Gage interlocked his fingers and began pushing down onto the center of Jace’s chest repeatedly. Zaela watched us, her eyes wide.
“Air, now!” he ordered, and I heaved a deep breath of air between Jace’s cold, pale lips.
We repeated this several times, and my breathing came in rapid breaths as I tried to hold my grip on reality.
A sob broke from me, and a scream of agony was working its way up my throat when suddenly a gasp erupted from Jace, followed by him coughing up a horrifying amount of swamp water.
“Oh, gods!” I shouted, right as Zae pushed him onto his side to aid his choking.
“You’re okay, you’re okay,” Zaela said to him, her composure significantly stronger than my own.
Jace worked to catch his breath, and Gage’s body sagged with relief as we watched him. My mate's eyes found mine, and the corner of his lips curved. He reached his hand up to cup my cheek, and he swiped my tears away with his thumb.
My eyes darted back and forth between his, but I couldn’t find words to speak.
“I’m okay, my Lia. I’m okay,” he mimicked the reassurance from his cousin through a few coughs.
A sound left me that was half a sob, half a shuddering breath as I leapt onto him, throwing my arms around his shoulders and gripping him tighter than I ever thought possible.
“I thought I lost you,” I whispered into the nook of his neck as I nuzzled my face into it, the chilled drips of water seeping into my skin.
He let out a strained chuckle. “Never.”
I leaned back and looked him over meticulously as his coloring slowly crept back into his lips and cheeks.
His eyes locked on me then, a lethal look to them. He pressed his hand to my side, and when he gently lifted his touch, my blood stained his fingers. “They hurt you,” he growled.
I laced my fingers with his. “I’ll be okay. You should see what I did to them.” A knowing grin formed on his lips as I gave him a wink. “What the hell happened while we were gone?”
He leaned up, and Zaela moved to sit on one of the seating boards behind her to get out of his way.
“We were waiting for you, and I was getting…antsy,” he started.
“He was ready to risk it all and come after you for taking so long. I was trying to keep his ass in the boat,” Gage cut him off.
My eyes shot to Jace, and I looked at him through furrowed brows. “Why would you do that? You knew to stay in the boat!”
“I couldn’t feel you.” Anger tinged with nerves radiated from him. He swallowed. “I didn’t know if you were okay, and enchanted lands or not, I was going to find out for myself.”
My eyes widened slightly. “The rift. It blocked out the bond.”
“The what?” he asked.
I was about to answer when Veli’s voice called to us. “Elianna!”
My gaze found her and Avery still on the riverbank. Veli's talon pointed a few feet away from our boat, where two sets of hate-filled, stark-white eyes stared at us.
I instantly stood, a growl erupting from me as I stalked to the edge of the boat—their tails waded through the murky swamp, aiming for me.
One of them had the audacity to place her webbed fingers onto its ledge and try to pull herself up. My teeth were clenched so tightly that I thought they would shatter as I tried to calm my fury.
“You took something from us.Someonefrom us,” she hissed.
Without a second thought, I reached down and grabbed the creature by her soaked, seaweed-crusted hair, heaved her up by it, and then sent my opposite fist into her face. Her cheekbone cracked beneath my knuckles and she let out a shriek of pain as her body splashed back down into the water.
Her counterpart hissed at me but swished her tail to move out of my reach.
The mouthy siren resurfaced and hissed at me.
