Hunter of the Tide Read online

  “What about me?”

  “Are you happy?”

  Rhea turned toward the bed, tracing her daughter’s delicate features with her gaze. She smiled. “I am.”

  Before the humans had come, Rhea’s existence had been defined by her daughter — keeping Melaina fed, protecting her from danger, showing her what it meant to be a kraken female, and doing whatever she could think of to discourage the youngling’s wanderlust and overwhelming curiosity. But the humans’ new perspectives had shown Rhea there could be more. There was room for herself and her daughter to find happiness, even if it meant relinquishing a little control. Melaina would find her way better with gentle guidance than with overbearing protectiveness.

  The humans had brought love to the kraken.

  Rhea knew now that she’d always loved Melaina, since the moment she’d first felt the flutter of life inside herself, but the humans had taught her new ways to express that feeling. New ways to experience it.

  Could she and Randall come to share it, one day?

  “Good,” Randall said. He leaned forward and rested his chin on her shoulder, pressing his cheek against hers. The small hairs on his face scratched her skin, but the sensation wasn’t unpleasant. Rather, it sent a tingling thrill through her, and she found herself wanting to feel it on other parts of her body.

  She dropped her gaze to his hands, which were settled at her middle. There was a sprinkling of dark hair across their backs, which thickened as it went up his arm. The female humans had hair on their arms, too, though it was shorter, lighter, and harder to notice. Rhea looked at her own hairless arm.

  All her life, she’d been trained to be confident, to understand that her place amongst the kraken was one of privilege. She was female. She was rare. She was important. Males fought for her attention, for the honor of mating with her. Now, for the first time, Rhea felt unappealing.

  It was not a good feeling.

  “Do you find me attractive?” she asked.

  “Of course I do.” Randall’s hands slid to her hips, and he guided her to turn around and face him. “I didn’t know what to think, at first. You’re so different from everything I’ve known. But every piece of you,” he trailed his fingertips along one of her tentacles, over her hand and up her arm, across the sensitive skin of her siphon, “is beautiful.”

  Rhea brushed her fingers through his hair, admiring its softness, before touching her own bald head. “I will never have hair like your females.”

  He took her hand in his as she lowered it. “And I will never have tentacles.”

  She wrapped the end of a tentacle around his wrist. “You do not mind that we are so different?”

  Randall smoothed a hand up her shoulder to cup the back of her head. She saw his answer in his gaze a moment before he pulled her close and covered her mouth with his.

  Rhea grasped his arms as her eyes fluttered closed. Heat spread through her body, trailing along her limbs, flooding her core. Her tentacle fell from his wrist to encircle his waist, and she leaned closer. He shifted his lips, and she felt the moist touch of his tongue against the seam of her mouth. Her lips parted in surprise. Randall’s tongue slid through to brush behind her teeth and stroke her tongue, beckoning it to join his.

  This was a kiss. This wild, thrilling act, unknown to the kraken until recently, was a kiss. And it was glorious.

  She moved her mouth against his, tasted his lips, tasted his tongue, but it wasn’t enough. She needed to be closer.

  Rhea slid her arms around his neck, pressing her breasts to his chest as the kiss deepened.

  Randall dropped a hand to her hip again, sliding it to her back to draw her pelvis against his. He groaned. The sound vibrated through her, making the tips of her tentacles curl in anticipation. His hardness probed her lower belly, signaling his want, and she grazed her claws over his shoulder.

  He abruptly broke the contact between their mouths, pulling away. His lips were red, his eyes dark and glowing with passion. Between ragged breaths, he flicked his gaze toward Melaina and Ikaros, who still slept soundly on the bed.

  “Believe me when I tell you it’s not easy for me to say, Rhea…but we should stop.”

  Rhea frowned. “I do not understand. You are ready to mate, as am I.”

  Randall released a sound that was half shaky sigh, half chuckle, and leaned his forehead against hers. “Just give me time, Rhea.”

  At best, the rules of human relationships were confusing to Rhea; right now, they were outright frustrating. Why wait when they were both willing? Both wanting? “I feel the proof of your desire now, human. What time could you possibly need?”

