able-bodied people have brought in.
There is no more time to write. I must go, must see if there are others I can help.
Xavier
Chapter 48
MIANE DIDN’T TAKE a real breath until Leila stepped onto Cifica, the city rocking gently under them in a rhythm that was the sea’s pulse. The young woman had been ferried by yacht to the nearest large BlackSea city, then put on a high-speed plane home. That plane had landed two minutes ago on the water beside BlackSea’s main city in the tropics.
“Leila.” She took her packmate into her arms, held her while Leila cried.
“They made me ugly,” Leila whispered against her chest. “I was never pretty but now I’m a monster.”
“Never say that again.” Miane fought her fury, squeezed Leila tight. “You are strong and beautiful and one of mine.”
Leila’s voice was thick when she answered, her fingers rising to her face. “The scars, Miane . . . I want them gone.”
“We have an excellent surgeon.” He was human but an angel with scars. “I’ll get him to come out to the city.” That Leila had spoken first of her scars didn’t surprise Miane. All victims of trauma reacted differently, and she knew from Olivia Coletti that sometimes, a superficial statement or request wasn’t superficial at all.
Each time I look in the mirror, Olivia had whispered to her, I see them. This isn’t my face. It’s what they made me.
“Will it work?” Leila asked shakily.
“Yes.” Olivia’s scars were already so fine that it was difficult to spot them under normal light. “He’s very good.”
A jerky nod. “I’m not vain. It’s just . . .”
“I know.” She kissed the shorter, slighter woman’s temple, kept her warm and safe within her embrace. “We’ve missed you, Leila.”
Sobs broke out of Leila’s body anew, heartrending and painful and raw. But when it was over and Leila lifted tear-drenched eyes to Miane’s, those eyes held a luminous light. “The world doesn’t understand. They think because some of us swim alone and because the ocean is so vast, that we don’t care.”
Miane wiped away Leila’s tears. “We know the truth and that’s what matters.” Miane would turn predator for her people, would fight any enemy to keep them safe. “We are BlackSea.”
“We are one,” Leila whispered, completing the motto that was written nowhere and yet that defined water-based changelings.
No matter how far they traveled or how deep, they were part of a bigger whole. Never forgotten. Never discarded. One.
PART 7
Chapter 49
TEN MINUTES AFTER receiving word that Leila Savea was home safe with her people, Riley walked with Mercy in the woods near their cabin, her arm hooked into his. He refused to let go of her—his tall, lithely muscled mate looked as if she’d topple over.
“Why didn’t you put on weight anywhere else?” he growled at her. “At least you’d be more stable.”
She bared her teeth at him. “Shut up. I can keep myself upright. And for your information, I ate like a bear before hibernation, but our children are voracious hooligans.”
Riley waited when she stopped, caught her breath.
Wait, at no point in her pregnancy had Mercy ever had to catch her breath during a simple walk. “You’re having a contraction,” he accused.
“First one.” A scowl directed at him. “Only tiny anyway. Probably be a few hours yet at least.”
“Of course it will.” Knowing that any children with Mercy’s blood in their veins would be in no way predictable, he pulled out his phone and put in the call to Tamsyn.
“I’ll be there in fifteen,” the healer said, clearly already in the vicinity.
That was likely on purpose, with Mercy overdue. Not just in terms of a multiple changeling pregnancy but generally.
“Oh, crap!” Mercy almost bent over.
Heart thudding, Riley nonetheless kept his cool and began to stroke her back with the firm touch she liked. When she was ready, he helped her back up. They walked some more but stayed near the cabin.
Riley’s instinct was to hustle her into a comfortable bed, but Mercy was a leopard sentinel and she knew her body. At one point, she pressed her hands palms-down against a tree and pushed out while he massaged her back, digging in his thumbs the way she demanded.
Even when she snarled at him, her eyes dark as a result of the increasing pain, he kissed her temple and petted her, and after the contraction passed, his wild, beautiful mate turned into him. “I’m sorry.”
Riley kissed her cheeks, her lips in a caress that was all about comfort. “You can yell at