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My hand found a missing section, and then to one side, another, and another. Wide enough to slip through it to the other side, though I scratched my sides on the remaining bars. Kellin swam to the surface alongside me as I took my first breath in the open sea. “Thank you,” I murmured and wrapped my arm around his smooth, warm neck.

Even with Goran’s bond giving me some energy, I’d felt weaker by the day, the ache in my chest more like an invisible wound that bled my strength faster by the hour. Only when I was touching the ocean or making love to Goran did it get better.

Lachlan’s bite pulsed slightly as I wrapped my arm more tightly around his brother and allowed him to pull me. “Where are we going?” He kept swimming to the north, and I knew. I could feel him in the new claiming mark on my wrist.

Goran was pacing on the beach and waded out to meet us. “Kellin, well met,” he said, pulling me to my feet. “Thank you for bringing her to us. Ma bohinya…” He stumbled, and I wondered if my weakness was affecting him, too.

It only took a glance to know. He was trembling slightly, his expression grim in the faint moonlight. “I shouldn’t have claimed you,” I murmured as he held me up. “I’m making you weaker.”

“Never say that,” he replied, then took my mouth in a kiss that was almost savage. “If you drained every drop of my strength, I wouldn’t care.”

“If I could give you mine, I would,” Kellin murmured. Goran set me down, and I turned to face the selkie. He’d shifted and handed me his pelt. His dark skin had an unusual pallor, and his eyes were flat. He was almost immortal, but he looked like he was about to pass out.

“You’ve done too much, Kellin,” I said, taking the pelt and tying it around my waist. “What do you need? Food? Rest?”

“Same thing all your mates do,” Goran muttered, as he began to wade back to shore. My cheeks heated until he finished, “For you to be safely away from this cursed island and that arserag of a god.” He turned his head and winked. “What did you think I was going to say?”

I lifted my hand in a rude gesture, and he and Kellin both laughed.

“Are you hungry?” I asked, suddenly awkward. The moonlight shimmered over every lean, muscular line of my selkie’s body, and my fingers itched to trace them. Our nights at Stellina’s home in Starlak seemed like they’d been years ago. I’d almost forgotten how beautiful he was naked.

I could never forget how much time he’d taken bringing me over and over again to my peak, and how he’d used those muscles, that mouth, and those hands to court me.

“Your mouth is open, little queen.” One of his fingers tapped my chin, and I snapped my jaw shut. “I will admit that it pleases me to have you look at me with such…” His voice trailed off as I quit arguing with my hands and let them rise to touch him.

“Lust, that’s the word,” Goran called back over his shoulder. “Our mate’s a lusty little thing. I’m worn to the bone after only one proper mating.”

“You are mated?” My selkie kept his face still, but a thread of hurt laced the word. I held up my wrist, the moonlight illuminating the new bite mark, not sure what to say. “I wish you both a lifetime of happiness,” he said after a moment, a sad smile creasing his lips. “He is a worthy mate and will keep you safe.”

“Hear that, ma bohinya?” Goran interrupted. “I’m worthy. You’re going to have to stop calling me an idiot.”

“I didn’t say you were an intelligent mate,” Kellin shot back, forced humor in his tone.

“No, that’s you,” I said softly.

Before I could finish my thought, Kellin moved past me toward the beach, stopping ankle deep in the surf. He spoke over his shoulder, his gaze not meeting mine. “I weakened the bars the first night, then swam back to tell Lachlan and Dustin the plan. I couldn’t make it back to the compound last night, so I let the current take me here. Goran waved me down and fed me well. The last bars were easy to saw through with the shard this evening.”

I waded to his side, though he still didn’t look at me. We both watched Goran as he fought his way up to the raft building area and picked up a conch shell, taking a long drink of what I assumed was fresh water. “Lachlan and Dustin are well?”

His smile softened. “Yes. They’ll be at the gate with the canoes, as planned. Apparently, Dustin has already written a dozen poems for a song cycle he’s calling ‘The Redemption of the Starlakian Nation: Bringing the Lost Omegas Home to the Undeserving Warriors.’ Or something like that.”

“A dozen poems already?” I stifled a laugh.

“He plans to write three hundred and twenty-four, one for every year since the old Chieftains of the Eastern Reaches left the Omegas imprisoned for the Picts to steal away. He’s got a good heart, that one. And a diet of fish seems to be beneficial. He’s sprouted up another two inches in the past week.”

“Ah, young Alphas,” Goran mused by the shore. “I could do with a piece of cooked fish myself.”

“Can’t trust fire,” Kellin warned, but when I told him about Mirrim’s prayer, he nodded. “We can try it if we need it. But it’s not worth the risk.”

True. I bundled Kellin’s pelt around my shoulders, feeling a chill for the first time in days. Goran waded back into the water, gathering me up and staring into my eyes before raking an assessing gaze over my body. His breath smelled slightly of cofi, and I made a note to gather some more before I slipped back into the Omega longhouse.

“You’re getting weaker, ma bohinya.”

“I’m tied to the one who watches,” I reminded him, tilting my neck to show the burn. They both growled in anger. “But Lusca’s bond is the real problem.” I gestured to the water at my feet. “A new development. I have to stay at least ankle deep or risk fainting. The farther I go from the sea, the more it hurts.” My chest felt as if someone were stabbing a fork into it with every breath when I was on land, and sometimes even in the water. The only good thing was that I could tell Lusca was still alive at the other end of the pain.

“You need your kraken mate,” Kellin said behind me. “Lachlan said he could feel you getting weaker. Hiding how it affected you.” Goran was still holding me, but suddenly, Kellin’s hands were on my shoulders, and he nuzzled my neck. “Are you hiding your pain, little queen?”

“She always does, Prince Kellin,” Goran replied when I didn’t. “What she needs is more of her mates to relieve her of it. Maybe more than one at a time.”