Maggie’s heartbeat was as slow as the little dragon’s pulse ever got, even and calm in exhausted sleep. Moss’s heartbeat was strong. Powerful. She pulled her attention away from it reluctantly, forcing herself to focus further away.
The tiny prickles of life, the bugs and critters that had led her to this scrap of shelter in the cliff. Farther up, in smaller shelters, the thrumming hearts of sea birds hiding from the storm. In the ocean, hundreds of fish, big and small, torn this way and that by wild currents. Some of them flickered out as she watched. The sea in a storm like this wasn’t a safe place for any creature.
But the metal shifters wouldn’t be in the sea.
She sent her senses up, tilting her head as though she were looking with her eyes and could see through the rock above their heads.
The sky was empty.
“I can’t sense anything out there,” she said uncertainly.
“How are you doing that?”
Moss’s voice was hushed, as though they were in a church. She blinked hard, pulling her focus back to her eyes instead of her other senses. Her eyes were stinging. Why were they open? God, had she kept them open the whole time, staring black-eyed up at the ceiling like that girl fromThe Ring?
She risked a glance at him. His eyes were wide, the shadows around him somehow deeper. As though he was surrounded by a dark, strangely possessive aura.
Right. Probably his octopus trying to hide him from the freaky shark lady.
She swallowed and looked away. “It’s something my shark can do.”
“Electrolocation?”
“I—yes. You’ve heard of it?” She hesitated. “And it doesn’t freak you out?”
“My whole family are marine shifters of one sort or another. A couple of them have a similar thing. Though I don’t think they can use it while they’re in human form.”
Neither could her brothers or parents. A shameful heat crept over her face, and she raised one hand to rub her cheeks, turning her face away.
Moss was instantly apologetic. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Shit. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. One silver lining to being stuck mid-shift, right?”
The lie came out too easily. She immediately wished she could take it back.
Moss reached out and hesitantly put his arm around her shoulders again. She leaned into him, equally as tentative. Slowly, awkwardly, they relaxed into one another.
Oh. Oh, god. Was it worth the lie, to have this? No one had touched her like this since before her shark first emerged. Before she transformed from normal teenage girl to the freak with a monster’s face. Even her family treated her carefully, as though if they got too close she might break worse than she already was—and that was her fault, wasn’t it? Because she knew that as soon as she let anyone see how much it hurt to be always kept at a distance, she would have to let it all out, all her loneliness and brokenness and shame.
But Moss didn’t know that this wasall there was of her.He wasn’t holding her out of pity and horror, because she was a broken thing and you were meant to be kind to broken things. And because he didn’t know, she didn’t have to be that broken thing. She could be… some other Carol. The version of herself that he thought existed. Waiting for this aberration in her ability to shift to pass, like walking off a cramp.
A Carol with normal human eyes and a normal human mouth. Who was like other shifters. Who could transform into humanoranimal, and not be trapped as some monstrous combination of both.
Like those metal bird shifters.
“We don’t know how far the storm took us before we found land,” Moss said, and she silently thanked him for pulling her away from her spiraling thoughts.
“Where were you sailing? Our flight path was meant to take us over the water to South America. But the pilot said the storm messed with the controls.”
“I was… off the coast. Not really keeping track.” He grimaced.
“Your accent…”
“I’m a Kiwi. New Zealander. Don’t worry. I’ve been living in the States for the last half decade. So it’s not like the storm took you halfway round the world.”
“We can’t have gonethatfar off route,” Carol mused, trying to convince herself more than anything. “And there’s no trace of the shifters who attacked us. Or—or the plane, but my range wouldn’t reach that far, anyway.”
Moss squeezed her shoulders in silent comfort. She drew a deep breath.
