“Yeah,” she agreed. “You’re probably right.”
Which made them both liars.
There was no mistaking what she’d seen. Those huge, nightmarish tendrils, stretching towards her from the ocean. Gathering her up. Holding her.
Whatever it had been, it wasn’t an octopus.
And as she drifted to sleep, in the arms of her fated mate, it was those nightmare limbs that filled her mind.
6
Moss
The moment Carol fell asleep, the kraken raised its head.
You’re still here,Moss said, his thoughts flat and exhausted.
The kraken observed his mind, then moved to look out through his eyes at the woman slumbering in his lap.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
She thought she’d seen his octopus. He could never let her know the truth.
Frustration boiled beneath his skin. The kraken’s emotions, like its thoughts, were so huge that he only felt the edges of them—and even those edges seemed too large for his body to hold. A small, unworthy vessel for the great duty his family’s oath demanded of him.
A duty that he would sacrifice everything for. And which would hurt the woman in his arms beyond imagining.
This couldn’t have happened before. He searched his memory for stories about his great-uncle, about the unbroken line of ancestors who’d fulfilled this role before him. They had always been alone. Nothing about wives or husbands, or children. Whoever their soulmates had been, over the centuries, theymust have roamed the surface world long after the kraken descended into the depths. Never knowing what sort of creature fate had chained them to.
It was a kinder fate than the one chosen for him. To find his soulmate in the hours before he left the surface world forever.
The kraken surged against his mind like a king tide. He slammed up walls against it, and the monster retreated.
But the tides tore down all walls, in the end. The kraken would wear down his defenses the same way the ocean wore down rocks to sand.
You said you would help me keep her safe,he reminded it, his thoughts disappearing into the cavernous void of the kraken’s mind.Tomorrow, she’ll make her way back to the mainland. She’ll be safe then.
A vision of a chasm opened in his mind. The darkness and the deep.
When she’s safe, we’ll go there, he told it.Not before. You stay hidden—you don’t touch her—and as soon as she’s safe, I’ll fulfil my duty.
What was he doing, negotiating with a monster? What possible leverage could he have against this creature of the deep? But the kraken drew back.
Are we agreed?he asked it.
There was only a low rumbling in response, like the distant movement of rocks falling on the sea floor.
Moss opened his eyes. The tiny flashlight turned the cave wall into a twist of shadows, transforming the tiniest bumps in the rock into huge, long shapes. But he was the only one looking at them. The kraken was dormant.
For now.
Which brought the total sum of his problems to an easily manageable several thousand, instead of several thousand and one.
He was the kraken. All right. Fine. Fuck his life, but whatever.
Carol had fallen out of the sky with a baby dragon in her arms and two unhatched eggs on her back.
That wasn’t supposed to happen.
