Page 31 of Emerald Waves
Best to do nothing, not even sigh, and wait for Emerson to be through admiring the little ones so we could go back home. Out of sight had always been my go-to defense mechanism against his piercing stare and pointed questions.
He was a master at the verbal art of talking in circles, and I was an abject failure at not falling for the traps he set. Ones that always resulted in me blurting whatever truth I had hidden…and begging forgiveness for keeping secrets from him.
This was the biggest I’d ever withheld, and I was desperate to cling to it until I’d solved the mystery on my own.
Never on our own, not anymore.
My dragon’s insistence came at a rather unwelcome time, as it often did. Goddess, but there were times when I wished my mind was my own, with no one to intrude upon my brooding, or poke around seeking answers as to why I’d withdrawn in the first place.
Honestly, I didn’t know why shutting down and staring off into the endless blue was easier than speaking to him, or any of them, but it was, and I wished they’d leave me to it.
They love us.
I got that, but love could be suffocating too.
And now you ignore me as well.
Yup. I did and I was going to keep on ignoring him until he shut down and took a nap while I struggled to process the unnatural fear that had filled me since the day I’d found that artifact.
A fear of returning to the place I loved more than anywhere else in the world. My beloved seas and oceans. The one true place I could hide. Only one other brother could reach the depths as I could, and he was always off on his own adventures. On land, well, anyone could find me there.
With my size, few lakes or rivers could conceal me, but the depth and berth of the sea had always had the ability to shroud me from even Ionus’ tracking abilities, much to his utter frustration in my younger days. The moment I sensed him, or any of my brothers, near when I didn’t wish to be found, was when I slipped into one of the currents and slip streams and let it carry me far away from their meddling, jokes, and snark.
“Emerson, we should probably get going soon,” I called out, stepping around my brother and back into the room where Alex and Emerson sat with the dragonets romping around on the floor between them.
“Eventually,” Emerson replied, never even looking up at me, he was too in awe of those tiny purple wings and tails.
Ionus’s chuckle, right fucking behind me, made me flinch and cast a glance over my shoulder to see him with his arms folded and that look I knew too well.
Whatever you’re keeping from me, stop before it effects more than just the good mood I’m in.
Doesn’t look like too good of a mood to me.
Because you are infuriating me right now, and it’s taking everything in me not to call you out in front of our mates and brothers.
It's not a problem that needs to be shared.
But it is a problem.
Goddess be damned he’d done it to me again.
How!
How the fuck did he always manage, with so few thoughts or words, to start ferreting out bits of information when my intention was to remain silent.
Your silence has always been a bigger confirmation than the word yes. Haven’t we always been stronger together?
He was right, though he was wrong, too, not that he’d ever see it that way. Strongest in battle, yes. Strongest when we worked as a collective unit for the survival of our people too. But when it came to the mastery of our own elements, we’d each possessed a uniquely intrinsic sense of oneness with them that the others simply would not understand.
Until it came to water. I’m really not sure even Mattias was aware of how in tune I was with his element.
The motion of the seas was impressed soul deep for me, like the sound of the waves and whalesong, it resonated on a frequency inside my head that never stopped. It silenced the voices. Only these days, when I tapped into it, those once soothing noises carried with it one I wished to erase.
One I didn’t dare focus on now out of fear I’d share it with him, or the rest of our brothers, though they were all occupied with the little ones now.
The time to speak on it is now, before you bury your connection to both the earth and sea and render me ineffective!
Our dragon’s insistence drove me to push him further away and I turned, shouldering past my brother and out of the roomwith the dragonets and the rest of our family laughing joyfully at their antics.
