“— go underwater,” he was saying. “Not a long way, but it will be quicker if I Change. Can you hold on?”
Her limbs felt too heavy to move. Her fingers were fat and numb. Regina took a deep breath and thought of Nick. Hold on. She just had to hold on a little longer.
She nodded, forgetting Dylan couldn’t see her in the dark.
“Good girl,” he said, taking her cooperation for granted. “This way.”
He put his arm around her waist to lead her forward. And maybe he could see after all, she thought dazedly, because he guided her without any trouble deeper and deeper into water up to her breasts. Up to her neck. She began to shake against his arm, hard, deep tremors that hurt her bones. She was so cold now that the water felt warmer than the air, but she felt its pressure in her chest as if she were already underwater. Her womb contracted. He was taking her into the water. Under the water. She couldn’t breathe.
She stopped, her hands curling protectively over her stomach.
“It’s all right,” Dylan said.
“I’m not . . .” But she was afraid. Horribly afraid. “The baby.”
“Baby,” he said without inflection.
She didn’t, couldn’t, answer him. She stood there, her teeth chattering, shaking like a dog in the dark.
He turned her into his body. His fingers stroked her cheek. He cupped her face in his hands. Was he going to kiss her? Now? Why not? She wanted him to. Either he was here— the only man who had ever showed up when she needed him— or she was dreaming. Let him kiss her before the water took her.
His breath skated over her eyelids, over her lips, hot, drugging, salty sweet. She stood a little on tiptoe, wanting to be closer to him, but he slipped away. She felt the sealskin again, in the water between them, moving with the current, heavy against her legs.
“Hold on,” he said.
And then he was gone.
She cried out in shock and loss, reaching for him, stretching her arms through the black water. The sealskin flowed under her hands, thick, soft, fluid. Her fingers curled reflexively. Hold on. His voice? Hers?
The pelt rolled with the water, assuming weight and form, muscle and mass. Her hands dug deeper in its folds. It was huge. Warm. Pulsing with life. The sleek fur glided under and against her like a dog nudging for attention. A really big dog. She caught her breath at the feel of the solid body under her hands, and it pulled her off her feet and under the water.
A confused rush filled her ears, filled her head. She couldn’t think. She barely had time to be afraid. She was weightless, warm, buoyed up and supported by the powerfulbody surging under hers, by the water streaming and bubbling over and around her. Her mind churned. Her grip tightened. The darkness grew gray and then gold and then erupted in dazzling light.
Sunset spilled over the rocks, and Regina sprawled beached on a block of granite with the day going down in banners of pink and gold on the horizon and a massive thing . . . shape . . . warm, black, sleek . . . beside her. She blinked. Gasped. Raised her head. Pushed up on her elbows.
A violent fit of coughing seized her. Helpless, she heaved, spasms squeezing her chest. Her head exploded. Her lungs rattled. Tears leaked from her eyes.
When she forced her lids open again, Dylan knelt naked at her side, and the sealskin lay empty on the rocks.
She passed out.
* * *
“You can go in now,” the doctor said.
Finally. Dylan stood.
He hadn’t known when he carried Regina into the clinic that he would be barred from her bedside. But he had known she needed more help than he could give. Medical help. Human help.
He’d stripped off Regina’s wet clothes and wrapped her in his shirt before carrying her to the nearest house. One look at her, unconscious in his arms, and the woman living there had called 9-1-1.
Caleb came, lights flashing, to drive them to the clinic and stayed past the clinic’s offical closing at five to hear the doctor’s report. Out of concern? Or to question Regina when she regained consciousness?
Antonia Barone came to smoke and pace on the sidewalk just outside the front doors.
Nick came with his grandmother. He hunched over some kind of video game, his thumbs busy, his face fixed and white, his attention completely focused on the glowing screen. As if the future of the world depended on his ability to punch and kick the tiny bad guys into oblivion. He had barely looked up the entire time they waited.
At the doctor’s announcement, however, he lurched to his feet, the game system sliding unnoticed onto the chair.
Dylan followed the boy forward.
The doctor— female, sixtyish, with a round, brown face and salt-and-pepper hair— frowned over her clipboard. “Family only.”
“But he saved her,” Nick protested.
Dylan looked down in surprise.
“I’m sure your mom will thank him,” the doctor said. “Later. Right now she just wants to see you.”
Antonia took Nick through the door to the exam room.
Caleb stopped the doctor as she turned to follow them. “How is she?”
“Better. Tired,” the doctor said. “The warmed IV brought her body temperature back up. I’m keeping an eye on her toes.”
“What about the baby?” Dylan asked.
“What baby?” Caleb’s tone was sharp.
