Kraken.
The world shrank around him. This river was nothing; if he stretched out to his full size, his tentacles could fill it bank to bank. Reach up and pluck people from the waterfront tables, swipe cars from the bridges.
Wind around pylons and buildings. Crush. Tear. Destroy.
No!Moss screamed into the kraken’s mind. It was like shouting into a cave so deep it had no echo; his voice disappeared into the darkness. He scrambled for control—his octopus liked to play silly buggers when he was in human form and he used to return the favor, taking over its limbs and swimming where he wanted to go, instead of squeezing into whatever bloody piece of rubbish it decided was its new home sweet home.
But this wasn’t his octopus.
The kraken barely acknowledged his attempts. Its attention was elsewhere—still watching, still seeking.For what?Moss screamed.We’re not meant to be here! We’re meant to go—
Somewhere that it made his whole soul shiver to think about.
The kraken twitched. Tentacles like steel hawsers churned the water. Then it was moving, its huge form straight as an arrow shooting to the mouth of the river and the ocean beyond.
The ocean’s song was so beautiful and so welcoming that Moss wanted to cry.
Then—south. They were going south. Moss let himself feel a shudder of relief. South was right. South was where they were meant to go. Down to the ice and the darkness and a lifetime of waiting for a call he hoped would never come.
That was his future. Locked away in the lightless depths—or a murderer a hundred times over.
Moss shivered, and this time, the shivering didn’t stop.
He was aware of the kraken’s mind, the slow, alien movement of its thoughts. He couldn’t guess what those thoughts were. He didn’t want to. For now, he was still him. Even without his octopus, even without the life he’d built for himself—he was still Moss. If he reached too closely for the kraken’s mind, tried to understand it, how long would he last before all that was left of him disappeared in its monstrous depths?
The taste of the ocean changed. The water became colder, darker. Pressure built as the kraken followed currents into the depths, and Moss couldn’t bear to listen to the ocean’s song anymore.
He pulled himself in, putting up walls between himself and the kraken until he couldn’t taste the ocean or hear its bittersweet music.
He would never see his parents again. What had he said to them the last time they’d called? Some bullshit about the new restaurant and how long it would last before his octopus wanted to find somewhere new again. Ah, fuck, his octopus. How was he meant to keep himself whole if he didn’t have the inner animal who’d made him who he was?
Would he ever see Pania and Ataahua again?
They would live their entire lives without him. Do things that were forever forbidden to him. Find their fated mates. Have children. Their lives would go on, and if they ever overlapped with his again, he would be… something else.
His heart gave an extra lurch at the thought that he would never find his fated mate. He’d never given it much thought before. All his focus had been on his career, and his career had rewarded that focus.
Was that really the reason? Or had some part of him—not the part of him that had been convinced it would never happen to him, not the part that flinched from the thought of his family’s oath like a burning brand—had some secret, curled-away corner of his mind realized that if hedidtake on the burden of being the next kraken, then having found his fated mate would only make it worse?
He was already losing so much—but those losses only hurt him. If he found his mate, the one person in all the world whose soul was made to intertwine with his own, and had to lose her to fulfil his duty?
Even the thought of it hurt too much to bear.
Small blessings, he thought.
And then the kraken found what it had been seeking.
Its whole body jerked with electric excitement. Forgetting his fears of losing himself, Moss reached for the kraken’s senses.
They were on the surface. All around, the ocean was battered by a storm—and above them, the tiny blinking lights of a plane, barely visible through the rain and clouds.
Who the hell would fly in weather like this?
The kraken stared up at the plane. Its vision was strange, its eyes not built for the lack of pressure at the surface, but it pinned its gaze on the plane like an eagle sighting its prey.
No,Moss thought, terror gripping him.No. You can’t. No one called us—this isn’t our duty! This isn’t what we’re here for!
This was why the kraken was locked away. It only wanted to destroy. And now there was nothing Moss could do as it gazed up at the plane, rigid with victory.
