“You disappear! You don’t contact us for days! And when youdo, suddenly the secret that our family has spentliteral generationskeeping safe is—poof! Tell everyone! Why not? And you’re—you’rehere.”
The mingled relief and dread in her voice told him what she’d expected. What he’d failed to do.
“I thought we’d seen the end of you, back in New York.” Ataahua’s voice cracked. “I thought that was it.”
“I did, too.”
“What happens now?” Pania was standing with her back against the door, arms folded. “When you sent your message, we thought you’d go to the deep before rescue arrived for Carol and the dragonlings.”
The deep. The end of the line, in all his nightmares.
“Did you hear the call? Is that why you’re still here?” Ataahua’s lips were pale.
“No.”
“Then…?” They both stared at him, matching expressions on their faces.
They couldn’t have heard. Carol had told her team, but the gossip hadn’t reached his cousins yet. That was a first.
“Carol is my fated mate.”
Pania’s gaze turned utterly blank. Ataahua whirled around, saw he wasn’t joking, and threw herself face-first onto the bed, where she screamed into the pillow.
“That’s impossible,” Pania said.
Ataahua screamed more.
“The kraken doesn’t have a fated mate.”
“So we’ve always been told.” Moss’s own voice was as carefully blank as Pania’s face.
Why?The question sounded like one of Carol’s, sharp and inquisitive and sliding in edgeways at the corner of his vision. She was beginning to rub off on him. Why not until now? Why not until he was around the only other people who’d grown up with the specter of this fate hanging over them? Did he want their support?
Or did he want them to close their hearts and tell him to close his, too, and that he knew where his duty lay?
“You can’t take her with you.”
He flinched. “I’d never do that.”
“Then—what are you going to do?” Ataahua’s face twisted as she looked up from the bed. “She’s your soulmate! You can’tleaveher. But you can’t take her to—that place. God! It’s bad enough one of us has to go, let alone anyone else!”
“The kraken has neverhada mate. But—whoever it chooses has always gone to the deep at once. So there was never a chance for them to find their mate, if they did… if they were meant to have one.” Pania’s voice was as pale and hollow as her expression. “No mate. No direct line of descent. And everyone else in the family makes sure to have a couple of kids so thatwhen one of us gets tapped on the shoulder, there’s always someone left to pad out the next generation.”
While the kraken waited, chained in the deep, for the call that would fulfil its duty. The call that never came.
“Moss.” Pania’s voice cracked. “What if—”
She couldn’t make herself say it. Her throat bobbed as the words stuck in her throat.
Ataahua whispered, “What are you going to do?”
He knew what he should do. The rules were clear. The moment he’d become the latest incarnation of the kraken, he should have taken himself off to the deep and ensured he could never harm anyone.
Anyone he wasn’t meant to harm, that was.
These last few days could be argued away as necessary delays. The kraken and the shadow dragons’ histories were intertwined; looking after little Maggie, ensuring she and the two unhatched eggs made it safely back to their protectors, could be considered part of his duty.
And now…
