Page 5 of Ethereal Shifters

I can’t swim.

Chapter

Three

I’m drowning. It’s happened so many times that it should be normal for me, and I shouldn’t fear this death…but I do. It’s a horrible way to die, with water choking my lungs, and I’m stuck feeling every inch of it, every bit of my life draining away to the cold, endless depths of the water. Terror is a cold-hearted bitch, and when I feel her again, she takes every inch of me that thinks I’m strong. I’m not strong. I can’t even swim.

Fight, Gwen! Fucking try to swim, try to get out, try to save yourself.I don’t know if it’s my Nexus or if it’s me, but terror has her claws deep into my body, and I just can’t. I open my eyes underwater. It stings for a second, but then I can see the depths of the sea, the water rocking me as I sink like a stone. Light shines above the surface, but the deeper I sink, the more the light fades. I just let the current pull me down, deeper and deeper, into the darkness, where a monster like me deserves to die alone.

I panic as my Nexus swims to the surface of my mind, desperately trying to save us both, screaming at me to do something, but I can’t. I don’t want her in control when we die this time. The water around starts to softly glow grey. Strands that remind me of ink, made of pure grey magic, spread out inwaves in the water around me, and they appear in the water right before I’m going to die. Death is a mercy from the pain. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. My Nexus pushes again, nudging my mind, and I push right back. No. This is my fault and I’m not letting her feel this moment. I want to protect her like she protects me. There’s nothing here for me to kill except for endless water and an endless darkness that’s awaiting me when I die.

I’ll wake up just like I do every time that I die. I’ve never drowned in the sea before, not this deep without a chain attached to my ankle so they could pull me out. Water starts filling my lungs to the point it hurts to think and my vision is spotted with dark spots. My body shakes, choking further. I need air. I need my mates. I need more. My memory doesn’t show me them; it shows me a single memory of when I climbed out of the pool myself after waking up from death. Neither one of my parents had pulled me out, and they were screaming at each other. “Enough! I don’t care what he said. We needed to teach her! That Vian fucker is wrong!”

“He isn’t! She will not survive, no one will, if she doesn’t learn!” my mother hisses back. I never knew who they were talking about, and the drowning didn’t stop. My father never wanted to hurt me. My mother insisted it was the only way, and I wish I could see her again to ask why. Why? Why? Why?

A large hand wraps around my waist, and I’m pulled hard against someone warm. I turn my head, the world spinning, and I see blond hair. Rhodes came for me. Wait…it’s not Rhodes. Hollis. My eyes widen as I shake in his arms, struggling to breathe. He holds me to him, and he swims fast up to the surface. Faster, quicker than any human or Nexus can swim, and I feel his power in the water around us, echoing like electricity. His power caresses my back and pushes me against him as weslam out of the sea and into the air, hovering above the ocean. He looks down at me, and I freeze.

His eyes are red, like blood, with gold specks dancing around his iris. His Nexus saved me. “Hello, mate.”

I can’t reply, I only feel my body collapse in his arms, and I barely manage to breathe in the cold air. A high, angry wave shadows over us, and fear strangles me as it crashes into us, but his power stops it. The water parts around us and carries on to the shore. “Let her out.”

I hear his Nexus, hear him wanting me to let my Nexus out, and she is curious but also spiteful and way too hateful of Hollis for me to dare do that when I can’t even stand. I gasp for air, coughing and choking out water onto his shoulders as he flies us to the shore. He holds me to him, and I cling to him, cling to his jacket so I don’t fall into the water.

When we get to the sand, he lets me go, gently putting me down on the sand that sticks to my hands. Once I’ve heaved what feels like the entire ocean out of my lungs, I lift my eyes to Hollis. I look over at him with wide eyes at my side. How close he is kneeling next to me. Just seeing him on his knees is confusing enough. He hates me. I rejected him and he has hated me since. Why the fuck would he dive in for me?

