Page 30 of Forever My Siren Luna

“What am I doing here?” I snapped.

“It’s not what you think. I….I didn’t….I mean,” he groaned, pushing himself up in bed. “Cherum brought you back to the packhouse late last night. Val….Val took over and sounded drunk. She demanded I brush her hair and then shifted. She passed out and when you shifted back….you wouldn’t let go of me. I’m sorry. I tried to pass you to Cherum, but you bit him when he tried to take you.”

“Val?”I snarled at her in my head.

I can feel her guilt and know Lachlan is telling the truth. “I….I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me,”she admits.

I do. Beretta. She snuck her herbal concoction in one of my drinks, I’m sure. It wouldn’t be the first time. She gives it to me sometimes to help me sleep, since alcohol doesn’t affect me easily.

“Why am I in your shirt?” I murmured, hugging the sheet tightly around my body.

He looks guilty, pink hues showing through the scruff on his face. “You were naked when you shifted back, Lira. We tried to get you in a dress but you told the maids to leave you alone. My shirt was all you would accept.”

My anger was building, but Val just felt guilty and ashamed. “It wasn’t just me,”she muttered. “You were the one who wouldn’t let him go.”

Crap. It was all that talk with Cherum yesterday that got me reminiscing about the past, I’m sure. I can’t believe I ended up in his bed the first night back.

Looking around the room, I noticed that everything was as it was before. He didn’t change a thing. All my trinkets and belongings are exactly where I left them. Even my mother's slippers and overcoat rested on top of the chair I used to sit on and stare out at the ocean.

I used to long to run away and make the ocean my home again when I first woke up back in this life. I found a way to do that, even without my fins. The ability to unlock my magic was lost to me with the loss of my necklace, but I still found refuge in the sea through Jack.

As I looked back over to Lachlan, a number of venomous things brewing in my head to say to him, I noticed that very necklace around his neck, resting on his chest.

Without thinking, I moved forward to touch it, not noticing what I had done until Lachlan’s sudden intake of breath caused me to look up at him, noticing our faces were just a short distance away from one another.

I hurried to scoot back, looking at him accusingly.

“That’s my necklace.”

His hand moves to touch the place my fingers just were. He’s biting his lips, his muscles flexed tight. I realize Killian is shining in his eyes, likely pushing to the surface and Lachlan is trying to hold him back.

“You left it behind,” he whispered roughly, clenching the pendent in his fist.

“How did you come to have it, though? I left it on an island far outside of the pack’s trading routes.”

“Cedric,” Lachlan said. His body relaxes as he gets full control over Killian again. “He followed the magic there. We had men posted there waiting for your return, but you never came.”

I narrowed my eyes on him. “I want it back.”

Sighing, he reaches around his neck and pulls the necklace from around him, reaching out to hand it to me.

“I was just keeping it until your return. Here.”

I slowly took it from his hands, staring at the pendant and tracing my fingers against the delicate jewels.

“It was your mother’s,” Lachlan tells me as I continue to examine the familiar piece of jewelry that seemed like my lifeline not too long ago.

“How do you know that?” I don’t remember my mother ever having this necklace or anything like it for that matter. As I try to think about her with a necklace like this, though, some of my memories become hazy, like I’m not seeing the full picture in my mind.

“Your father told me after Cedric brought it back. He gave it to your mother in your first life so she could call for him if she needed him or changed her mind.”

“Changed her mind about what?”

His long silence caused me to look up at him again.

He looks nervous about telling me. “Do you want me to tell you, or would you rather hear it from him?”

My brow furrowed. “Is it something you don’t want to tell me, like how you didn’t want to tell me you’re the same bastard that hurt me before?”