And their inner creatures were stuck with them. These strange, human animals with their complicated wants and needs and fears.
She ran her hand down his tentacle. It was firm and unyielding, a single powerful muscle designed to coil around its prey and destroy it.
Or protect it. Like now, surrounding her—she wasn’t afraid. The kraken wasn’t threatening her. It wanted to keep her safe. The same way all those phantom touches back on land had felt: worshipful, gentle caresses.
*We’re both more than our inner animals,*she told the monstrous creature in front of her. *And they’re more than we know, too. My shark wasn’t ignoring me all these years. It was shy. Scared to unbalance the human whose soul it entered in the most terrifying moment of my life.*
Understanding and love, warm and caring, flowed through the mate bond to her. She made sure her shark felt it, too.
*Death isn’t all your kraken wants.*
A tentacle brushed against her cheek. It was leathery and strong—but its touch was feather-soft. *No.*
*You don’t want to kill anyone. I don’t want you to kill anyone, either. So forget the ship. Stay with me. Save me. Starting with getting this thing off my neck.*
The kraken’s huge eyes softened. It reached out for her, its tentacles thicker than her waist, capable of crushing solid wood and steel, as gentle as they were enormous.
And too big.
They realized it at the same time, tension ricocheting between them and their inner animals. The kraken couldn’t break her collar. Not without snapping her neck, too.
47
Moss
The kraken flinched back as its tentacle brushed against Carol’s collar. It had the strength to break it but not the dexterity.
Echoes of images too blurred for Moss to make out flooded its mind with horror, and he realized with a rush of nausea that it was remembering previous victims. All those it had killed in service of its vow. Or its rage.
But not her.Not her,it pledged, with a desperation that matched the fracturing in Moss’s own heart.
*We can go back to the ship,*he told Carol. *Those bird shifters could cut it off—*
Even if the kraken had to kill everyone else in its way to get to them.
*No!*Carol cried. She’d heard his thoughts. Her face twisted with frustration, and she kicked towards the surface. *We’ll find another way. I just need to breathe first. I need to—to—*
Panic hazed the edges of her voice. He wrapped a tentacle around her to help her to the surface, but the kraken froze, paralyzed by the memories of the destruction it had wrought with its powerful limbs over centuries and centuries.
Use your magic tentacles then, the ones that—
That he’d last used to break the bodies of the warriors who’d attacked them in their home? The kraken seethed. How could it be gentle now? How could something like it keep her safe?
Because we have to.For the first time since the kraken had become part of him, Moss was certain of himself.Because she is our mate. She makes us more than what we are.
Deep inside him, something stirred from where it had been hiding.
And something in his mate responded. Carol’s eyes widened. Not the flat, shark-black eyes he knew, buthumaneyes.
For a moment, she looked like a stranger.
Then something rushed up inside her. The power of it reverberated along the mate bond, calling and pulling on something inside him—something that had hidden in the greatness of the kraken’s soul, lost in the darkness the way he’d feared he would lose himself.
The kraken’s huge steel-hard tentacles twisted, shrinking and softening, as another form pushed its way forward.
My octopus?
He couldn’t believe it. He didn’t want to believe it, and lose his octopus all over again when this turned out to be some trick or delusion.
