Lords of the Deep (23 page)

She supposed they wouldn’t need hair—although she’d never completely understood why people had it. She guessed, if she’d given it any thought at all, which she actually hadn’t, that it was just something left over from when they’d been hairy beasts. And evolution-wise, nothing in the sea had hair.

Which made her wonder abruptly why they would even have hair on their heads.

“No hurt,” she said finally, touching the hair to make sure they understood. “It’s just hair.”

She could see that hadn’t translated, which didn’t surprise her considering her previous thoughts, though she wondered why they wouldn’t have a word for hair at all.

All three of them looked at her a little doubtfully, but took her word for it.

They seemed to dismiss it after a few moments and settled down to discussing whatever it was they’d been discussing before. The translator, as Damien had pointed out, wasn’t that helpful, but she began to get the impression that they were trying to figure out a way to make her blend in with everyone else—to make her appear to be a mer like they were. She wasn’t sure she grasped why they felt that need, but it seemed to
be
a need, not just a whim, but important.

Since they seemed to divide their time by discussing possible ways to disguise her, talk about the breeding grounds, and mentioned the
mertiz
a number of times, she began to get the impression that they expected trouble because the
mertiz
had seen her and were trying to devise a way to head it off.

She was certainly all in favor of avoiding potential trouble if Damien and Miles were worried about it.

Deirdre hadn’t seemed perturbed at the discovery that Damien and Miles were harboring a human in their midst, but the woman didn’t actually strike her as being particularly bright. She seemed nice enough—actually rather sweet—but not terribly intelligent.

She didn’t think she could count on everyone reacting the same way, though, to the discovery that they had an ‘alien’ among them. As hard it was to think of herself in that sense, she’d been terrified when she’d first discovered she’d been captured by beings she thought of as aliens. The reverse would almost certainly be the reaction many of the others would have toward her.

Even Miles and Damien had seemed wary of her—particularly Miles, who was a scientist!

It occurred to her to wonder why they didn’t just take her home if there was a possibility that there might be trouble because of her. Oddly enough, the moment it did, she felt a great gulf of reluctance settle inside of her. She examined it with a touch of both surprise and dismay, wondering why she would feel that way when she’d felt a desperate urge to go home where everything was comfortingly familiar little more than a week before.

She was anxious about returning, she realized. Part of it was the trip back itself—she’d begun to feel secure inside of Miles’ home and the prospect of facing a very long swim from the bottom of the ocean wasn’t particularly thrilling even if it meant home on the other side.

She’d disappeared weeks ago, though, and it was very unlikely searchers would still be in the area looking for her. They would’ve given her up for dead long since.

They’d been miles and miles from the nearest port when she’d been taken, she realized in dismay. If they merely returned her to the spot where they’d taken her, she didn’t have much chance of surviving.

All of that was valid concerns, and it still didn’t completely explain her reluctance, she realized fairly quickly.

After a little thought, she added the rider that, now that she’d gotten over her fear of them, the scientist in her had risen to the light of day and she was just as curious to learn more about them as they were about her. Beyond the obvious differences between them, the hints of their society intrigued her. The talk about the breeding grounds was particularly intriguing considering what it implied.

And it seemed they intended to take her.

How often might an opportunity like that arise?

Once in a lifetime, if at all.

Of course, that was more than a little scary, too, but certainly no more unnerving than the fact that she’d sailed with a crew searching for giant squid. She doubted there would be nearly as much danger in observing the mating rites of the merfolk as there would’ve been in possibly tangling with a giant squid.

That all depended, of course, on exactly how they meant to take her there and how they meant to handle the fact that she would be completely out of her element. She didn’t know if they could breathe air from the water or they were just able to hold their breath a lot longer, but she certainly couldn’t.

They knew that, though. Miles would’ve taken that into consideration. She felt confident that he would make sure she was safe in that respect.

And if he was too absentminded to have considered it, then Damien wouldn’t overlook it as a potential threat.

She allowed her gaze to drift over first one and then the other as those thoughts went through her mind and realized abruptly why she’d felt such an empty feeling at the thought of going home. She wouldn’t see them again if she did—when she did—probably ever again. It made her feel hollow just thinking about it.

It was odd that she felt so—connected to them—more than she’d felt with anyone since she’d lost her mother. She certainly hadn’t felt close to her aunt and uncle. Although they’d been kind enough to take care of her until she’d been old enough to get out on her own, she’d felt like a guest at best and an intruder at worst the entire time she’d been in their home. When she’d left for college, she hadn’t even felt a pull to go back for the holidays. She couldn’t recall, exactly, when she’d last spoken to either one of them.

She’d explored her sexuality once she’d left home, rather defiantly, actually, because her aunt and uncle had ruled with an iron fist while she’d been living with them and she’d hardly even dated, but although she’d discovered she liked sex well enough, she hadn’t actually understood what the huge draw was.

Largely because, she thought wryly, she’d never really experienced a climax before. She’d thought she had.

Boy had she been wrong!

Was it the sex, then, that made her feel like she had a connection, she wondered abruptly?

She tried to consider it objectively and finally realized that, although that was certainly a big part of it, it just as certainly wasn’t all of it. Even being unable to really communicate freely with Damien and Miles, she felt more comfortable, more safe, more important, more cared for than she’d felt since her mother’s death.

And she liked that.

She didn’t want to give it up.

