“Why put the kraken within reach?” Keeley interjected. “If the Soul-Eater can steal other people’s inner animals, the last thing you’d want is for it to control something as powerful as the kraken.”
He felt as though he were stripping himself bare in front of them. Telling Carol—that was one thing. But the others?
This is their future,he reminded himself.Their lives at stake. Their families. Their world.
We’ve kept the truth a secret for too long.
“You’ve seen the kraken’s nightmare tentacles. How they’re real and unreal at the same time, made of magic. The Soul-Eaterneeds physical touch to take a shifter’s animal soul. The kraken is the only shifter with the power to hold him off without risking itself.”
Carol looked worried, as though hearing the explanation again only raised more questions.
“Why keep it trapped? Can’t it be killed?” Chloe demanded. Everyone stared at her. She raised her hands, eyes flickering, and Moss felt a sudden urge to look elsewhere.
“I’m just saying! No need to look at me like I suggested we fly over there and gut him personally. And, uh, not to volunteer anyone, but if Moss here is the only one who can actually do any damage to the guy…”
Moss cut in. “The Soul-Eater is eternal. If he dies, he’ll reincarnate in another body. A thousand years ago that meant he could wipe out shifters over half a continent before he was stopped. But once you found him, you found him. Now? When anyone can fly around the world in a matter of hours? Losing track of him could be the end of us.”
“Or you find the reincarnated child again before his power emerges and imprison a kid.”
A chill went down Moss’s spine at Carol’s words. “Or that.”
Except he’d never thought of it that way before.
Lance sighed. “Anyone else feel like we’ve stumbled into an old fairy tale?”
“I’ve felt like that since the moment Maggie hatched.” Keeley gave him a gentle smile. “Remember, even you ‘normal’ shifters are not exactly business as usual to those of us who grew up human.”
“Wherever these bird shifters popped up from, it sounds like they’re the key to everything happening here,” Mathis mused. “This keeps happening, doesn’t it? You came looking for me and the others that Gerald Harper locked up—and you found a dragon. We all go on a trip to take the dragon home—andcome across metal bird shifters and a kraken. Who knows what’s waiting for us if we go looking for the birds now?”
“At least we know about them,” Chloe chirped. “Silver lining to them attacking the plane. Sure, Carol and Maggie and the eggs went flying, and I thought I’d finally let my mate out of my sight only for him to almost explode in a crashing plane—but we know what we’re up against.”
“We have one of them locked up in the basement,” Carol said quietly. Moss shot her a sharp look, his instincts wary.
“And you’re all alive,” Chloe went on. “Nobody died. It could have been worse. We all could have done with a bit less trauma, but… it could have been worse.”
Mathis put his arm around her. She sank into him as though it had been taking all her strength to hold herself upright away from him, and being in his arms was as natural as letting gravity hold her to the earth.
The way true mates should be.
The way he and Carol would be, if he wasn’t bound by fate to abandon her.
Or worse. To keep her.
“That assumes theyonlyattacked us.” Lance’s voice was grim, and it dragged Moss from his own dark thoughts. “We know they exist now. We don’t know how many of them there are or where their base is. Maggie might not have been the only target that night.”
The meeting went on for hours. Lance and his crew were professionals, but the panic sizzling under the surface made it clear they knew they might be out of their depths.
They all were.
At last they came to a decision. They would continue to Antarctica, taking precautions against the Stymphalian threat.
Him. He was the precaution.
Everyone was going to get what they wanted. Maggie would be back with her uncle. Moss would take the kraken and all the danger it posed to Antarctica. They would deal with the Stymphalian birds and the Soul-Eater. The kraken’s great duty would finally be fulfilled. And Carol…
The one thing he wanted after all of that was to talk to Carol alone, so of course as soon as he was showered and dressed in clean clothes, he was corralled by his cousins.
Ataahua wasted no time grabbing him by his upper arms and shaking him. Pania whacked her on the shoulder until she let him go, but that just gave her the freedom to storm around the room, waving her arms.
