Allegiance of Honor (Psy-Changeling #15) - Nalini Singh Page 0,162
“I study the creatures that call the ocean home.”
Isaac whistled. “Smart.” His tone changed on the next words, became rough. “Those assholes hurt you pretty bad.” He nodded up ahead. “You need medical help from your people?”
She could see the gleaming white all-terrain vehicle through the windscreen, the landscape beyond painted by cloudy late-afternoon light. “Are you sure those people are mine?”
“Some guy called Malachai confirmed it.”
Her eyes threatened to fill with tears.
Malachai wouldn’t let anyone hurt her. He was Miane’s and Miane protected her people, no matter how distant they were or how small their relative importance to the rest of the world. Each and every member of BlackSea was important to Miane.
Crawling up to sit in the passenger seat, she forced herself to say, “I could ride with them. They’re going really fast.” Only she didn’t know them and Isaac was safe. Isaac had a beard like her father and he loved a woman with blonde hair and freckles scattered over her nose and across the tops of her cheeks.
“I could do with seeing the ocean,” Isaac replied with a grin that reassured her he didn’t mind this detour. “Been a while.”
“My name is Leila.” It seemed right to tell this good man who was taking her home.
“Pretty.” Picking up something from the cup holder, he held it out. “You should eat a little more if you can.”
Taking what proved to be a protein bar, she peeled it open with fingers that were swollen from how the driver of the SUV had wrenched her fingers back when she tried to run at a stop. He’d also punched her in the face.
“You have someone who’ll look after you?” Isaac asked in that rough tone that was oddly comforting, like Malachai when he got gruff. “Once you reach home?”
The thought of home made her chest ache.
“I swim alone,” she told him after swallowing a bite of the protein bar. “But I’ll go to the city for a while, rest in my family’s arms.”
“You ever get lonely?” He grabbed an unopened water bottle from his side and handed it to her. “Swimming alone I mean? Ocean’s a big place.”
Laughter spilled out of her, unexpected and rusty. “Don’t truckers drive alone for days at times?”
“Point to you.” He chuckled and the sound was a warm blanket wrapping around her. “But I don’t run alone much anymore.” A glance at the photograph that said more than words. “The rare times I do, I still see people—at the truck stops for one. At the sleep stops, if we end up parking side by side to catch some shut-eye. No truck stops in the ocean.”
“I have friends who swim by.” She smiled at the memories of how her best friends would haul themselves up onto her boat and raid her galley shelves for cookies. One time, after the fiends had eaten her out of cookies until not a crumb remained, she’d come up from a swim to discover two large sacks of cookies left on deck, the supplies carried to her in waterproof bags.
“The gaps are longer than in your line of work,” she told Isaac as her mouth watered for a taste of those chocolate-chip-raisin cookies. “Weeks rather than days, but we’re social in our own way.” Her smile faded under a sudden nausea, her skin chilled. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to swim in my waters anymore. The kidnappers might take me again.”
Isaac shot her a dark look that didn’t terrify—she already knew him well enough to understand his anger was directed at the people who’d tortured and imprisoned her. “You could swim with a group for a while,” he suggested. “Fight your need for solitude to stay in your home waters.”
Leila thought of how she’d fought so much already, of how she’d survived unbroken and felt a flicker of pride, an emotion she’d long thought dead inside her. “It might be nice to swim with my friends,” she admitted, knowing those friends would welcome her despite their own normally solitary travels.
Her skin ached, hungry for the cool slide of water. At home, the water was so clear she could see beams of sunlight spearing through to scatter sparkles of light like a silent fireworks display. But right now, so far from home, the memory hurt. So she turned to something that didn’t. “Will you tell me about your Jessie?”
Isaac grinned, and then he told her all about the tough, smart girl he’d picked up on a lonely road late one