Hunter of the Tide Read online

  “Aymee might,” Melaina said.

  Randall’s frown deepened. He regarded the prixxir in silence for a long while.

  Perhaps it was wrong for Rhea to pressure him into accepting the responsibility, but what did she — or any kraken, for that matter — know about caring for an animal? The only sea creatures kraken interacted with were prey. The only other options were to return the prixxir to the sea, where it might perish, or kill it and use it for food.

  But after the tumultuous emotions of the last few hours, Rhea couldn’t bear the look of disappointment Melaina would wear if the creature died. Was it selfish of Rhea to burden Randall with her daughter’s happiness?

  Rhea straightened and inhaled deeply. “Please.” The word felt strange as it left her lips; female kraken didn’t ask, and they most certainly didn’t beg.

  Melaina echoed her mother.

  Running a hand over his stubbly cheeks, Randall sighed. “All right. I’ll figure something out. But I can’t promise anything.”

  Melaina’s face brightened with a huge smile.

  “And I have a condition,” he continued.

  Rhea frowned and furrowed her brow. “What is this condition?”

  “Melaina has to help take care of it.”

  “Yes!” Melaina exclaimed, her tentacles writhing on the floor. “I will!”

  Randall lifted his eyes to Rhea in question.

  Rhea nodded once.

  “Good. Now, my father told me when I was little that you shouldn’t name animals, because they were bound to…well, move on. But my sister named them anyway. I think you should give him a name. Having something that belongs to him will help him be strong.”

  Melaina stared down at the prixxir. The creature stared back up, shifting its attention between Randall and the youngling. Opening its mouth, it released a high-pitched call and attempted to leap out of the container; it fell back into the water with a splash.

  “Ikaros,” Melaina said.

  “Come.” Rhea placed a hand on Melaina’s shoulder. “Randall will tend to it, and we will visit soon.”

  “Ikaros, Mother, not it.”

  Rhea raised a brow.

  Melaina offered Randall a smile. “Thank you.”

  Despite thanking Dracchus earlier, Rhea’s instinct was to tell her daughter never to thank a male; it was a male’s duty to provide. But she held it in. Things were changing. The kraken were changing. And Randall wasn’t a kraken, anyway. Rhea had been learning from her human friends, Macy and Aymee, and they frequently expressed appreciation to their males. Perhaps it was a good thing to do, from time to time.

  “Hopefully I’ll earn that thanks.” Randall’s smile, despite his strange human teeth, was the most charming that Rhea had ever seen. She stared at his lips and wondered what it would feel like to have them pressed against hers.

  Chapter 2

  All was quiet as Randall walked through the empty corridors save for his own footsteps, the gentle sloshing of water in the container, and the occasional whine from the prixxir within. The creature’s calls were high-pitched, chirruping, and heart-wrenching. Though some part of Randall thought it was ridiculous to empathize with an animal — his father would’ve called him a damned fool — he couldn’t help but think he knew how Ikaros felt.

  As though things aren’t grim enough, now I’m comparing myself to a baby sea-lizard.

  He grinned. Fortunately, no one was around to see it; he worried it was the expression of a desperate man losing touch with reality. The thought shouldn’t have amused him that much.

  He took a meandering route through the Facility; his mind wandered often lately, and he lost himself in thought as he went to check the spots Aymee frequented when she wasn’t in her room — the mess hall, the infirmary, the chamber she and Arkon had cleared to use for painting.

  The thought of Aymee and Arkon gave him pause. Randall had wanted Aymee from the first moment he’d seen her — she was beautiful, yes, but she was also passionate, bold, and intelligent. If circumstances had been different for them both, he liked to think he would’ve had a chance. They’d enjoyed one another’s company on the few occasions during which they’d been able to relax. But she’d fallen for Arkon.

  That had hurt a lot more than Randall had expected it would.

  He searched for that bitterness, for the ache of rejection, for the constriction in his chest, but he could not find them anymore. He’d seen Aymee and Arkon together often in the weeks he’d spent here in the Facility, and it had stung every time. That sting had lessened a little with each passing day.

