Page 64 of Surge

Chapter Twenty

Jax

As soon as she was far enough up the stairs, I turned to look at Blake. His lips were drawn in a tight line and his shoulders slumped.

"Are you worried she has siren in her bloodline? It's highly unlikely." Even as I said the words, they sounded ridiculous.

What I felt toward Riley wasn't normal. She was like a magnet and I couldn't get her out of my head. Tritons, both male and female, didn't feel the kind of desire that I had for her. I wanted to take her to my bed, tie her up, and never let her go. Or let her tie me up.

"I'm not worried about that." He sat back on the couch and rubbed the stubble on his cheek. “A highway patrol pulled me over for no reason. Was a real dick."

"Did you get his badge number? They should know-"

"It was because of my skin color, Jax." I rolled my eyes. It was still a fairly new phenomenon for me since I had only been on land just over three years. "If they treat black people and other people of color like criminals, how would they treat non-humans?"

"Not well. We can't let Riley know." Of that I was sure. We needed to be more careful around her.

"She knows we're something, but seems to be in denial." He stood. "What's taking her so long?"

I cursed and followed him up the stairs. I went straight to her room where the door was shut and opened it.

"What the hell?" Blake took a step in and then thought better of it and stepped back out.

In our human form, we weren't as strong or as well protected as when we were shifted. In the water, we were not only able to camouflage to be virtually undetectable to human eyes, but we had a layer of protective scales.

The scales protected us against most threats, including shark bites, but there was one thing that it didn't protect us from: a siren's knife. The same knife that Riley was standing in the middle of the room with. Her eyes landed on us as her chest heaved.

I wasn't sure what Blake had told her before I arrived, but clearly she had decided to test out its capabilities on her desk chair, wall, and a wooden storage box at the end of her bed. It looked like she had stabbed it about twenty times.

"Can you put the knife down?" I held up my hands and stepped toward her. I hoped she didn't plan on coming at me with it. "I guess we now know you have a little siren blood in you."

She held the knife out at me like the night I had let myself into her house and room. "Stay back."

Blake's cell phone rang with Morgan's ringtone. He ignored it and stepped beside me. "Riley, this changes things."

Her eyebrows pinched together and she backed up. "No, it doesn't. You took my mom, didn't you?"

"We didn't." I kept my eyes locked on hers. I could see how she would draw that conclusion, but we weren't monsters.

"Then who did?" Her chin trembled, but she quickly pulled herself together and stood up straighter. "You three are mermaids and I can stab crap I shouldn't be able to stab with this knife."

She stepped to her bed and slashed at the metal spindle on the end. It flew off and hit the wall on the other side of the room. A pained laugh left her.

"Why don't you put the knife down and we can talk about this." Blake stepped toward her again, but this time the bed was between us and her.

"So you can take the knife and destroy it?" She was back to pointing it at us. "Fuck that."

I rubbed the back of my neck. "You know too much."

"So what, are you going to kill me now like some mafia boss?" She pulled her phone out of her back pocket. "I'm calling the police."

"The police won't help you. The chief is one of us, and if he sees that knife, I can guarantee he'll tell the admiral." I crossed my arms over my chest. "If the admiral knows you know about us, he does act like a mafia boss."

"So you're military?" I was glad I confused her. She needed to be confused about what we were.

"Something like that." I jumped a bit when Morgan's ringtone sounded in my pocket.

"You should get that, it might be the admiral."

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