“Adonis, I’m here.” Connor’s gaze darted over the destruction he’d caused. It was significant. He stepped over Adonis’s tail to kneel at his torso. Adonis reached to cup Connor’s cheek, and his eyes flashed as he surveyed him for injury. It took a few minutes of calming words, in which Laurence and Nick came from their bedroom to see the destruction, for Adonis to be calm enough to speak again.
“You were gone,” Adonis said in an accusing tone.
“I was hungry.”
Adonis stiffened. His glare cut to Trevor. “You lethimfeed you?”
Oh boy… Connor wasn’t sure he wanted to spend forever trying to dissuade Adonis from picking fights with Trevor. It wouldn’t help in getting Trevor to like Adonis at all. “I was hungry,” Connor repeated. “Can you transform back?”
Adonis sneered at Trevor. “Massive.” He flopped his tail. “Much bigger than yours.”
“Adonis,” Connor chided. “Enough. Keep this up, and you can stay in the ocean alone, and I won’t visit.”
Adonis fumed in Trevor’s direction, clearly holding him responsible for the threat. After a few moments, he calmed and pressed his cheek gently to Connor’s. “Adonis Connor’s…” he said very, very softly.
Connor’s heart instantly melted. He pet Adonis’s hair to reassure him but heard a snort from behind him. He turned to see it was Trevor that looked amused.
Trevor raised his eyebrows at Connor, a grin curving his lips. “He can play you as easy as Laurence does.”
“Play me? He’s not…” Connor narrowed his eyes suspiciously at Adonis. Who, when Connor looked back at, was casting an unmistakably smug look in Trevor’s direction. “Adonis…” Connor trailed off, exasperated by his antics.
Adonis turned his energy back to lavishing affection on Connor. Despite knowing it was being done to manipulate him, Connor still folded to it.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“Is this really allowed?” Nick looked around himself as the elevator doors pinged open. Laurence, for his part, seemed more excited than nervous. Connor felt more of Nick’s apprehension than he did Laurence’s eagerness. He didn’t want to be back in this underground lab. Now that he knew experiments he had no memory of occurred within the labs, the comforting press of the ocean felt sinister. A place he’d once felt safe in was cold and remote. Unknown.
It looked exactly the same as it always did: the long walkway on his right with the ocean rising above him, the rows of deserted desks on his left. His dad’s—Ben, he corrected himself—Ben’s office further down on the left, with Arthur’s directly after it. Connor half expected Ben to walk out of the lab as if he’d been there the whole time. He’d had more time to absorb what he’d learned upon returning to the house. Ben was dead.
A lawyer contacted Connor only last week about transferring Ben’s assets to him. In lieu of a will, apparently his dad—Ben, call him B.E.N.—Ben had never written one, and Connor had been given everything as his only living relative.
Laurence touched Connor’s elbow. Pulled from his thoughts, Connor saw the look of concern Laurence directed at him.
“I’m fine.”
“We can do it if you want to wait up top,” Nick offered. Despite being the one who had voiced the most complaints, he had been the only one to advance, venturing deeper into the lab. His gaze met Connor’s, and there was no reproach in his expression. “I’ll make sure to find everything,” Nick promised. “I won’t leave even a word about you behind.”
Connor told them what he’d learned about himself and had been met with sympathy. None of them knew the extent of what Connor was, and Connor didn’t think he ever would. As more and more police officers spoke to him and news outlets covered the sunken ship, he realised that even when his nerves prickled with curiosity, the fear that someone with the same resources and determination as Cessair might learn about him was far greater. He wanted all the evidence gone. And he knew that all the evidence was kept here with no cloud backups.
“I’m fine,” Connor repeated. He broke away from Laurence and strode forward with fake confidence. As soon as he stepped out of the shadow of the elevator, Adonis was at the glass, swimming beside them. Connor let out a frustrated exhale. “Adonis, I told you not to come.”
Adonis heard him. He gestured to his ears, shrugged, and feigned an overly baffled expression.
Laurence snickered at the display, but Connor was less amused. He sighed. The sight of Adonis soothed him, even if the sight of him so close to the lab was worrying…
“He worries about you, too,” Nick said, coming up to Connor’s side. “I wouldn’t be too cross with him for this.”
“Nick, you’ve been far too cross since we met to give me any lectures on the subject,” Connor replied curtly.
Adonis backed Connor up by hissing at Nick. Connor felt it only weakened his argument.
Nick looked contemplatively at Adonis, then leaned close to Connor and spoke in a low voice that Adonis, judging by how he pressed his ear to the glass, struggled to hear. “What would he do if I hit you?”
“He’d smash the glass,” Connor replied promptly. He looked at the beams and supports that held back the mighty weight of the ocean. “The cage they placed him in was much more secure than this. More support, more glass, and still, he had the bolts bouncing. If he could dothatto something built to hold him, he’d make short work of this when all it has to hold back is the ocean.”
Adonis preened at the compliment, brandishing his tail as he swam acrobatic shapes in the water.
Connor looked from the bolts to his tail, and the solution to their issue presented itself in a neat thought. And Connor thought he’d been crude to harass Sam for crowbars that he could use to physically smash the computers that held his secrets.
