“The door will be open for you,” he says.“But the clock has started, Lilith.Please.Don’t wait until the last hour to come back to me.”
I don’t answer.I can’t.Shoving my feet into my shoes, I bolt for the door, my heart screaming the only thing it knows.
Home.I just want to go home.
Chapter Nine
Theron
The click of the door is the loudest sound I’ve heard in three centuries.
It’s a small, final sound that echoes through the pocket realm, vibrating against the walls until the silence rushes back in to fill the void.The air, which only moments ago had been thick with the scent of salt, heat, and Lilith’s skin, suddenly feels stagnant.It’s too thin.It’s like the air of an ancient tomb.
I stand frozen in the center of the room, my humanoid form flickering, unable to hold its shape under the pressure of the roar building in my chest.My tentacles lash out instinctively in a violent reaction to the sudden vacuum where she used to be.One of them sweeps across the dresser, sending the candles flying around the room.They flicker out before they even hit the floor, leaving trails of gray smoke that look like dying ghosts.
I shouldn’t have told her.
The thought is a lie, a coward’s thought, and I know it.If I hadn’t told her, I would have been a thief.I would have stolen her soul while she was blinded by pleasure, siphoning away her humanity until there was nothing left for her to go back to.I’ve lived a long time, and I’ve done many things, but I would never be a parasite to the one female human who gave my existence a reason.
But seeing the way she looked at me with frantic human fear felt like being gutted.She looked at me like I was offering her a cage instead of a life.
I pace the room, my heavy limbs dragging across the floor.I can feel her moving away.Every step she takes back toward the street, further away from this pocket realm, feels like a barbed hook being pulled through my hearts.
“She won’t come back,” I growl.It’s a low, guttural rasp that sounds more like the crushing of stones than a voice.
I want to go after her.The predator in me is screaming to tear through the veil, to appear in the middle of her street and wrap myself around her until she forgets there was ever a world without me.I want to carry her back here, lock the door, and hold her captive in the dark until the seventy-two hours are up and the choice is made for her.If she were a prisoner, she would eventually adapt.
But I know the truth about my kind.A kraken’s mate must be a willing anchor.If she stays because she is forced, her soul will wither.The bond will turn toxic, into a black rot that would eventually poison both of us.She would become a shell of her former self, and I would become a monster in truth, not just in form.
I sink onto the edge of the bed, the dark sheets still damp and smelling of her—that sweet, floral perfume mixed with the salty musk of my essence.Pressing my face into the pillow where her purple hair was splayed out only minutes ago.I inhale deeply, trying to anchor myself to the fading scent.
She thinks it’s a choice between two worlds.She thinks she has to choose between the life she built and me, the creature that haunts her dreams.
She doesn’t understand that she is the bridge.And she didn’t give me the opportunity to explain.If she accepts the final bond—the true ritual of the Anchor—she doesn’t have to lose anything.My energy will stabilize her, allowing her to walk in the sun without fading, and her presence will allow me to follow her.She would be the queen of my deep, and I would be the guardian of her world.We could exist in the spaces between, powerful and inseparable.Our home would be built in a pocket realm.
But I can’t explain that to her while she’s drowning in panic.She has to realize that her normal life is a shallow pool compared to the ocean I’m offering her.She has to feel the hunger I’ve felt for years.She has to realize that the human world is now the place that is alien to her.
I growl again.My tentacles coil tightly around the bedposts, and the wood groans under the pressure.I can’t just sit here.I can’t be patient.Not anymore.
I focus my senses, pushing my consciousness through the veil, searching for that thrumming pulse of her soul.I find it.It’s faint, flickering like a candle in a gale, already being muffled by the mundane noises of the human world.I feel her heart racing.I feel her confusion, her grief, and that sharp, lingering ache of a body that has been thoroughly claimed and then abandoned.
She’s back in her apartment.I can feel the coldness of her walls, the artificiality of her lights.It’s a sterile environment for someone who now carries the spark of the Veil in her veins.
“Forty-eight hours,” I whisper.
I’ll give her forty-eight hours to mourn her old life.To see that her coffee tastes like ash and the people around her feel like cardboard cutouts.I’ll give her time to realize that she isn’t Lilith the toy designer anymore.She is the mate of a King of the Deep.
But if she doesn’t return by the second night, I will stop being a gentleman.I will stop being a brooding observer.If she tries to let that clock run out, I will cross the veil and remind her that no amount of human logic can silence the call of the bond between mates.I will drag her back if I have to, and I will spend eternity making her glad I did.But even as the thought forms, I know it’s a lie I tell myself.If I take her choice away, I lose her forever.
I stand up, my form shifting, expanding, until I am more kraken than man.
“You’re mine, Lilith,” I roar, the sound rippling through the pocket realm and out into the void.“You’ve been mine since the first time you dreamt of me.I will not let you go back to sleep.”
I move toward the window.I can wait.I have waited for centuries.What are two more days?
But even as I tell myself this, my tentacles twitch with the memory of her skin.The hunger is a physical weight, a craving that makes my very bones ache.I am a creature of the deep, and I have found my anchor.I will not let the tide take her away.
I settle into the shadows of the room.I will watch.I will wait.And if she doesn’t come back to me, I will tear the world apart to find her.
