I allow myself to sigh softly as I let myself into my room. It’s nothing special, slightly moth-eaten and worn with time. There’s everything I need, though with a bed with an ancient, sagging mattress, a couple of oversized armchairs, and a monstrosity of a wardrobe that requires careful maneuvering around. I dump the tray onto the bed before carefully placing Noush’s skin onto the back of the chair that’s in front of a wood-burning fire. I then toss on some dry clothes before hanging up my wet ones in front of the fire.
My stomach rumbles and I plop down into one of the two seats and tuck into the food. I hate to admit that Torin’s right when he’s acting so weird, but I’ve not been eating properly since my sealskin was stolen from me. Half the time, my stomach rebels at the thought of eating, so I have to take the chance to chow down on as much as I can whenever I feel remotely hungry. Just like now.
I’m almost finished when Frannie strides in through our connecting door, weaving her tall form around the awkwardly placed furniture and brushing her long black hair into a sheet down her back.
“Was that your man bringing more food?” she asks, her black eyes lighting up at the sight of the steaming bowl in front of me.
“Not so sure he’s my man,” I mutter through a mouthful of stew. It’s meaty and delicious, filled with chunks of vegetables and slow-cooked to melt in my mouth. Clearly Cookie’s skills in the ship’s kitchen work equally well on land.
“He’s yours all right,” Frannie replies with a confidence I wish I felt right now. “Are you still both pussyfooting around each other?”
I snort through another mouthful. “He’s the one being weird, not me. I keep thinking if I prod him enough, he’ll go back to normal, but it hasn’t happened yet.”
Something changed in Torin when we visited the Deadwood Cove labs. Sure, he’s usually gruff and a little grumpy. But he also usually finds me at least a teensy bit amusing, as much as he tries to hide it.
Not anymore, though.
I don’t know if it was revisiting the home of his nightmares—where they experimented on him until he was no longer human—or if it was our mate bond breaking, but he’s changed.
And I don’t like it.
Now, he just seems fed up with me, as much as he is with everyone else. Or like he can’t wait to get far away from me. It’s like up until now, I’ve been getting a different version of Torin, but now I’m experiencing the one everyone else gets. The one who brings you blankets and food and won’t accept a thank you, and won’t even acknowledge he’s doing something nice.
It’s not like I expected things to go back to exactly how they were. Not when he thought we were mates, and that fate had smiled down on us and selected the two of us to be a perfect pair. And then that bond got torn away. Still though, I’d like him to at leasttalkto me.
“But you told the others, right?” Frannie says with a knowing eyebrow raise. “You’ve told Torin and Kit about Aster faking the mate bond?”
She knows full well that I haven’t. Frannie’s the only one I’ve told the truth to, and that was only because I couldn’t cope with all the shitty feelings that have been steadily growing in intensity since I first lost my sealskin.
I just can’t seem to make myself say the words out-loud. Possibly it’s because it was bad enough to have an unwanted bond break and to realise it was the only thing giving you any sort of connection. But it would be infinitely worse to know the bond shouldn’t have ever existed.
Things are messy, and that’s without both Torin and Kit being wanted by the authorities.
Which means we’re stuck together in this house, so there are likely to be a lot more awkward encounters with Torin as he tries to pretend he’s not taking care of me, even though he’s decided he no longer wants to be around me.
But that’s an issue for another day. Until he puts on his big-boy trousers and tells me what’s bothering him, I have plenty of other things to occupy my mind. Like trying to get Noush back.
“No luck on your swim then?” Frannie asks, although it’s pretty clear she already knows the answer.
I shake my head, piling my empty bowl back onto the tray to return to the kitchen later.
“Maybe it’s time to try something else then?” Her tone is more hesitant than I’m used to hearing from my strident friend. “Have you spoken to Aster about it yet?”
Shaking my head, I avoid her knowing look. “I know, I know I’m a terrible hypocrite, moaning about Torin avoiding me one minute and doing the same thing to Aster the next.”
Things have been strained between us ever since we made it out of the Deadwood Cove labs. And I know that he didn’t mean for his magic to cause chaos, but it did, and I’m struggling to just pivot like I normally do and get over it.
Aster spent weeks allowing me to believe that our mate bonds were real, and it’s not something I can easily forget.
I just don’t know how to feel around him.
Frannie’s annoyingly right, though. Daily swims in the water aren’t working, so maybe I need a solution that’s more magical in nature. Which means begging a favour from the witch I used to think of as mine.
Chapter 2
Reva
There’s a wild yell from somewhere downstairs, loud enough for it to carry right up to my room.
