Second star to the right - Larry

FIVE

My lungs are working overtime when I regain conscience. I cough up water and gasp over and over again until I'm relaxing again, eyes closing as I push myself up so I can lean against Harry.

"Fuck," he says. "I thought I was losing you."

"Sorry."

"Are you okay?"

I'm about to nod when I notice the stinging pain in my thigh. I hiss when I pull my shorts up to see the wound—alone the sight is enough to make me dizzy. The bite mark isn't bigger than a normal human bite, but mermaid teeth are not only sharper but also longer, so the wound is deeper than I originally thought.

Jack takes a look at it, then gets a knife between our weapons. Niall is the only one wearing a shirt, so Jack cuts a piece and comes back to me, blushing when he asks me to stand up so I can slip my shorts down. I let them pool around my ankles so he can wrap the material around my thigh and stop the bleeding.

He ties the ends together, then stands back up and lets his eyes gravitate down my body. And that's when it occurs to me that my boxers are clinging to my body and leave nothing to the imagination. I blush as I pull my shorts back up, then turn to look at Harry who's eyes have certainly been lingering on my ass.

"Stop it," I say, slapping his arm and closing my shorts. "This really isn't the time to get worked up."

"I'm not getting worked up."

"I know how you look when you're—"

"Let's go," Zayn interrupts. "The sun is going down soon."

Jack leads us into the woods once we've gathered our weapons. Once we settle down, the night is similar to last night—the boys go hunting as Fawn carries fruits one by one that Harry and I can eat instead. As soon as we tell her it's enough, she collapses on Niall's stomach as the silence makes me think about things I'd rather not think about.

Zayn and Harry are the only ones with a clear conscience, but I can tell they're traumatised by simply witnessing what happened. And when all comes to all, I'm happy Harry doesn't have to carry around this much shame. At the lagoon we allowed ourselves to think about something else, but now we're drowning in guilt, so my hand is tight in Harry's.

"Listen," Jack says, "what happened today wasn't great, but it's about survival. And we need to prepare ourselves because it's gonna happen again."

"It doesn't matter that the odds are against us," Zayn continues. "Peter has the twins. And we don't leave our own behind."

No one says anything, but the boys clearly agree with him. I eventually try to get some sleep, but every time I close my eyes, I see the boy I killed and his empty, empty eyes. I'm scared my mind is going to take me somewhere unpleasant in my sleep, yet somehow I'm knocked out by exhaustion with my hand still clutched in Harry's. 

I'm trembling by the time I wake up again, breathing heavily as I try to shake the nightmare that's closer to a memory. My immediate instinct is to curl into Harry, but I would rather no wake him up by doing so. Zayn has been put on look-out duty so Jack can sleep, so he's awake as well, carving something into the tree he's sitting on.

"The nightmares are gonna pass."

I sit up properly, absentmindedly playing with Harry's hair. "How do you know that?"

He's quiet a long moment, then looks at me. "I used to have them when Peter brought me here. I remembered things I couldn't put into actual memories, so I wasn't adjusting very well. I still remember the dreams—or at least certain parts, but they're not coming to me anymore."