He smiled and nodded.

   “Say something to me,” I said.

   “I’m fine,” he said.

   I narrowed my eyes at him, because I didn’t believe him. I turned my head again to look at Damian. Nicky tightened his grip on my arm just a little to help steady me. It was exactly what I needed in that moment, which he managed to do most of the time. I said to Damian, “My hearing shouldn’t be this good yet. I think Nicky’s taken the damage for me like a good cannon-fodder Bride.”

   Damian looked past me at Nicky. “It is his job metaphysically as your Bride.”

   I sat there with Nicky’s hands so firm and steady on my arm, and he didn’t feel like expendable cannon fodder. It felt like his hands on me helped me breathe a little better. “Yeah, but now I’m in love with him and that seems shitty. Okay, that seemed shitty once the system was explained to me.”

   Damian smiled at me and touched his fingertips to the edge of my face. “You can be so harsh, but you are also one of the most genuinely caring people I’ve ever met.”

   The compliment embarrassed me. I wasn’t sure why, but it did. “I don’t know what to say to that.”

   “You don’t have to say anything.”

   Domino said, “If Nicky really can’t hear well, we need to know that if he’s going to keep being one of your bodyguards today.”

   “Good point,” I said, glancing at him. The sunlight was touching the top of his hair, making the few white curls in all the black almost iridescent, as if the thick Irish sunlight brought out the shine in his hair.

   “He’ll feel me talking, because he’s touching me. One of you say something where he can’t see you talking.”

   Damian bent down to kiss me so that his face was hidden from Nicky’s view. He kissed me, soft and gentle, but as he drew back, he said, “Can you hear me, Nicky?”

   There was no answer from the man holding my arm. I had to fight an urge not to turn and look at his face, because that would be enough to give him a clue. “Try again,” I told Damian.

   He bent down and got another kiss, but he kept our foreheads touching so that his long hair fell forward, and even if you’d been standing, you couldn’t have seen our faces, let alone our lips. It probably looked very intimate, but Damian spoke like that, hidden from sight. “Nicky, if you can’t answer my question, then you have to step down as Anita’s bodyguard.”

   We waited a second with our faces touching, but Nicky didn’t answer the question. Crap. “Nicky, can you really not hear us at all?”

   “That would be a no,” Domino said.

   Damian sat back up and looked at Nicky. I turned around and looked at him. I looked into that face, which seemed to steady me just by being here. Not everyone I loved made me feel that way, so maybe it wasn’t our special love, but the fact that he was my Bride. I hated thinking that, but it was a type of hiding from the truth not to think it. “Nicky, can you hear anything we’re saying?”

   “Yes,” he said.

   Domino was standing a little behind him, so that he couldn’t see him as he asked, “How much can you hear?”

   Nicky turned and looked at him. “Some.”

   “How much is some?” Domino asked.

   “My ears are ringing, and I’m hearing everything down that long tunnel that happens without ear protection.”

   I touched his face with my free hand, turning him to look at me. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

   “You can hear, right?”

   I nodded.

   He smiled. “Then I’m doing my job.”

   “If you shift to lion, will that fix it?” I asked.

   He frowned, which probably meant he didn’t understand everything I’d said. I tried again with fewer words and enunciating carefully. “Shapeshifting will heal you?”

   “Yes.”

   “But he needs to shift soon,” Domino said. “The longer you go without shifting to heal, the greater the chance that you’ll have some damage left over. It works that way more with some things than others, but hearing can be one of them.”

   “You could change in the ambulance,” I said.

   Nicky frowned at me.

   Domino said, “He’ll have to stay in beast form for a few hours to make sure it heals completely. He can’t just shift back and forth even if he’s able to do that without risking permanent damage to his hearing.”

   “He can’t run around Dublin in lion form, Anita,” Damian said.

   “Especially not one the size of a small horse. We’re all bigger than the regular version of our animal side. A lion that big would attract a lot of attention,” Domino said.

   “I’d think any lion loose in Dublin would attract attention,” I said.

   “True, but our normal beast size is huge. It won’t pass for a natural animal.”

   “I’ve seen shapeshifters that were the normal size of their animal,” Damian said.

   “I haven’t.”

   “I think it may be an older type of lycanthropy,” he said.

   “That would explain it, and be weird. Why would older lycanthropy strains make their beast half look like a regular animal?” Domino asked.

   “Maybe it’s camouflage,” I said. “Back when there were more real lions, tigers, and bears running around, if you could pass for a real animal I’d think you’d go undetected longer.”

   “So why did that strain die out and ours with the really unnatural-looking beasts survive?” Domino asked.

   Nicky was watching the conversation, but unless he read lips he couldn’t follow it. I felt guilty about the fact that it was my damage he was suffering through. I hadn’t consciously given him the hearing damage. I touched his face, which earned me a smile. I wanted to give him a kiss but was afraid that leaning that far forward would make my arm move too much. My stomach had settled down, and I wanted to keep it that way, because there was nothing romantic about throwing up on someone.

   “I know that the shapeshifters that looked like normal beasts didn’t hide in their animal form as stringently as those who couldn’t pass for ordinary,” Damian said.

   “That led to many of my brethren being hunted like common wolves,” Jake said. He’d apparently walked up while we were talking.

   “Are you saying that the fact that they could pass for a normal wolf meant they let themselves be seen, and that led to them being hunted?” I asked.

   He nodded.