  Somehow, Rhea had chased the last of that feeling away. She’d been kind — if sometimes overbearing — during Randall’s time here, and she made little effort to hide her interest in him. While he’d recovered in the infirmary, it’d been Rhea who was there each time he woke, Rhea who’d often tended to him. Now, she’d stood up for him to other kraken without hesitation.

  And said I’m under her protection…

  The first time he’d seen her — while he was in extreme pain and on the verge of exhaustion — he hadn’t known what to think. The kraken had been so new to him, then, so alien, and the females were hairless and bare, their breasts on full display. But he’d grown more accustomed to their appearances since, and he couldn’t deny Rhea’s exotic beauty and effortless grace. Her features were deceptively delicate, belying her impressive physical strength, and her gray skin was so soft to the touch.

  His curiosity felt dangerous; was it right for him to be attracted to her? Was it natural?

  Randall had spent his life hunting dangerous creatures, and that’s what the kraken were supposed to have been — prey. More threatening than anything else he’d hunted, perhaps, but wild beasts all the same. Something that needed to be killed to protect human life. Shaking that manner of thinking had proven difficult; it had been ingrained in him since childhood.

  Pushing away those thoughts, he shifted his attention to his surroundings, stopping to lean into Aymee’s painting room. She wasn’t there, so he continued walking.

  In some ways, the Facility reminded Randall of home. Like Fort Culver, this place had been constructed with clean, impersonal aesthetics favoring practicality and functionality. Despite centuries of inhabitation by the kraken, it was clear that everything in the Facility had had its place, and that everything had been arranged in a fashion that favored organization. It’d come as little surprise when he was told this place — like Fort Culver — had been utilized by military personnel.

  But Fort Culver wasn’t sixty-five meters below the surface of the ocean, nor was it inhabited by human-animal hybrids.

  Pausing in the doorway of the mess hall — called simply the Mess by the kraken — he glanced inside. The large room, which had undoubtedly been utilized as a dining area long ago, was empty, and the kitchen beyond was dark.

  As he walked toward the infirmary, he glanced down at Ikaros. The prixxir stared up at him with those wide, dark eyes, looking so small, so helpless.

  “Damnit,” he muttered.

  His sister, Elle, would’ve laughed if he told her he saw his feelings reflected in the gaze of an animal, but there wouldn’t have been judgment in her laughter. This was what she’d so often talked about. This was the sort of connection she’d made with so many of Halora’s creatures.

  He’d never thought less of her for it, though their father had little patience for what he called her bleeding heart. She could outpace most other rangers, was the best shot in the fort and everywhere else they’d gone, and maintained her cool better than anyone Randall knew, but she had always been too soft in Commander Nicholas Laster’s eyes.

  Too much like their mother.

  Randall shook those thoughts away as he peeked into the infirmary; the lights were dimmed, and all was quiet within. He turned toward the cabins — once the quarters of the Facility’s crew, now home to the few humans who lived here — and resumed his walk.

  The prixxir chirruped and po
ked the tip of its snout out of the water, little nostrils flaring.

  Sighing, Randall shook his head. Maybe this was a belated acknowledgment of his days as a ranger being over, a subconscious effort to move on.

  The betrayal he’d suffered at the hands of his fellow rangers should’ve been the best indication. Men he’d known for his entire life, who he’d hunted with since he was old enough to lift a firearm, had attempted to relieve Randall from command through use of deadly force. He’d always butted heads with Cyrus Taylor, who’d been a close friend of Randall’s father, but how had those disagreements in method escalated into attempted murder?

  The main directive of the rangers had been simple — protect the colonists from whatever came. Had that always meant something inhuman was the enemy? Had it always meant destroying things before understanding them?

  Had Randall always been so damned naïve?

  By the time Randall reached Aymee and Arkon’s den, his left shoulder ached. He’d taken a stray bullet there when he’d first confronted the couple on the beach, two months ago, when Cyrus attacked Aymee and the weapon in her hand accidentally discharged. The bastard might as well have shot Randall twice himself.