Dylan’s shoulders tensed. “There’s a possibility she is pregnant,” he said stiffly to the doctor.
The doctor glanced down at her clipboard and then up at him. “And you are . . . ?”
Dylan set his jaw. “The father.”
“I’ll talk to the patient,” the doctor said and disappeared through the door.
“You son of a bitch,” Caleb said.
Dylan winced. Emotions seethed and bubbled inside him: worry, responsibility, guilt. He covered them, as he had learned to cover all emotion at the selkie court, with a sneer. “Why? Because you weren’t the only one to enjoy himself on your wedding night?”
Caleb’s punch snapped back his head and rocked him on his heels.
Dylan ran his tongue around his teeth and tasted blood. “One,” he snarled. “I’ll give you one.” He deserved it. “But hit me again and I’ll take you down.”
“You can try,” Caleb said.
“If you were really eager to defend Regina, you would ask me why she was taken.”
Caleb hooked his thumbs into his pockets. “I’m listening.”
It was one thing to confide his mission to Margred; quite another, Dylan discovered, to discuss family matters with his brother. The Hunters had never been big on communication.
“There are . . . stories about our family. About our mother.”
“Yeah, I heard most of them. After she took a hike.”
Dylan shook his head. “Not gossip. Legends. Prophecies, if you will. The stories say that a daughter born of the lineage of Atargatis will one day change the balance of power among the elementals.”
“Atargatis.”
“Alice Hunter. Our mother.”
Caleb’s eyes narrowed. “So?”
Dylan spoke carefully, in the even tones he’d learned at the prince’s court. “If Regina is with child, a female child, that offspring could fulfill the prophecy. It would be regarded by Hell as a danger to the present order.”
“Regina’s child,” Caleb repeated.
“Hers. And mine.” He felt a lurch of something— possessiveness? pride?— as he said the words.
“You think the demons decided to take her out?”
“To eliminate the threat of the child. Yes.”
His brother eyed him grimly. “So, before you knocked her up, did you tell her she was going to be a demon magnet?”
Dylan’s lips thinned. “I did not know she was a target.”
“You didn’t know she was pregnant?”
It chafed him to admit it. “No.”
“You still had no business putting her at risk.”
“Remember that,” Dylan
said, “when you go home to your wife tonight.”
10
“I WANT TO GO HOME,” REGINA CROAKED.
Warmth seeped from the hot water bottles packed along her sides; dripped from the IV attached to her arm. She was still cold all over. Except for her throat. Her throat burned. She wanted desperately to feel normal again. For everything to be normal.
“Don’t be stupid,” Antonia snapped. Her mother’s way of expressing concern.
Nick’s hand tightened on Regina’s through the blankets. He’d stuck his arm through the metal bars on the other side of the clinic bed, holding on to her bandaged hand as if he never wanted to let go. Regina knew how he felt. She wiggled her fingers, tickling his palm, until his tight, pinched face relaxed.
Donna Tomah folded the blanket back over Regina’s feet. “Actually, I can discharge her in a couple of hours. As long as she gets lots of rest and plenty of warm fluids, there’s no reason we can’t all go home tonight.”
“I can make tea,” Nick volunteered.
Regina smiled at him, so full of love she thought she might burst with it.
“You’re spending the night at the Trujillos’,” his grandmother said.
Regina’s heart dropped.
So did Nicky’s expression. He tightened his grip on her hand.
“Not tonight,” Regina said.
Last night Nick had woken up in front of the TV to find her gone. Tonight he needed to sleep secure in his own bed with his mother safe in the next room.
“I already talked to Brenda Trujillo,” Antonia said. “It’s all arranged. She’s giving the boys dinner.”
“Dinner, fine,” Regina said. “But Nick needs to be home tonight.”
They needed to be home. Together.
Her eyes clashed with her mother’s.
“Fine,” Antonia said. “I guess I can stay with him until you get out of here.”
The tension eased from Nick’s bony shoulders.
“Thanks, Ma.”
Antonia’s mouth trembled. She bent it into a scowl. Her face resembled a wooden mask, the lines carved deep, the eyes dark and devastated. “I was going to spend the night at the restaurant cleaning anyway.”
This had been an ordeal for her, too, Regina realized. And she was trying, the best way she knew how, to restore her restaurant and their lives, to make things right again.
Sudden tears pricked Regina’s eyes. She widened her gaze, staring up at the stained acoustic tile. She didn’t want Nick to see her cry.
Antonia reached through the bars on the other side to pat her hand. “Don’t you worry. They arrested that guy. Jericho.”
“Where . . .” Regina’s throat hurt too much to continue.
Antonia understood. “The hospital in Rockport. Caleb’s out front, waiting to take your statement.”
