“Don’t worry. We all know itdidhappen. Not likely to forget it, either.” He frowned as he looked Carol up and down, and as though awakened by his concern, dozens of tiny scrapes and cuts all over her body suddenly made themselves known. “Thequestion is, where the hell are we, and how do we get off this rock?”
And where are my teammates? And what were those strange metal bird shifters? And—
“I know.” Moss’s voice was quiet, and his hand slipped from her shoulder—a loss that made her skin chill, until he closed the space between them and put his arm, so tenderly it was like he expected her to explode, around her waist. “Those aren’t the only questions we need to answer. But we almost died. Let’s cut ourselves a break. One thing at a time, right?”
“One thing at a time,” she agreed. Water swirled around her ankles. The wind was a constant tug on her skin.
They were in the middle of nowhere, with no food, no decent shelter—
Those were only three things, and they already felt like too much.
Around her neck, Maggie gave a tiny croak of complaint. “That’s right, Maggie. Starting with not standing around with our feet wet.”
“Pree!”
Maggie tugged on her collar, batting her wings to “help” Carol get further up the beach faster. But Carol already felt like she was walking on air. Moss still had his hand on her lower back. Just for this moment, she could convince herself that he truly wanted her as his soulmate. Everything was going to work out.
Instead of the more likely scenario, which was that everything was going to continue to go to shit.
Well. Maybe she couldn’t convince herself, even for a moment. But she could still enjoy it. Right?
“Gotta admit, I was hoping for a different answer to that first question,” Moss muttered.
They were standing on the craggy peak above the cave. The highest spot on the island. There was no doubt now that itwasan island. A small one.
In the middle of the empty ocean.
“Would have been nice to get up here and turn around and bam, turns out we spent the night with a beach resort right behind us.” Moss sighed.
“We already knew there was no one else around,” Carol reminded him.
“Still. Could have done without the painfully clear evidence. Not even a cloud on the horizon to aim at.” He hesitated, and an uneasy expression crossed his face. “You know, maybe swimming in a random direction isn’t the best idea…”
“Your octopus isn’t comfortable in the open water?”
“My—yeah. That’s it.”
Carol frowned.That isn’t the reason, is it? You’re hiding something from me.Something about his inner animal. She’d suspected it the night before, and this was—well, not evidence, but a little warning bell.
“You won’t need to swim. Out of the two of us, your octopus has more arms than my shark. You could—I don’t know—h-hold on to Maggie and the eggs, and hold on to me, and…”
“And we could be the world’s strangest life raft?” He grinned at her. “Let’s do it. An octopus catching a ride on a shark, carrying its luggage with it? I can’t think of any better way to guarantee the immediate appearance of a shipload of tourists armed with high-powered zoom lenses. We’d be rescued in no time.”
“And we explain away the dragon again, somehow,” Carol said absently. Moss shot her a narrow look but didn’t say anything.
And another little warning bell rang in the back corner of her mind. How did he havenoquestions about Maggie?
The night before, she’d been overwhelmed, focusing on staying alive and keeping Maggie and the eggs safe. And on the fact that her sexy-as-hell mate had appeared in the middle of the storm like some sort of freaking god of the ocean.
But today, with the skies clear and nobody trying to slice her up with their razor wings…
Yesterday’s events were coming together in her mind, like putting together a jigsaw puzzle that had been shaken apart.
And so many of the pieces didn’t fit.
She clenched her jaw.Trust issues, much?
Moss had done nothing but help her. And she was hiding things from him, too.
