Triangle by Sara L. Daigle

Author:Sara L. Daigle [Daigle, Sara L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B07J1P3CPH
Publisher: Merry Dissonance Press
Published: 2018-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

Late one morning, after he’d escaped into the mountains for some much-needed rest, the ringing of his personal cell phone dragged Merran out of a sound sleep. Rubbing his eyes and trying to chase the cobwebs from his mind, he stumbled out of bed and into the kitchen to grab the phone. Glancing at the blinking numbers on the screen, he frowned. The number was not Ketiana’s, unless she was calling from a location he didn’t know about.

“Hello?” he answered the phone in English rather than Azellian, just in case the caller was someone other than Ketiana.

“Merran,” Alarin said. Merran could hear the strain in his voice over the phone. His friend had not used the video function to call, so Merran couldn’t see Alarin’s stress, but it was clear enough that something wasn’t right, even without visual confirmation.

“What happened?” Merran asked in Azellian, automatically reaching out with his mind across the miles that separated them to brush up against solid shields that only imperfectly covered the churning concern underneath.

“Where are you?” Alarin responded in Azellian, but he ignored the invitation and the touch of Merran’s mind. “Ketiana wouldn’t say.”

“Not far actually. In the mountains. On a much-needed vacation. What’s happened?”

Alarin took a deep breath. “I thought you might want to know that Tamara’s in the hospital.”

“What?” Merran demanded. “When? Where?”

“She’s at Denver Mercy,” Alarin replied slowly, as if the words were being dragged from him. He kept his shields high and tight, relying instead on spoken words. “They’re keeping her in the hospital on enforced bedrest. I ... it wasn’t easy for me to decide to call you,” he admitted, his tone almost hostile, but Merran could clearly read the fear and worry behind the hostility. Alarin didn’t often leak through his well-developed shields, but he was most certainly doing it now.

Merran hesitated for a moment. He knew what he wanted to do, but he also knew that his relationship with Alarin depended on his next actions. “Do you want me to come down?” he asked, carefully putting a relaxed note into his voice that he didn’t feel. Tamara was in trouble, but he had to take the time to dance around Alarin’s sensibilities. He knew he should be amazed that Alarin had called him at all—and he was—but Merran didn’t know quite what to make of it.

“It’s up to you,” Alarin replied, his tone still faintly hostile. “It doesn’t matter to me.”

Doesn’t it? Merran thought to himself, extremely aware that Alarin was still not accepting the casual mental touch Merran offered. There was more to this invitation, he thought. More to the call than he knew. What could be wrong with Tamara? “Are you going to tell me what happened to Tamara?”

“Come down and visit her yourself,” Alarin replied and hung up the phone.

Merran stared at the phone in his hand. There was something not right about the whole thing. On the surface, it appeared that Alarin was extending an olive branch, but the way he ended

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