Return (Awakened Fate Book 3) by Skye Malone

something might break. “If your friend went back to his home.”
    “What? No.”
    The response came out fast, and harsh too, and my gaze snapped up from the ground to glare at her.
    Her face tightened, as though arguing with me and trying to tell me what to do had suddenly become difficult for her. “Chloe, I… Whatever you think you’re feeling toward him, you can’t… it’s not…”
    I stared at her in confusion as she struggled for words.
    “He’s dangerous,” she concluded. “He’s dehaian, and if anyone finds out he’s–”
    “ I’m dehaian.”
    “No, you’re our Chloe,” she countered fervently. “You are not –”
    She cut off and turned away as Dad put a hand to her knee.
    “Not what?” I demanded. “A fish? Scale-skin? Scum-sucker? What were you going to call us?”
    Breathing hard, I stared at them.
    “Like them,” Mom whispered.
    Still shaking with fury, I took a moment to respond. “And what does that mean?”
    Dad gave a small glance to the kitchen. “I’d rather we not discuss this with–”
    “ Say it.”
    He paused, watching me. “Soulless.”
    My brow flickered down incredulously.
    “The dehaians,” he said, “when our people split from theirs, we each got a bit of what made us who we used to be. For them, it was the ability to live underwater. To change like they do. For us, we have the ability to live on land without pain, and apparently, well…”
    He sighed. “I guess you’d call it humanity. The capacity to care about others. Dehaians… they’re not like people, Chloe. Every story we’ve heard of them makes it clear they don’t have feelings like us, and that they use the feelings of others for their entertainment. They enjoy manipulating people and their emotions, and they don’t care about the consequences or the suffering. They even use magic to force people to become obsessed with them, just so they can watch–”
    “Wait, that ?”
    “They kill people with ‘that’, honey. For fun.”
    I stared at him. “No, they–”
    “That’s not true.”
    Zeke’s voice made me stop, and I looked over to see him standing by the archway, his gaze on my parents.
    “Only sick freaks do that. And it’s illegal. Using it at all on non-dehaians is illegal, and what you’re describing, we view as murder.”
    I turned back to Mom and Dad.
    Dad’s mouth compressed briefly. “Chloe, of course he’d say that. They’re manipulators, only interested in getting what they want. But if you understood what they are truly capable–”
    “I do understand,” I interrupted.
    “Then you’d understand that this boy has probably used it on you!” Mom cried. “Everything you’re arguing for him could just be a result of what he’s done!”
    “It doesn’t work that way.”
    “Chloe, they–”
    “It doesn’t! Not between dehaians. For us, it–” I cut off, discomfort catching up with me, and I fought to keep myself from blushing. “It’s not like that.”
    She shook her head. “You can’t be sure, Chloe. Please. You’re not one of them; you’re like us. You wouldn’t know what it is or if he–”
    “I’ve used it,” I said.
    She froze, her face a picture of shock and horror.
    “We both have,” I continued. “The man who attacked us, when he was strangling me, I used it to stop him. And Zeke helped a friend–”
    “Your daughter,” he interrupted.
    I turned to him in confused surprise. In the cave, he’d told me he’d been trying to keep someone from dying.
    He hadn’t mentioned anything about it being me.
    Zeke didn’t take his eyes from my parents. “When she was in the hospital and the damage that Sylphaen bastard had done was killing her, I had medicine from back home that could help. But I needed to get past emergency room security, so I used that ability you’re describing. Aveluria. Just a bit, so the woman recovered. And your daughter did too.”
    He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice shook with quiet intensity. “We