Regina swallowed painfully. Caleb. Of course. He was the chief of police. She thought she’d dreamed . . . She must have imagined . . .
“You don’t have to see him now,” Donna Tomah said. “You don’t have to see either of them until you’re ready.”
Either of them?
Regina’s heart began to pound. “Dylan?” she croaked.
Donna glanced from the monitor to her face. “Mm. He hasn’t budged from the waiting room since he brought you in.”
Regina opened her mouth. No sound came out.
“He rescued you,” Nick said.
Dylan’s voice, deep in the dark. “It’s all right.” The water surging, swishing, bubbling around her, and her fingers flexing, cramping. “You need to hold on to me,” he’d said. “Hold on.”
Yeah, and then he’d turned into a giant seal.
Regina closed her eyes, cold and hot at once.
“Are you all right?” Donna asked.
He’d said that, too. Or had she imagined it, the way she’d imagined everything else?
Regina moistened her lips. Her hand crept under the blanket to her stomach. “Fine,” she said hoarsely.
She was fine. Everything was fine, as long as she ignored the persistent ache in her throat, the pain of returningfeeling in her toes, the panic fluttering at the edges of her mind.
Antonia left to take Nicky to the Trujillos’ for dinner, promising to pick him up later and put him to bed. Rare hugs and more reassurances. “I’m fine. I love you. I’ll be home soon.”
Regina lay back, exhausted. With one hand she stroked the change of clothes her mother had brought: black sweatpants, a tank top, a hoodie. She needed to get dressed. In a minute. Just . . . one . . . minute . . .
She slept.
Donna came back with Regina’s discharge instructions and scrawled something on her chart. “I want you to come back tomorrow for more tests.”
Regina struggled to sit. She didn’t want more tests. She wanted to go home, back to her real life and her regular routines, Nicky running up and down the stairs to the apartment and her mother driving her crazy in the kitchen.
“Can’t we . . . get them over with now?”
“I’m afraid not. All the fluids you’ve had will affect your hormone levels.” The doctor’s voice was brisk and professional, her eyes sympathetic. “Although if you’d prefer to take a home pregnancy test tomorrow morning, the results should be fairly accurate.”
Regina’s breath caught painfully. Pregnancy test.
Donna knew.
Dylan knew.
“I’m not . . .” she’d said to him. “The baby.”
Realization crashed through her careful pretense.
Things were never going back to normal again.
* * *
Regina hobbled into the waiting room on Donna’s arm, clutching a plastic bag full of her old, wet clothes.
She stopped dead at the door. They were both there, waiting for her, Caleb, wearing his uniform and a thoughtful, guarded expression, and . . .
Dylan.
Her heart pumped. He was taller than his brother, darker, leaner. Younger, until you looked in his eyes. His eyes were flat black and dangerous.
She moistened her lips and looked away. “Where’s Ma?”
Caleb moved forward. “I told her I would bring you home.”
Regina tightened her grip on Donna’s arm.
“She can’t answer questions now,” the doctor said. “Her throat’s bruised. She needs to rest.”
“Understood. I can take your statement in the morning,” he said to Regina. “Tonight I’m just your taxi driver.”
Her gaze flicked back to Dylan, black and brooding beside him. “What’s he? My bodyguard?”
“Yes,” Dylan said. He wasn’t smiling.
Regina drew a shaky breath. O-kay. She didn’t feel up for an argument. Besides . . .
“Should . . . say thanks,” she croaked.
“No, you shouldn’t,” Dylan said, relieving her of the bag. He hesitated and then put his free arm awkwardly around her waist. “You’re not supposed to talk.”
She snuck another glance at his hard profile. Was he kidding? She didn’t know him well enough to tell. She didn’t know him at all, really. The thought depressed her.
Donna unlocked the clinic doors. The evening air blew in, cool and moist. In mid-August, the days were already shortening, the sunset almost an hour earlier than a month ago. Regina shivered, grateful for Dylan’s warmth as he helped her out to the curb and into Caleb’s Jeep.
She eyed the grill separating the front and back seats and tried not to feel like she was under arrest. She didn’t need a police escort. Or a bodyguard.
Why was he here?
“He rescued you,” Nick had said.
And now he wouldn’t even look at her.
Caleb glanced in the rearview mirror, like a cop, like a father driving his fourteen-year-old on a date. “All set back there?”
Regina nodded. Dylan had withdrawn to his side of the car. Fine. She hadn’t asked for his company. She wasn’t going to cling. She pressed her lips together, pressed her hands together, keeping them warm b
etween her legs.
They rode to the restaurant in silence.
* * *
Dylan gazed out at the unlit streets, his heart a live coal in his chest. He needed to talk to her. He had to explain, to win her over somehow, to make her accept . . .
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