Of Poseidon 02: Of Triton

But apparently my presence is needed here. Apparently it’s very important to hear Mom and Grom fill each other in on the last who-knows-how-many decades they’ve been apart. To hear how she’s missed him so much and still loves him and thought about him every single day. To hear that he swore he sensed her sometimes, that he thought he was losing his mind, that he visited the human mine daily to grieve her loss, blah blah blah.
    Galen happens to be in possession of my favorite pair of arms—his—and most of the time when they’re wrapped around me, I feel whole and secure and like my blood has turned into hot sauce running through my veins. I should especially be feeling all melty right now. After all, I’d virtually lost him then gained him back within the cruel space of twenty-four hours. But right now his arm feels like a shackle chaining me to the hotel bed—and not in a good way.
    What’s worse is that he’s doing it on purpose. Every time he feels me tense up, as Mom and Grom exchange mushy sentiments and googly eyes, Galen tightens his hold on me. Which makes me wonder what my face must look like. Does it reveal all the betrayal and hurt and pain I feel inside? Is it obvious that I want to fling myself across the hotel room to where they sit together in one chair, my mom on Grom’s lap, wrapped around him like there’s no such thing as gravity and she’s trying to keep him grounded? How apparent is it that I want to put Grom into a headlock until he goes to sleep, and yell at Mom for not loving Dad or caring that he’s dead?
    I know Mom and I talked about this at the diner. That it was never love, that it was an arrangement that suited them both and that I was an added one-time bonus to that arrangement. But somehow I just can’t believe that Dad wouldn’t mind seeing this if he were here. Fine, it wasn’t love at first sight for my parents. But how, after all those years together, could it not have been love at all ?
    But maybe my expression isn’t as bad as I think it is. Maybe Galen’s just really good at reading me. Or maybe he’s just being overly mushy himself. He is a tad protective, after all. I glance at Toraf, who’s sitting on the other full-size bed next to Rayna. And Toraf is already looking at me. When our eyes meet, he shakes his head ever so slightly. As if to say, “Don’t do it.” As if to say, “You really don’t want to do it.” As if to say, “I know you really want to do it, but I’m asking you not to. As a friend.”
    I huff, then adjust myself in Galen’s death grip. It’s not fair that Galen and Toraf silently ask me to accept this. That my mother is putty in Grom’s proficient hands. That her temperature barely raised a degree around my dad, yet Grom, within an hour of reunion, has her titanium exterior dissolving like Alka-Seltzer in hot water.
    I can’t accept it. Won’t. Will. Not.
    How can she sit here and do this? How can she sit here and tell him how much she’s missed him, and that she never stopped loving him, when she had my dad?
    And ohmysweetgoodness, did Mom just say she’s going back? “Wait, what?” I blurt. “What do you mean, ‘I’ll call my boss and let him know’? Let him know what?”
    Mom gives me a rueful smile, full of motherly pity. “Emma, sweetie, I have to go back. My father—your grandfather—thinks I’m dead. Everyone thinks I’m dead.”
    “So you’re just going to go back to show him you’re alive? You’re just letting him know where you are, right? In case he wants to visit?”
    Her eyes get big, full of charity and understanding and condolence. “Sweetie, now that Grom is … I’m Syrena.”
    But what she’s really saying is she belongs with Grom. What she’s really saying is that she should have never left. And if she should have never left, then I should have never been born. Is that what she means to say? Or am I seriously freaking out? “What about me?” I whisper. “Where do I belong?”
    “With me,” my mother and Galen say in unison. They exchange hard glares. Galen locks his jaw.
    “I’m her mother,” she tells Galen, her voice sharp. “Her place is with me.”
    “I want her for my mate,” Galen says. The admission warms up the space between us with an impossible heat and I want to melt into him. His words, his declaration, cannot be unspoken. And now he’s declared it to everyone who matters. It’s out there in the open, hanging in the air. He wants me for his mate. Me. Him.