His tendril wrapped around her. Tighter. Drawing her closer, regardless of how she burned.
The kraken’s thoughts echoed through him.
*Want.*
*Mine.*
*No!*Moss screamed. As the kraken’s shadow-tendrils pulled the woman down into the dark hunger at its heart, he forced it back beneath his skin.
You can’t conquer it.Everyone knew that. His grandfather had said it in grief, remembering his brother who was lost to it. The kraken was a curse that would protect the world—and destroy everything Moss loved.
But not this. Not her.
The woman falling from the sky, with the sun in her soul and the ocean beneath her skin, was his mate.
And he would die before he let the kraken hurt her.
His nightmare tentacles held her, slowing her fall. When she was a handful of feet above him, he managed to withdraw them completely. She fell into his arms. Hishumanarms.
They clung to one another for one desperate moment before a wave crashed over them like a wall of stone. She tumbled through water black as tar. He swam after her, each stroke like trying to crash through concrete. The storm was too powerful. His human body wasn’t strong enough.
He couldn’t shift back into the monster and risk hurting her.
But she could. He’d tasted the shark beneath her skin. It would have more chance against the raging waters than her human form. Why wasn’t she shifting?
She disappeared in the darkness. The kraken raged inside him. It could find her. It could snatch her from the waves, hold her tight—safe—
Not safe. Never safe, in the monster’s arms.
He strove towards her. The ocean fought him as hard as he fought the monster within himself. At last he reached her. The water spun them around one another, waves crashing like falling buildings, air thrashed from his lungs—but she was there, curled in on herself, one arm clutched over her chest and the other grasping his shoulder.
Their eyes met, sudden and shocking, as lightning lit the world in white.
Dark eyes filled his vision.
She was beautiful.
Her mouth moved in the split second before darkness closed in around them again. She flung herself against him, and if he’d had any breath left in his body, that would have knocked it out. The solid knock-elbowed leg-kicking reality of her body as they clung to one another against the battering ocean took what was left of his soul and laid it at her feet.
Her mind sought his, tentative and limned with fear and wonder in equal measure. Oh god. If her mind felt like that, what did his feel like? She was a goddess, and he was a monster. A creature of death and destruction.
Whoever else he had been, that person was gone. He might still have his own mind and heart now, but before long, the kraken would drown out even that.
The storm tore them apart again, and he barely managed to grab her hand as the waves bore her away.
The kraken’s voice thundered through him. *We could hold her.*
He gritted his teeth.No.
*We could wrap her tightly in our arms.*
No!
The kraken seethed beneath his skin. Why was he denying it this one thing it wanted? His human form was weak. The ocean was strong.
He should let it take over, before it was too late.
No.He gritted his teeth.If I die here, you lose her too.You want her? Then keep us both alive. Without touching her. Without EVER touching her.
