I stomped toward them, knowing if Skadi came back, this was all going to go tits up faster than I could make them understand. I yelled, “Give me back my dagger, or you’ll be the one facing death!”
“Mistress.” Alexios was at my side, pulling something else out of his dry bag. “I regret this is all the clothing I have for you?—”
“Fuck, thanks.” I stopped long enough to pull on the long shirt he handed me. I could tell by the scent it was Goran’s, and I let myself sniff it as I slid it over my head. His pine and musk had always felt like home. “Our boat?”
“In too many pieces for even your secret kraken mate to repair.” He lifted an eyebrow. “You had no memory of him?”
“Not until just now.” Gripping my nautilus shell, I headed for Lusca. My foot caught on a sharp rock, though, and the scent of my blood swirled in the sea breeze. “Ouch.”
Alexios had me bundled in his arms before I could take another step, and Kellin was there as well, taking Alexios’s boots off for him while he held me. “Good idea, Kellin,” Alexios said. “Her feet are about the same size as mine.”
“Kellin, no. He’ll need those himself,” I protested, but I might as well have been one of the squawking seabirds on the cliffs, for all the good it did. When he slid the first one on me, I sighed. “I can put them on myself, you know.”
“I know.” Kellin pulled off his fur and wrapped it around the wound, the warmth of it sinking into my skin. I could feel the small cut healing beneath it. “I know you prefer not to have me help you. You may have rejected me as a suitor, but please let me help.”
I cringed. I’d really, really fucked up. He ducked his head, removed the pelt, and slid the other boot on. “Kellin, I didn’t mean to reject you.”
He stepped back, his head still lowered. In the background, Lusca kept on shouting at the sky. The wind was colder now, but it wasn’t coming from the direction of the land. The sea air was dropping in temperature, fast.
But I needed to explain. “Kellin, I’m sorry I poisoned you. I… I need to explain what happened. I had no choice.”
He lifted his head then, a hurt expression I could have lived my whole life without seeing on his handsome face. “You had a choice. You made it, and I understand. I’d hoped…” He sucked in a breath, whirling around. “To the south!” he shouted.
Alexios set me down and handed me a knife. “Mistress? Is he an enemy?” The words were snatched away, and then I was, too, as the wind picked me up and tried to throw me into the sky. He leaped for me at the last second and managed to grab my leg, pulling me back down. Only my cloak kept me from being cut to ribbons on the sharp rocks when we landed.
“Youdareto touch my captive,” the wind itself seemed to shout, a blink before Skadi materialized in front of us in his ice dragon form over the water. He froze the sea where he landed and roared as his snout and scales and wings appeared. Those cold eyes fell on me, a spark of what might be fear or concern shimmering for an instant. Then he raked his gaze over the men around me, landing finally on Lusca, who stood in the wreckage of the ice house. “Who broke the cage I built for my enemy?”
I sighed. Cage? He really could have put that better.
RADA
I’d grown up dodging feral Alphas. I’d spent years learning to duck blades and axes, and I’d even managed to temporarily avoid my own biology.
But there was no dodging the sea and the sky on that small island, when two idiot monsters decided to fight over me like giant, ill-mannered dogs with a juicy, small bone between them.
At least one of them took the time to set me out of the way before they killed everyone, though I was knocked around a bit at first by the divinely pissed-off ice god. I did manage to wrap my cloak around my hands before I fell to the jagged rocks again, and by the time I’d gotten back to my feet, Goran was there. He grabbed me and pulled me to his chest, wrapping his own soggy cloak around us both. We stared at the monsters for a moment, frozen in shock.
Lusca had moved down the beach enough that when he took his form again, he didn’t flatten us, though his enormous shell loomed a bit too close for my comfort. If he fell, we would be crushed.
“I have to get you safe,” Goran shouted. “Is there any shelter?”
He wasn’t asking me; Kellin was staggering toward us, and he yelled back, “Nothing for miles. If we could swim out far enough and sail due east, there’s an island with a sand cove a half day’s?—”
The wind whipped his next words away. It blew like an icy hurricane around us, though Skadi had now made himself physical enough to snap with his teeth at Lusca’s whiplike tentacles. An icicle the size of my leg came hurtling toward Kellin’s head from behind, but Lachlan was suddenly there, snatching it out of the air before it could connect.
I gasped. We were all too exposed. There was nowhere to hide.
While I panicked, Alexios was doing something at my waist—putting a belt around me? No, tying the bag of supplies there. “Can you two swim her out far enough?” he shouted to Lachlan and Goran.
“We can try—duck!” Lachlan yelped. Goran immediately pushed me down, crouching over me as something whistled over us. Icicles or tentacles, I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t care.
“Get in the boat!” I ordered everyone. Luckily, the kraken had placed Goran’s boat in shallow enough water that it was still close enough to wade out to.
They all obeyed, though Goran refused to climb in until I was aboard. There were supplies on board, or crates anyway, and a small cabin. Goran and Dustin tied ropes to the anchor holds and tossed them into the water. The selkies shifted into their seal forms and grabbed the ropes in their mouths, preparing to tow us deeper. I knew the sea was Lusca’s domain, but I needed to explain to him that Skadi might not be a friend, but he wasn’t necessarily an enemy. However, the water that whipped around the boat made it almost impossible to see the two fighting creatures, and speaking to them was out of the question.
“Go below,” Alexios shouted at me, pointing me toward the cabin. I rolled my eyes and went to stand at the side, peering out into the storm.
“Lusca!” I yelled. “Skadi! Stop fighting, you great hulking idiots!” To my utter shock, one of them listened. But it wasn’t the one I’d expected.
