“You like the ocean and you like to cook,” she said weakly. She bit her tongue before she could say,My parents are going to be thrilled.
“And I’m a workaholic. I have a large, terrible family, including two cousins who decided aged four that I was their favorite dress-up doll and haven’t changed their minds since. And my octopus”—another flash of grief twisted his face—“never met a screw it didn’t want to unscrew or a lock it didn’t want to pick. If you like your car doors to stay attached and your furniture to not collapse underneath you, you’re in for a bad time.”
“I have seven older brothers.”
He stared at her. “Hell.”
“They’re all great white shifters, too.”
“Hell.”
She laughed. She couldn’t help herself. Everything was terrifying, and the future yawned ahead of her like a whirlpool she couldn’t stop from dragging her into the depths, and—here she was. With her mate. Laughing.
“You should all go out sailing sometime,” she suggested, like they’d met over drinks and not in the face of death.
He looked as though he was trying not to look like he was trying not to cry. “My octopus would take the boat apart underneath us.”
“They’d love it.”
She swallowed hard. So did he. Fate had picked them out for each other and here they were, mapping out their future at the edge of the world. As though there was no question theyhada future.
“I guess you’d need a new boat first, though,” she said, her voice wavering.
He looked down at their joined hands.
“I thought I was about to die,” he said, his voice so soft she could barely hear it over the storm outside. “And then you appeared. And now we’re…”
Silence hung in the air. Even Maggie was silent. She’d given up her baby-bird routine. Exhausted by their adventure and lulled by Carol and Moss’s quiet voices, she’d curled up in Carol’s lap and fallen asleep.
Moss frowned. “I was on a boat. But you—you were on a plane. How the hell did you fall out of a plane?”
And how did I survive falling all that way?A shiver ran down Carol’s spine. She remembered—
She shook herself. “We were attacked. A type of shifter I’d never heard of before. Like birds made out of metal. They tore right through the side of the plane.”
“They were after the dragons?”
“They must have been.” Carol looked down at Maggie, asleep in her lap. “Have you heard of anything like that? Shifters who—who look caught between their two forms. And one of those forms is a bird with razor-sharp feathers.”
“Never.” He hesitated. “The world’s full of surprises, though.”
Tell me about it.Carol’s chest tightened.
“They tore a hole in the plane. Maggie and I fell out of it. The others—” She swallowed hard, her chin trembling in that way that told her if she didn’t get hold of herself now, she wasn’t just going to be a freak with black eyes and pointy teeth, she was going to be all blotchy and teary, too. Nobody wanted that. “The pilot was going to find a place to land. I—I hope they’re okay.”
Moss’s eyes flickered to the mouth of the cave and the rain-whipped darkness outside. She didn’t need telepathy for her to know what he was thinking.
We were flying over the ocean.
“Do you think these bird shifters could follow you here?”
Carol jerked. “I hadn’t even thought—shit.Shit.”
She closed her eyes. Her shark was so deep inside her, she had to hunt after it. When she found it, the shock struck her like she’d actually been out swimming and turned around to find a great white looming behind her.
There you are, she said, hiding her hammering heart behind exasperation.I need your senses again.She’d used them on the plane, and again as they stumbled up onto the beach of this deserted island, but her shark had been easier to find then. She hadn’t needed to go searching for it to connect to its abilities.
Her shark didn’t respond to her, but suddenly she could sense the electric hum of life all around her.
