Hey everyone! Here's the second update of the week. :-) Dealing with a hell of a storm here tonight so I'm all cozy, curled up with a cup of tea and a blanket. Hope you guys are all doing alright!

Much love,

Robin

*

Aftercare

When we reached the McLaren beach I could see that the McLaren family was gathered out on the sand but the Corenths were all gone. They were looking angry, worried and grim in the light of the lanterns they'd set out in the sand. When we breached Dev and Orly ran into the surf to get to us but Matt got in their way somehow, making a really angry feral sound I'd expect from a dog but not a man.

Dev fell back immediately but Orly snapped, "Get your head together! We're just helping!" It took my hands on Matt's back to get him to ease to the side and then he was demanding his shorts and a towel for me and acting like he hadn't almost torn into his own brother just now.

Matt was on two legs and dressed in his swim shorts quickly, not bothered by the need to be completely dry for the change to affect him. He helped me roll the towel around my waist and then lifted me tail and all right out of the water and into his arms. Which took a tremendous amount of power to do (my tail was hella ungainly especially wet). Not just that, as soon as he had me in his arms he started evaporating the water right off my body so that by the time he'd carried me out of the surf we were both dry and the change wrenched through me.

He didn't pause to set me down in the sand but strode through his family and carried me right up the path to his parents house. "You get dressed okay, I'll bring you home," he said, nodding at my pile of clothing lying neatly folded on the patio table. He deposited me gently to my feet next to the table and I struggled to get my shorts on under the towel.

"Matt, you need to get that cut on your chest looked at," I told him right as the others had caught up to us. "I have a first aid kit in my car, I'll take care of it after I get you home," he assured me but I didn't think that was good enough. I caught Clara's eye, "Tell him to get that fixed now. Matt you'll get an infection..."

He gave me a single nod and Clara immediately disappeared into the house to fetch first aid supplies. In the meantime I pulled my shirt on over my head and sat down to struggle into my sandals. Matt was there, bending over my feet to take over the task for me, I let him do it. Too sore and tired to do the task myself easily and not wanting to make a fuss with everyone hovering over me as if I'd fall apart at any moment.

"I'm okay," I said, when I realized they were all staring. "I'm really okay, Matt's the one who's hurt." Matt made a huffing sound but said nothing while Thomas said quietly, with deep anger threaded through his voice: "They are never welcome here again. When first Clay and then Gavin returned bloody... We told them to leave. Josh called us from the boat to confirm they'd left the marina."

"Good," Matt growled as he rose to his feet and perched on the table right next to me, his leg pressing against mine. "We feared the worst when neither of you came back, you guys were at least thirty minutes behind Gavin..." Orly said. "He looked beat up to hell and back by the way brother, it was a miracle the sharks didn't swarm him..."

"Bad luck I guess," Matt muttered and the angry comment actually made me smile. I found his hand and grabbed it, "Yeah too bad huh?" His dark eyes flashed to mine and for the first time since this all happened, since he'd come back from that two week salvage really, I saw a hint of humor.

"You are tough as nails aren't you darling? Took a bite right out of his fucking bicep... Shit and if you hadn't managed that scream I would never have known where to find you." He sounded really proud when he said that and I felt a glow envelope me. I had contributed to my own rescue, I hadn't been a complete damsel in distress.

"Deserved what he got I bet," Orly muttered while slinging his arm around Mariana and hugging her tightly to his body. "If that had happened to you babe, I'd have slaughtered him, left him for chum." "Of course you would have," his wife said indulgently but she leaned eagerly into his embrace all the same, clearly looking for comfort.

"Yeah well if Dani hadn't been about to drown I probably would have done so too... If I ever see his face again I'll kill him, no question about it. I know just where to hide the body." Matt's big hand around mine convulsed once angrily and I squeezed back hard, wanting to let him know that I was still here and I was alright. At least, I was pretty sure I was alright.

Then Clara was stepping back onto the terrace carrying a tray, with a quilt slung over one arm. She set the tray down on the table and then draped the quilt around my shoulders and I gratefully pulled it closed, letting go of Matt's hand only when a steaming mug of tea was pressed into clammy fingers.

The others all came to grab their own mug, except for Matt who was letting his mother spray the slash over his chest with peroxide. He hissed angrily when the stuff sizzled on the open injury but was already pulling open a packet of butterfly strip stitches, "Thanks mom, I can do these myself."

But the moment Clara had rinsed the, what appeared a relatively shallow, cut clean she swatted his hands away and expertly applied the butterfly strips to pull the cut closed neatly. The slash crossed from just below his right pectoral, which was inked with the compass and waves, slightly upward to actually go diagonally over his left pectoral.

"You might want to get this actually stitched up... It's long enough that it might gape a bit even with the butterfly strips," she told her son but Matt just rolled his eyes. "Like I care if it'll scar, you know we're not prone to infections." She ignored her son and instead checked out a scrape over the side of his jaw and then commented that his eye was going to turn black.

I'd already noticed the smattering of bruising that was growing on his flat stomach, which kind of matched the bruising on my hip Jamie had given me. I myself was all in all only a little raw on my wrists but Gavin hadn't managed to inflict any more injuries on me. He'd clearly done his best to leave me relatively unscathed.

"The belly something I need to worry about?" Clara asked and Matt now grinned sort of feral and aggressive looking. "He got in some water punches, the coward, but it's only minor bruising. Honest mom, I blocked most of it. Neither Clay or Gavin fought particularly well, they were really untrained." "Which is the only reason you got away this well after fighting two of them!" Thomas warned, "Don't get cocky and decide to go after them in a bid for revenge."

Matt's eyes went to me and darkened a little, then in a rather husky voice he said, "No I wouldn't leave Dani unprotected." Dev who'd slipped away quietly earlier came back at that moment to declare that he'd called the marina to confirm Josh's information that the Corenth's had really lifted anchor and left. They were one hundred percent gone according to the harbormaster.

"You can sleep here tonight if you'd like," Clara offered me with a sidelong glance. I shook my head immediately, wanting nothing more than to go home to my own bed. Though I liked Clara and all of the McLarens, after what had happened I needed to get to terms with it in my own space. "Thank you but I think I want my own bed, if it's not too much trouble to get a ride?"

"Dani, of course I'm driving you home," Matt told me, "I told you that already. In fact let's go," he added while climbing to his feet and shrugging his mom's hand off his chest. She'd just applied a gauze bandage over the cut and added some waterproof tape over that so he looked pretty wrapped up. Dev handed him his shirt and he shrugged into that without any apparent hindrance from the wound or the bandaging on his chest.

"Thanks all of you, for doing your best to look out for me... I'm sorry this has ruined your friendship with the Corenth's," I said while I set my empty cup on the tray and then turned to carefully fold the quilt. It was a silly thing to say, like they'd want to be friends with men that did what they'd tried to do to me. My own thought was echoed by several voices exclaiming one over the other that none of this was my fault and like they'd want friends capable of that.

Mariana came and hugged me and then Clara did too and Dev leaned in to brush a kiss over my cheek. Telling me that I could call him any time if I wanted to talk. Then Matt had his hand on the small of my back and was guiding me around the house to his truck.

*

Hope you guys liked it, please vote and comment or follow if you want a notification for my next update!

I keep laughing over Matt's "Bad luck" comment, hope you guys found it funny too. ;-)

Much love,

Robin

P.S. final chapters for The Professor and the Siren are going up tomorrow! Yay!