Tidal Engagement - Chapter 4

This was the first time he didn’t ask if I was willing.

He dragged me out of the break room. Outside the floor-to-ceiling window at the end of the hallway, seawater had already flooded up the hotel steps.

The moon hung very low, like a dissected white eye.

Water began seeping through the carpet.

Tiny silver lights swam in the water.

My scalp tingled at the sight.

“What are they?”

“Tide Bugs.”

“Do they bite?”

“They don’t bite.”

Pei Tinglan pulled me into the emergency stairwell.

The next second, something slammed into the iron door.

He shielded me behind him, his voice very low.

“They crawl into people’s dreams.”

I didn’t have time to ask what would happen if dreams were invaded.

Because a thin layer of water had already flooded in through the door gap.

My mother’s face surfaced on the water.

She died eight years ago.

But she stared at me from the water and whispered, “Ah Wu, come back.”

All the blood in my body went cold.

Pei Tinglan pressed his hand over my eyes.

“Don’t look.”

I gritted my teeth. “I’m not that fragile.”

“I know.”

His fingers were trembling.

“I’m the one who can’t help it.”

“Help what?”

He didn’t answer.

I heard his breathing grow heavy, as if something was waking up inside his chest.

My mother in the water kept calling me.

I raised my hand and pinched myself hard.

The pain pulled me away from that face.

“Pei Tinglan, let go.”

He didn’t.

“I can tell real from fake,” I said. “Don’t decide for me.”

He slowly released his hand.

At that moment, I saw his eyes had turned completely silver.

Not the kind of silver humans have.

The light that prey in the deep sea can never escape.

The emergency stairwell was completely blocked by Tide Bugs.

Pei Tinglan led me to the top floor.

In the stairwell, his scales spread downward, finally disappearing under his collar.

His steps were steady.

If not for the veins on the back of his hand straining as if about to burst, I wouldn’t have noticed he was forcing himself.

When we reached the seventeenth floor, I stopped.

“Are you bleeding?”

Pei Tinglan also stopped.

The emergency light at the stairway corner illuminated him.

A large patch on the back of his white shirt was soaked-not water, but pale golden blood.

“Minor injury.”

“You better not treat me like a fool.”

I reached to lift his collar.

He caught my hand.

The grip was very light, yet brooked no refusal.

“Don’t touch.”

“Why?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed.

“During High Tide, touch is taken as an invitation.”

My hand froze in mid-air.

That sentence was actually very dangerous.

But he said it with such restraint, like someone pointing the blade toward himself.

I pulled back my hand.

“Then tell me yourself, where’s the injury?”

Pei Tinglan leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.

“Old fishhook wound, it splits open with the tide.”

“From Nangang that time?”

He opened his eyes.

I knew I had guessed right.

Six years ago, the person who lifted me out of the sea hadn’t come out unscathed.

A grappling hook from my father’s boat had torn through his back.

I stayed calm for a few seconds.

“You saved me, and the Pei Family knows?”

“They know.”

“So they chose me as an anchor because I touched your blood?”

Pei Tinglan looked at me, silent.

The answer was clear enough.

Suddenly I understood why that Silver Ring had “Seventh Anchor” written on it.

The previous six so-called main wives, perhaps none had been willing anchors.

And I was the first natural anchor the Pei Family had found.