Page 12 of Guarded By the Vodnik

I wondered if it was overheating. Was it possible? I’d been told it was designed to keep an optimal temperature.

He nodded curtly, and I shivered, realizing how his palms spanned my waist. They covered an impossibly large area of my body, and that made a spark go off in my brain, making me blink stupidly before I realized he was waiting for a reply. His touch was light and questioning.

“Oh, okay.” I nodded.

He didn’t react at once. His fingers twitched, and he pulled his hands away, letting them hover around my waist as if there was an invisible barrier around it. He tilted his head to the side, his eyes roaming me up and down, before his hands fluttered back to my waist.

His throat worked as he swallowed, looking away from me.

I gasped. So suddenly, he pressed me to his torso much the same way as I held him before. I barely had enough time to react and put my arms and legs around him, and then we were in motion, shooting through the water as his powerful tentacles propelled us away from the pickup point.

And now, I would be completely lost in the enormous, terrifying lake. My bodyguard was the only person standing between me and death.

Chapter 5

Vodyan

Holding her like this didn’t help me clear my mind, only producing more confusion instead. But it couldn’t be avoided, because the safehouse was far into the lake, and if we traveled at her pace, it would take days.

She was probably slower than a cargo walker. If she could swim at all. I still didn’t know.

I held her close to my body to make our joined shape as compact as possible and easily pick up speed. And as she nestled against me, warm, squirmy, and small, I wrestled with my thoughts.

My biggest problem was that I couldn’t speak. I didn’t understand it at all, but it was like from the first moment she clung to me, something hard lodged in my voice sack and didn’t let go.

It made completely no sense, and no matter how hard I tried to clear and expand that space so sound could come out, it didn’t work. That tightness didn’t feel like anything I’d ever experienced before, and it irritated me even more than my principal’s lack of survival skills underwater.

Though, to be fair, it didn’t seem like it was her fault she fared so poorly. From what I understood, this assignment had been sprung on her, just like it had been sprung on me.

We shot through water at a slightly greater depth, because I gradually lowered us as we traveled. She squirmed against me, her legs, which were wrapped around me again, squeezing my sides as her fingers dug into my back. I clenched my jaw and sped up even more. The sooner I got us to the safehouse, the sooner I’d be able to stop touching her.

It made me wildly uncomfortable, probably because of the temperature difference. She was so scaldingly hot.

And yet, I had one reason to be glad about our position, because it allowed me to monitor her status. She trembled slightly, but her breathing rhythm was normal, and I was relieved. It looked like she wouldn’t have another panic attack. Hopefully.

That was the other thing that confused me—the feelings. I finally understood why she had acted the way she did. She was scared, and not just of the lake, but of the criminal she was supposed to testify against, too. That terror was reasonable and justified.

And even though I had obliterated my own fear long ago, it was familiar enough that I could sympathize. That sympathy led to an even stranger thing: wanting to help her feel safe.

I made a frustrated, half-croaking sound, trying to understand why this felt wrong. I was supposed to protect her. It was literally my job.

The problem was, whenever I worked a protection detail in the past, I was never motivated by a personal need to keep a client safe or make them feel better. My only motivation used to be duty, which was why I was good at my job. Feelings were unreliable and fickle, whereas protocol and professional integrity could always be trusted.

I’d never felt much on the job before. Which was why it was so completely baffling that I found myself not just concerned about her, but angry on her behalf.

When the Monster Security Agency and Zoe’s protection team negotiated the pickup, it was treated with logical efficiency. It made sense for me not to emerge but wait at the right level so I could intercept her. For one, if anyone happened to watch the pickup, my presence on the surface would call even more attention to them. Without me there, Zoe was just a diver going into the lake.

But if a vodnik showed up to pick her up, that might provoke questions, and her agents were adamant about avoiding that risk.

And yet, had I known how difficult this was for her, I would have waited closer to the surface. But there had been no indication at all that there was an issue.

All through planning the pickup, her team took everything into account apart from Zoe’s mental state. No one informed me she had panic attacks. She was treated like cargo all through the process, and it felt wrong to me now, but I couldn’t understand why.

She was cargo, just as Malgeri said. I was supposed to keep her alive, uninjured and safe. That was the full extent of my assignment, and helping her stay calm wasn’t even on the list.

But that was precisely what I wanted to do. Keep her calm. Keep her safe in a way she could trust. And keep her talking so I could learn what else she needed.

I finally decided it was all because I found her so annoying. All that thrashing around that disturbed the waters, her rambling speeches that didn’t make sense half the time, and her need to touch me were all highly irritating.

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