My feet had only just touched the ground when Alexios was there, his arms wrapping around me. “Trouble really is yourmiddle name, isn’t it, Mina?” he muttered, wrapping me in a hug. He had his priest’s robes on, and it was a good reminder, or I’d have kissed him. He set me down, his hands on my cheeks, before he pushed back and stared at me. “Where’s your—ah, thank you, Emperor.”
Lusca had grabbed my cloak off the beach and bundled it around me. “Why is it empty?” he growled, holding up one edge. He leaned down to sniff it. “It smells of pain… and sex.” His face grew even stormier. “You have mated the ice god.”
“Oh, hells no, I didn’t mate that asshole,” I protested when five sets of eyes suddenly bored into me. “I, ah, did mate with Lachlan, but he’s an Omega.”
Lachlan waved awkwardly. I bit my lip to suppress a hysterical giggle at the surge of pride and happiness that I felt in our bond.
“Good.” Lusca nodded to Lachlan, who wiggled his eyebrows at me. “That was expected. But the one who abducted you?”
“Abducted and emptied my damned cloak of anything useful,” I muttered.
Alexios let out a hiss. He should be pissed; half of my poisons and antidotes had been made with his help, and as my valet, he was in charge of keeping everything organized. “I might break my vow of nonviolence for him,” he replied when I told him some of what was missing.
“He abducted you from your mate. He stole from you. But he has also entered you, beloved,” Lusca insisted, his voice soft now. “Do you protect him? I can sense a part of him inside you.” He reached for my abdomen, but I twisted away before he could touch. His voice thrummed with command. “Beloved. Tell me the truth. Did you lie with him?”
I sighed. This was awkward to explain. How could I phrase it?I choked him, and he liked it? There was no sex, but I wantedto try riding his double-knotted icicle cock?I settled for, “More under and over him.”
His voice dropped to a sibilant hiss that would have been scary as hells if I didn’t know this kraken was fully devoted to me. “Did he… enter you? I can sense a part of him inside you still.”
I made a face. “That sounds far more fun than it was in the moment. It wasn’t fun, Lusca. It fucking hurt.”
“Hehurtyou?” His irises had begun whirling slowly, like a whirlpool had formed inside them. I should have kept the ice tentacle thing to myself. It sounded a lot worse than it was.
Well, a little worse, anyway.
“Yes,” I blurted out, but then realized what was happening. Lusca was the father of sirens. His voice was too irresistible to ignore, and lying to him was as hard as not breathing. “Ah, shit. So, yes, there was a bit of a misunderstanding yesterday about consent, and what needs to happen before a male sticks his… ice tentacle, or whatever, inside a woman.”
“He entered you with atentacle?” Lusca’s human form shimmered, and the waves almost knocked me to my knees. Alexios and Kellin were suddenly there, one on each side, holding me up. “Atentacle?” My kraken said the word like it was more intimate than a tongue, or a cock.
Maybe it was.
“Without your consent, my mate?” Kellin demanded, his normally placid demeanor replaced with a quieter rage that was just as alarming. He and Lachlan had moved closer, but when Lachlan tried to speak, Kellin cut him off. “He dared?”
“Ah, yes, strictly speaking. But let me explain—” Panic shot through me as he bared his teeth. I’d never seen Kellin enraged, but the fury in his dark eyes was unmistakable. “He didn’t know what consent even was. He was trying to help me…” I looked around for help.
There was none to be found. Matching expressions of disbelief flickered over their faces, all transforming into rage. Even Alexios was snarling, his hands curled into fists.
“Damnit, calm down. I don’t want you guys to try and fight him. He’s a god.”
Well, that was a mistake. It was like I’d waved a red cloth in front of a pasture full of bulls.
Lusca lost it entirely, swamping all the others in a giant wave, though he was careful to keep me dry. His body kept transforming from human-shaped to kraken, though not nearly as big as he actually was, or we’d all have been crushed. But the churning a few hundred steps out in the ocean made it clear that he’d let his tentacles stretch there and was whipping the surface of the water in his anger.
Kellin was chanting some selkie rhyme that sounded like it was half magic spell and half Starlakian second verse, listing all the ways he would kill Skadi and precisely where he would hide his bones.
Goran had stopped puking, tumbled off the side of the boat into the water, and was wading toward me, his sword in one hand as if Skadi were behind me, ready to be attacked. I peeked over my shoulder, glad when I didn’t see anything. I’d have to wait for the guys to stop posturing to explain what Skadi had done.
“I know a way to kill a god,” Alexios whispered in my ear. When I turned to ask what he meant, he reached into a bag I didn’t recognize.
“My dagger!” I gasped, grabbing it.
“EXCELLENT IDEA,” Lusca proclaimed, and we all covered our ears. I dropped the dagger in the water and scrambled to retrieve it, but Lusca had already plucked it up with a tentacle. He brandished it, moving up the beach. “I will find him and punish him for his crime against you, my Empress.”
“Everybody calm the fuck down!” I screamed, but they were all past listening to reason, or even to me. Only Lachlan and Alexios stayed by my side as the other three stormed the beach.
I could hear when they reached the ice house, because Kellin shouted something that sounded like, “Desecration!” and shards of the house and the stacks of firewood outside it started flying into the air.
“Come and face your death, worm!” Lusca shouted to the sky.