  He shifted the container to his right arm. The prixxir wobbled in the sloshing water and made another of its little sounds as Randall stepped in front of the door, which was cracked open about ten centimeters, and knocked on the doorframe.

  Cloth rustled inside, followed by a shriek of laughter and footsteps. The door slid open to reveal Aymee. She wore a broad grin, her curly hair wild around her shoulders.

  “Randall! Hi!” Aymee’s happiness shone in her brown eyes.

  Arkon slipped a tentacle around Aymee’s waist and settled a hand on her shoulder as he came up behind her. He regarded Randall with narrowed eyes. Though he was leaner than most of the male kraken Randall had seen, he still towered over most humans; he had to be at least two and a half meters long from the top of his head to the tips of his tentacles. With pointed teeth and wicked claws thrown in for good measure, Arkon looked every bit an apex predator.

  Randall couldn’t fault the kraken for his jealousy or possessiveness — whatever tension existed between he and Arkon was warranted. Their history, however brief, hadn’t exactly been conducive to building trust and friendship.

  “Hi, Aymee. I don’t want to bother you, but I was hoping you could help me with something,” Randall said.

  “You’re not bothering me.” She glanced at Arkon — whose expression made it clear he was bothered — and gave his tentacle a pat. “Let me talk to Randall, and then we can get back to our game.”

  A bit of the stiffness eased from Arkon’s posture. He brushed his thumb along Aymee’s neck with a simple intimacy that would’ve set a jealous fire in Randall’s gut only a month ago.

  “I will be waiting, quite eagerly,” Arkon said. He leaned his head down and kissed Aymee’s cheek, lips lingering for several seconds, before moving back into the room.

  “You two playing some Blind Man’s Bounty?” Randall asked.

  Cheeks reddening, Aymee cleared her throat, but her smile didn’t fade. “Something like that. So, what can I help you with? Is it your shoulder?”

  Randall moved aside as she stepped into the hallway. “No, shoulder’s fine as long as I don’t overwork it.” He took the container in both hands and held it up. “I know you’re not an animal doctor, but I was hoping you might be able to help me tend to this critter. His name’s Ikaros.”

  Aymee’s brows rose. “A prixxir? Where did you get it?” She reached into the container and gently rubbed Ikaros’s snout with the tip of a finger. Ikaros leaned into the attention, closing his eyes.

  Randall smiled. He couldn’t deny that the little prixxir was cute. “Melaina found it, and I graciously volunteered to take care of it.”

  “So, Rhea told you to, huh?” Aymee glanced up at him, smirking.

  “Actually, she asked me to do it. Guess I’m the animal expert around these parts.” He lifted a leg to brace the bottom of the container on his thigh and reached into the water, carefully slipping a hand under Ikaros’s belly. He lifted the prixxir out of the red-tinted water. “Something tried to make a meal of him. Is there anything we can do?”

  Aymee leaned closer and examined the puncture marks. “Let’s take him to the infirmary. I can run a scan to see how serious the damage is and get him patched up. Just give me a sec to tell Arkon.”

  Randall settled Ikaros into the water as Aymee slipped back into her room. Before he removed his hand, Ikaros caught it with his forepaws and clamped his teeth around one of Randall’s fingers with surprising gentleness. The prixxir pulled his head back, ran his rough tongue over Randall’s skin a few times, and finally released him.

  “Let’s go get this little guy checked out,” Aymee said when she reemerged.

  They walked to the infirmary together. It was the most familiar room in the building for Randall, who’d spent his first two weeks in the Facility laid up in one of these beds, receiving daily shots filled with chemicals he couldn’t name to speed along his recovery. Being bedridden for all that time had taken a toll on his body, but the hardest part had been watching Arkon recover from more severe wounds in a matter of days.

  Aymee walked to the closest bed and placed a folded blanket atop the sheet. “Go ahead and lay him down,” she said as she swung the overhead scanner into place.

  Randall removed Ikaros from the water. The prixxir clamped onto Randall’s hand, trembling in the open air, and didn’t let go once he was down.

