blood in time.”
“His pulse is steady,” Bastian agreed.
“Well done.” Scarlet’s voice.
Shit.
Chapter 34
Lydia wept in frank relief, cradling Wrench’s head in her lap. “Thank you,” she told Saina, when she could breathe again. “Thank you so much.”
The mermaid was looking fairly gobsmacked herself. “I never knew that siren powers could be used like this,” she confessed. “I’m so happy I could help.”
“You’re amazing,” Bastian murmured.
“Is Uncle Wrench going to be okay?” Ally asked, her voice subdued.
She was rather suddenly the center of all the attention in the courtyard as nobody wanted to look at Scarlet.
“Your uncle is going to be fine,” the resort owner said mildly. “But I’m left with some questions.”
“She needed a safe place,” Travis said too swiftly.
“She’s been no bother,” Bastian added. “None of the guests have seen her.”
Wrench mumbled something unintelligible and sat up weakly, leaning heavily on Lydia.
“Wrench didn’t want the cartel to know about her,” Lydia added quickly. “Her mother is in protective custody until the sting.”
They all braced for the worst.
Scarlet took a step forward, and extended her hand to Ally. “I’m Scarlet,” she said mildly.
“I’m Ally,” the girl replied gravely, shaking the hand gingerly.
“I’m pleased to meet you.” Scarlet’s voice was utterly neutral. “It was very brave of you to try to fight the snake.”
Ally was still clutching the fork, and she gave a lopsided smile. “Snakes can’t hurt me,” she said proudly. “Papa is a GOOSE shifter, and I will be, too.”
The statement met a puzzled silence.
“A goose?” Lydia pressed. She wasn’t sure how being a goose shifter would protect the girl.
“A MAN goose,” Ally added.
At Lydia’s side, Wrench began to wheeze.
For a moment, she was worried he was going to seize again, then she realized he was chuckling. His mirth gained strength until he was laughing helplessly and everyone was staring at them.
“Mongoose,” Wrench finally gasped. “She’s a mongoose shifter. They’re immune to snake venom.”
“That’s what I said,” Ally said in exasperation. “A MANGOOSE.”
Lydia giggled almost hysterically. Bastian and Saina burst into laughter, leaning into each other. Travis chortled, holding his sides. Even Scarlet was snickering, a hand over her mouth.
“What?” Ally demanded.
That only made everyone laugh harder, until their eyes were streaming with tears and Travis fell onto the grass because he couldn’t stand up anymore.
Chapter 35
Wrench hated being babied much less than he suspected he would. Ally clearly took a lot of enjoyment in playing nurse, and he couldn’t complain about getting more time to spend with her as he recuperated in Lydia’s room.
But it was only a day before he felt well enough to resent his inactivity and started thinking again.
He didn’t want to talk about it too much with Ally around, but Laura and Tex took the girl down to the beach on his second day of enforced rest.
“There’s still an assassin here,” he growled at Lydia. “One that knows about you and Ally now.”
“We’ll find him,” Lydia assured him. “Everyone—especially Scarlet—is on full alert, and we’ll make a game plan to flush him out when you’re back to full strength.”
“You don’t deserve this risk. It’s my fault this danger is here.”
“You don’t deserve it, either,” Lydia reminded him.
“What if I do?” Wrench demanded. “What if it’s all this I don’t deserve?” His gesture included Lydia, and Lydia’s cozy room, a room that felt more like a home than anywhere he’d ever lived, and the view out the open window. It encompassed the whole island, with all the strange people who had accepted him as one of their own.
He didn’t have to look at her to know that Lydia was gazing at him with that look she got—that look that said she wanted to touch him and was careful not to. She’d been thoughtful about how much she casually touched him, and Wrench had caught her reaching for him and pulling back at the last moment several times.
“Do you really think that?” she asked gently. “That you don’t deserve happiness? That there’s not good in you?”
“If there was good in me, I wouldn’t be so good at hurting people,” Wrench growled.
“We reflect the kind of people we’re around,” she reminded him softly. “And if you’ve never been anything but hurt, that’s all you’re going to be good at.”
Wrench started to interrupt her—but to his surprise, she walked past him then, and gestured to him to follow her out into the courtyard. “Come.”
A blanket was spread out on the grass, and at first Wrench thought that she had very specific plans in mind. He had no objection to this idea—Ally’s arrival and his snakebite had put the kind of crimp on those activities that anyone would expected and he craved having her in his arms again.
But Lydia patted the blanket and not only made no move to remove her own clothing, but put on a pair of flexible leather gloves from her apron pocket. There was a little pile of odd tools to one side and Wrench suddenly wondered if sh
e had a kinky side he hadn’t known about.
“Take off your clothes and shift,” she commanded him.
He froze in confusion, his ardor dampened.
“Don’t look so frightened,” she scolded him. “I know you don’t like to be touched, but I want to show you how it can be.”
No one had ever accused Wrench of looking frightened in his life. When Lydia patted the blanket again, imperiously, he slowly obeyed.
In panther form, he crouched slowly down before her on the blanket, tense and anxious, tail lashing.
Then she slowly began to brush him, a coarse, short-bristled brush in her strong capable fingers.
Panther gave a long sigh of release and slowly relaxed under her ministrations.
She brushed his back with long, hard strokes, and moved down the sides of his neck. Without really intending to, he lifted his head to let her get the front and let out a long purr of contentment. She used her fingers to massage along his jaw and up around his ears. He head-butted her gently, and rolled to one side to let her brush his belly and smooth the fur down over his legs, massaging and brushing as she went.
He purred until he drooled, letting her groom him from nose to the tip of his flexible tail, and caught himself rolling to catch her in gentle claws when she paused.
This ain’t exactly dignified, his human reminded him, but his panther was too delighted by the attention to pay him any heed.
She kneaded muscles that Wrench hadn’t even known were tense, even relaxing the pads of his big feet. She sat between his front feet and did things to each side of his jaw and down his thick neck that nearly crossed his eyes with pleasure, leaning in with talented fingers to find every knotted muscle and hidden pain.
At last, he lay in her lap, gleaming with some sort of minty oil that she’d rubbed into his fur, and purred in a half-stupor of joy.