Of course, she was sure most of it was because she was an interesting experiment to them, and that was bound to change over time, but she wasn’t ready to give it up now, not before she had to.

Noticing abruptly that Damien and Miles were both studying her a little worriedly, she smiled at them.

They looked uncomfortable.

She lifted her brows, wondering what they’d been discussing that had brought that worried look on.

Miles stood decisively and held out his hand to her. Curious, she took his hand and allowed him to guide her from the living room to his lab. He took her to the stool in front of his computer and leaned over her, opening a file. Fortunately, it contained a good many pictures because she couldn’t read their language any more than she could speak it and although Miles struggled to explain the whole while he was showing her the pictures, using the cursor to point to specific things, it still took her a while to understand what it was he was showing her—and then a while longer to figure out why he thought it had anything to do with her.

It was a medical procedure, she realized fairly quickly, though it took her a little longer to figure out what it was for.

She was stunned and disbelieving when she finally understood.

Apparently, their children were sometimes born without the ability to filter air from the water and the ‘defect’ had to be surgically corrected.

She didn’t know if she was more frightened or more excited when she finally realized he was suggesting they perform the surgery on her. She looked at him uneasily. “On me?” she asked, unconsciously covering her throat with her hand.

He nodded, gesturing to the pictures again, pointing out those that showed the ‘after’ with the babies swimming beneath the water without any trouble.

The mer babies, she thought, were really adorable. She was wrapped up in studying them for a while, smiling at the chubby little baby faces that smiled up at the camera that had captured their images.

“They’re so cute!” she murmured, completely distracted, for a while, from Miles’ objective in showing her to start with.

She discovered that Miles and Damien both were watching her when she returned her attention to them at last, their expressions indecipherable. Damien crouched beside her stool. “Want, yes? Don’t want?”

She blinked at him, her mind still firmly in the realm of adorable babies.

He touched her throat. “Fix, yes—not?”

Angie felt her throat close with emotion as she studied Damien’s earnest face. Fear wasn’t it.

An image of a baby Damien swam before her mind’s eye and hectic emotion filled her, conflicting emotions. She’d never even considered having a baby before—at all. Never pictured herself as a mother. Why now, of all times, would she feel such a powerful draw to the idea?

She didn’t know and she definitely didn’t want to know.

Shaking the thoughts with an effort, she tried to focus on what he was asking, why he was asking it, and what it would mean to her if she allowed it.

Beyond making it possible for her to have the sort of freedom they did, how would it change her?

They didn’t have any trouble with the transition between a complete water environment to air that she’d seen.

The idea of surgery scared her, though, and the idea of testing it out was even more scary.

“I want to think about it,” she said finally.

Miles didn’t seem very happy about that decision. Actually, Damien didn’t either, but he merely nodded. “You don’t have much time to decide,” he said.

Nodding that she understood, she left the lab and returned to her room. Deirdre, to her relief, seemed to have left.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like the woman, but she wanted quiet to think and Deirdre wasn’t a quiet person. She was actually a bit of a chatter box, Angie thought with amusement—completely opposite her son, who tended to be reticent and even a little shy—at least around her.

Oddly enough, she spent a lot more time thinking about the babies than she did about the surgery—which she shouldn’t have. True, she was in no hurry to leave. She hoped she would be allowed to stay and study the people—share her knowledge with Miles and learn about his people at the same time. She would be perfectly willing, she thought, to devote as much time as she needed to to the study.

But a baby ….

She seriously doubted it would even be possible, even supposing she allowed her urges to overrule good sense. They appeared to have a lot in common, but that didn’t mean they were similar enough on a genetic level to even make it possible for her to mix with them.

And what if she had a baby and it took after the father almost completely? It wouldn’t fit in to
her
world. She didn’t want to stay forever. Eventually, she wanted to go home. Having a child would make that impossible—or nearly impossible, depending on whether it took after her or the father.

She realized after a while that she’d already made up her mind to have the surgery, as unnerving as it was. She wouldn’t have been thinking in terms of staying indefinitely if she hadn’t accepted that it was something she was willing to do. It was just too dangerous to live under the sea as unequipped as she was to handle it. If the surgery worked, and she saw no reason why it wouldn’t, then it would make it far easier for her to study the merfolk.

Leaving the room again, she headed to the lab. Damien, she saw, had left, but Miles was perched in front of his computer, apparently trying to tweak the translators. “I’ll do it.”

He looked at her blankly for a moment before it seemed to penetrate his understanding. A slow smile curled his lips. “Will?”

She smiled back at him. “Yes.”

He leapt up from his stool, which alarmed her at first since it occurred to her that he might instantly take her up on it. He merely grasped her shoulders, though, smiling down at her. “Good! Very good! Tomorrow. Ok? Make ready all things.”

Her belly clenched with nerves, but she nodded agreement, reflecting that, if he was in a rush, there was probably a good reason for it.

Chapter Eleven

Angie hadn’t actually expected Miles to perform the surgery, though it dawned on her once she’d found herself on the table that it should have. It was obvious she was a well kept secret and one they intended to try to keep, otherwise they wouldn’t have considered the procedure at all.

Or brought ‘Mother’ in.

Fortunately, she didn’t have a lot of time to dwell on it, or Miles’ skills. Whatever he used to knock her out, did so so quickly that she’d barely settled tensely on the table when she lost awareness of everything.