  “Will my hand be in the way?” he asked.

  “Just shift it to the side.” She activated the scanner. “Okay, little guy, let’s see what’s going on.”

  The scanner projected numerous thin beams of light onto Randall’s hand and the prixxir within his gentle grasp, revealing intricate webs of blood vessels beneath skin and scale.

  As Aymee adjusted the scanner, it displayed more of the underlying anatomy. The damage to the muscles of the prixxir’s hindquarters was apparent, but the nearby bones looked undamaged.

  Ikaros made a whining sound and dug his claws into Randall’s skin.

  Randall shifted his finger to pet the underside of Ikaros’s jaw. The prixxir angled his head to close his mouth over Randall’s fingertip again, gnawing softly. Was he doing that to comfort himself?

  Aymee switched off the scanner and pushed it away. Leaning down, she ran a hand along his scaled back. “Nothing serious. I can clean and seal the wounds, and he’ll be good as new in no time.”

  “Will it hurt him?”

  “I can apply an anesthetic around the wounds to numb the surrounding area. That should help. I don’t want to risk injecting him in case he has an adverse reaction.”

  “All right. Let’s do it.”

  Randall held the prixxir in place as Aymee worked. Ikaros clenched his jaw, his little claws and teeth biting into Randall’s skin. Randall got the sense that, despite being wounded and frightened, the prixxir was trying to keep from doing him harm.

  After she’d sealed the wounds, Aymee wrapped a bandage around the newly healed skin and looked at Randall. “Try to keep him from scratching or biting the area for a day or two to make sure he doesn’t open those back up.”

  “I’ll do what I can.” Randall lifted Ikaros off the bed and gently pried his hand out of the prixxir’s hold. Tiny beads of blood welled where his skin had been broken.

  “We should probably get those cleaned up, too.”

  “It’s nothing to fuss over, Aymee.”

  “I’m not fussing. However small, those were made by a wild animal. Do you really want to chance an infection?” Aymee’s expression communicated her stance clearly — argue with me at your own risk.

  Ikaros settled himself along Randall’s forearm, leaning his chin into Randall’s gently rubbing fingers.

  Randall placed his free hand atop Aymee’s rolling cart.

  “How are you doing, Randall?” she a
sked as she disinfected the little punctures.

  “I’m alive,” he replied, and then hesitated. She didn’t need to be burdened by his troubles, but everything felt so complicated, so confusing. His life spent on the hunt hadn’t been easy, but at least it had been straightforward. This was all new territory for him. “I guess I feel…lost, though. Trapped. And part of me feels like I should’ve died a couple times over by now.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t,” she said, setting the disinfectant aside. “I know this isn’t what you planned for, or what you wanted, but think of it as a new start. You’ve earned the trust of some of the kraken, and that goes a long way. You have a place here, Randall, you just need to figure out what you want it to be.”

  “Easier said than done, I guess. How did you deal with giving everything up? How’d you just leave your old life and accept this one?”

  “Because I have hope.” Aymee stared at Ikaros silently for a moment. “It might be wishful thinking, but I hope, someday, kraken and humans will come together peacefully. I’d like to go back home. I enjoy my time here, but I miss the sun, I miss land, and most of all, I miss my family. I think I put a lot of stress on my father, too. He’s the only doctor in The Watch, and it’s all on his shoulders now that I’m gone.” She met Randall’s gaze. “But if I have to choose, I’ll always pick Arkon. Does that make me selfish?”

  The question was harder to answer than Randall might’ve thought. Most everyone he’d talked to in The Watch had said Aymee was a kind woman, always willing to help in whatever way she could. What did it mean that she’d chosen Arkon over everyone and everything she’d known? What was it like to have someone so devoted that they’d give up everything for you?

  “If it does, it’s the best reason for selfishness I can think of,” he finally replied.

  “That’s good to hear,” Aymee said with a smile. “I better get back to Arkon.” She petted Ikaros before placing her hand over Randall’s. “It might not feel like it, but you’re not alone here, Randall.”