The red in his eyes fades back to forest green. “Hollis?” He shakes his head and looks up at the sky for a moment, then back down at me. “Are you okay?”

He laughs, but it lacks the bitter sting of the way he usually laughs at me. “You’re asking if I’m okay? Why the fuck can’t you swim?”

“Thank you.” I smile at him and it’s genuine. He did dive in for me.

He frowns. “Don’t smile at me for saving you. You still hate me as much as I hate you, mate.”

Mate. He has never called me that, and now he has twice. Usually he thinks of me as a suntanning, empty-headed girl who he got bonded to and ended up being rejected by. Mate. “Of course, but thanks where credit is due. I would have died. You know, again.”

“Just because you can die, Gwenieve, doesn’t mean you should let it happen. My Nexus feels it.” His voice is clipped. “Don’t be selfish and upset us all because you can’t be asked to learn to swim or save yourself.”

I’m shivering from head to toe, and yes, it’s cold and I’m wet, but I’m angry too. “I didn’t?—”

“Yes, you did.” He cuts me off. Fuck him. “I should throw you back in and make you learn to swim.”

I glance at the sea, and I start panicking at the thought. My breaths come out in deep huffs. Hollis is still speaking, but I don’t hear him. I can’t smell the beach, hear the seagulls or even feel the cold. All I can do is freeze, imagining myself underwater, dying with no one. Everything starts to spin as I think about what would have happened if I’d gone lower, if Hollis hadn’t come for me, if I’d drowned. If it’d been like before, that helplessness, powerless to do anything. Would I have woken up and drowned again and again? Endlessly coming back to life? Would I have gone mad with the pain and terror?

“Gwen!” I hear a voice through the buzzing in my mind. The sand moves at my feet, and Hollis grabs my face, not rough but firm. “You’re here, you’re safe, you’re not in the water. I don’t know what it is about the water and you, but I can see you’re terrified. Tell me?—”

“I’ll show you and I want to hear your heart break.” My Nexus speaks from my lips. “No,” I scream, but it’s too late. It’s too late as my Nexus slams straight into his mind and shows him. I don’t know how she does it, but she shows him the hundreds of times they put me into the pools in Spain, France,England and more. She shows him one after one quickly, like flipping through pages of a book, time and time again, all of it. She shows him the dead fish, the dead animals and the fear. She shows him how scared I was and makes him feel it. Then she shoves him away from us, throwing him back into the sand as I gasp. “Why the fuck would you do that?” I hiss at her. She just fucking betrayed me to him. Of course she blocks me out, and my blood freezes as I meet Hollis’s gaze. “Don’t you dare tell anyone about that! Don’t you dare laugh or try to make fun of me for it!”

Hollis is silent though, absolutely silent. He stares at me. His eyes are clouded over, and I can’t read his expression. We both stare at each other across the sand, breathing deeply. “I’m so, so fucking sorry.”

No. He doesn’t get to be sorry. Those words are something I never thought I’d hear from his mouth, and I don’t know what to say to him, how to even respond. My mouth opens and shuts until I have the words. “I don’t want your sympathy,” I snarl. “You made fun of me for being scared of the water. You just…now you know. But that wasn’t my choice. I’m just the monster who rejected you, and you hate me. Let’s just leave it at that between us.”

My heart is pounding so loud.

“I’m a fucking moron,” he whispers.That we can agree on. “For the record, you were never the monster. It was them.”

I clench my sand-covered hands. “Don’t say that about my parents!”

“After what I’ve just seen, they do not deserve the title of parents.” He rises to his feet with nothing but fury and pity and sadness in his stupid eyes. No, he doesn’t get to feel those for me. No, he doesn’t get to hate my parents when they kept me safe. I’d be dead without their training, without them making my Nexus too scared to burn this world down without my consent. Theycontrolled her for me. They helped me! “And from now on, I’m teaching you how to fucking swim.”

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