His eyes softened, and the care in them cut like a knife.
“You’re still caught in your shift. You didn’t feel safe enough to find your human form again on the island, and you haven’t here. And instead of helping you, or waiting until you found your equilibrium again on your own, I kept pushing. Just another asshole taking advantage.”
You didn’t push anything!she wanted to scream.Except the things I wanted you to push! Can’t you see that?
No. Of course he didn’t. He only saw the teeth, and the eyes. The same things everyone else saw.
“You didn’t—” The words stuck, because of course they did. They always stuck when it was important. “I—I can’t—”
Agony opened up like a raw wound inside her where she thought there had only been old scars.
Thoughts clashed together, breaking into shattered pieces before she could turn them into sentences. What did she do wrong? Why hadn’t she told him everything? Why did he have to say anything now? Had she bitten him?
“Did I bite you?”
No. No, she didnotwant to have just said that—
“No.” His goddamn perfect crooked smile only made the sadness in his eyes more painful. “But if I’d behaved the way I should, you wouldn’t have had to worry about that, would you?”
No, no, that wasn’t what she meant. Babbling wouldn’t help her fix this.
She reached for him mentally, scouring the anguish and fear from her thoughts so they wouldn’t hide the truth. She’d lied to him. This was her fault. He hadn’t done anything wrong.
*You don’t understand, it’s not you, it’s—*
The connection between their minds shone like a riptide under moonlight. And there it was: the mate bond. It had to be. A ribbon of deceptive stillness between the waves. One she would gladly let drag her away.
And then Moss shut his mind to her. Gently, as though that made it hurt any less.
The silver thread flickered.
“I should have left already,” he said, his gaze all rueful regret. “Not stayed and made everything worse.”
A sinking feeling took hold of her. “I thought we already talked about this. The plan—with Lance and the others—we’re goingtogether.”
His eyebrows did their furrowed-question thing, and her heart sank. “I can’t stay, Carol. Being here even one night… it’s just putting off the inevitable.”
Had she felt still and calm before? Her mind flickered like a thousand tiny fish fleeing a school of sharks, darting senselessly in all directions. “This is about waiting for the dragons’ call, isn’t it? Standing guard.”
“It is.”
“But why? If the kraken can drag us halfway across the ocean, why does it need to lie in wait for the shadow dragons’ call? Why not live your life up here—”With me,she wanted to say, but her throat locked tight on the words.
“Because the kraken is too dangerous to be allowed out in the world. You know what it was, before the Weaver bound it to my family? A ship-killer. A murderer. It killed thousands of people.”
Her stomach lurched. “But you’re in control of the kraken now.”
“I’m only as in control as it lets me be. And I suspect the only reason it thought I wasstrongin the first place is that it was exhausted by its escape. And…” He winced. “I’m not sure how much longer the ‘me’ that’s resisting it will beme.”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged, too casually, and didn’t meet her eyes. “That’s what happens when we get our inner animals, right? They become a part of us. Affect how we see the world.”
“I never felt like that.” Her voice cracked. Was this another way that she was broken?
But if Moss thought the kraken was taking over his mind…
“I never noticed it, until I lost my octopus. I lost a part of myself then, too. What I am now isn’t what I was. And the longer the kraken’s inside me, even if it’s pretending to behave itself…”
