He could introduce Carol to his parents. The whole whanau. He hoped she was prepared for that.
And speaking of reuniting families…
“Maggie’s uncle is still out there, right?”
Lance nodded. “So far as we know. We’re a few days off schedule,” he said dryly, as though the delay hadn’t been literally life or death, “but now we have even more reason to believe he’s headed south. To the… fortress.”
“You make it sound like the fact that there’s a secret invisible dragon fortress hidden in Antarctica is a weird thing,” Carol joked.
Lance blinked, and Moss wondered if he’d ever heard Carol joke before. “Well,” he began. “…Invisible?”
“I assume? The dragons can turn themselves invisible. Why not their secret base, as well?” She looked up at Moss.
“And the Soul-Eater’s prison,” Moss confirmed.
“Oh, and from something the Stymphalians said while we were on the ship, I think they might have magically created the storm that came down on us,” Carol said, blinking.
Lance’s gaze turned distant. “Great,” he said bluntly. “Can’t see any issues with that. Invisible dragons in an invisible house. Metal bird shifters that can call down the lightning. It’s not like anything else about this has been simple.”
Maggie perked her head up. “Chree!” she announced.
52
Epilogue
Moss and his mate floated on the surface, the swell of waves all around them and the sky a blue-white shell far above. The kraken’s power kept the swell from overwhelming them.
Somewhere behind them, Lance and the others were aboard a ship. The last few days had been a flurry of activity, and this was the result: a small force, with a baby dragon for a navigator and heralded by birds whose wings rang like clashing shields.
And with the kraken in front, in case they were all wrong and the Soul-Eater was already free.
Who knew what lay ahead. But here, as the water changed from cool to icy, he and Carol were stealing a moment to themselves.
*What does your kraken think of all this?*Carol asked, underlining the question with a reminder that he’d asked the same about her shark, not too long ago. A lifetime ago.
The answer came to him like the scent of smoke on the night breeze. There was so much the kraken hadn’t done, for so long. To exist like this at all, to watch the sky change color and knowthat its vessel was holding his mate in his arms, was more than it had dared to dream.
Carol sighed, satisfied. Then she rolled over, facing him in the water. “We don’t know what the future’s going to bring crashing down on us. Before that happens…” She smiled, but there was a question in her eyes. “I’ve met your family now. You’ve experienced what it’s like to have a video call with more great white shifters than anyone wouldeverwant to encounter. And if we get through this—whenwe get through this—we’re going to keep showing each other where we came from. Where we grew up. And… I want that to include the kraken.”
“It’s not like we can leave it behind,” he joked.
“I mean—”
Her meaning washed through him. He shivered. “You want to visit where it’s meant to be imprisoned?”
“Not if there’s some—some magic that will trap it there? Or something? But—” She bit her lip, the same careful pressure of sharp teeth against soft skin that had enthralled him the first time he saw it. “I’ve been… I’ve had these dreams.”
She hesitated, then slipped her hand into his and closed her eyes. A vision flowed to him through the mate bond.
The crushing pressure of water far below where any light could reach. A world so distant from the surface, it might as well have been on an alien planet; cold, remote. Some things lived there, but it wasn’t a place for humans. For people.
Then even deeper, pulling hand over hand into a chasm, through narrow gaps in the wall, past light, past warmth, past the staring eyes of the creatures that lived here in the deep…
He gasped and jerked away. She didn’t let go.
“Why would you want to go there?” His voice shook. *Why?*
*I’ve been dreaming about it,*she replied. *I only put it together after you told me about the kraken needing to be exiledwhile it waited to be called. I think—I think we need to go and see it. So we can put it behind ourselves. All of us.*