  He sat back and shook his head. “For starters, your daughter is two meters away.”

  She glanced toward Melaina. “She is sleeping.”

  “And I would rather not be in the middle of it when she wakes up.”

  “If it is privacy you wish, we can move to the hall.”

  Randall smirked, but the light in his eyes had already changed. His gaze burned with passion, but not with the immediate, scalding flames that had scorched her only moments ago. “It’s selfish of me to hold you to my way of doing things without any consideration for your traditions. If I was just another kraken male competing for your attention, you wouldn’t have given me a second look so far. You don’t even know if I can provide for you and your kid, or if I can protect you.”

  She opened her mouth to deny his words, but nothing came out. He was partially right. Randall hadn’t done anything to prove his worth as a provider, though he’d demonstrated his ability as a protector by saving Jax from the other humans. But it was his inner strength that had drawn Rhea to him during those first weeks — the strength of his resolve, his unwavering humor in the face of his circumstances, his easy adaptability.

  Rhea loosened her hold on Randall but didn’t release him. “What is it you wish?”

  “Females choose the males, don’t they? That’s the way of your people?”

  “It is.”

  “I want to be chosen because I’m worthy, not because I’m…exotic.”

  She tilted her head and searched his face. Perhaps that had been part of his draw, in the beginning — she’d been fascinated by him, the first and only human male she’d ever seen — but it wasn’t the sole reason she’d chosen him. “You wish to go slow. To prove yourself to me.”

  “To you, and to myself.” He gripped her chin gently with his forefinger and thumb. “But don’t doubt that I want you, because once I prove that I can provide for and protect you and Melaina, you will be mine.”

  Pleasure blossomed in her chest at his words. Before Randall, the thought of a male claiming her would have bothered Rhea. Now the thought tantalized her. Perhaps it was because she wanted him more than any male she’d known.

  Rhea nodded. “I will give you time, but you must agree to continue kissing me.”

  A wide smile spread across his lips. “Deal.”

  Chapter 6

  “It does not seem wise to grant your request, Randall,” Dracchus said, folding his arms across his chest. His voice was a deep rumble, the sort that always sounded to Randall like it must have pained the speaker.

  “I’ve spent my whole life outside, Dracchus,” Randall said. “These walls are driving me crazy. I’m not asking to go to land, just to get out of this building for a little while.”

  “After you threw a knife at Neo—”

  “That was two weeks ago! Are they still complaining about it?”

  Dracchus frowned; he probably wasn’t interrupted often, and he didn’t seem to appreciate it. “They have used it to rally a few more kraken to their cause. Proof of how dangerous humans are.”

  “They would’ve torn me apart without a second thought.”

  “I know. But that does little to change minds that were already made up. Letting you outside, even for a short while, will be viewed as allowing you a chance to escape.”

  Randall sighed and ran a hand through his hair. I
t wouldn’t be smart to take out his frustration on Dracchus, even verbally, but it was still a struggle to bite his tongue.

  The time he’d spent with Rhea had been wonderful over the last two weeks. The confrontation with Kronus, Neo, and Volk had, unexpectedly, brought Randall and Rhea closer together. He still hadn’t given in fully, but he’d come to accept his desires. Her understanding of what he’d requested seemed to grow a little every day. She’d even confessed to speaking of it with Macy and Aymee to learn the perspective of the female humans.

  Melaina was a joy, too, and Ikaros was more energetic and playful than Randall had thought possible. Kronus and his followers had kept their distance since the incident in the mess hall. Everything considered, life was surprisingly joyful.

  But these walls were driving Randall insane.

  If he couldn’t get fresh air — and holy hell, he wanted some fresh air, wanted real wind on his face — he at least needed a change of scenery.

  “So, letting me out would be taken as you disrespecting their stance?” Randall asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t that alone worth it to you?”

  Dracchus’s brows fell low over his piercing amber eyes, and he pressed his lips into a tight line. Ikaros stepped past Randall and sat beside the kraken, swatting at a moving tentacle. Dracchus looked down, frown deepening, and pulled the tentacle away. Ikaros pounced.

  Sinking into a crouch, Dracchus slipped a hand beneath the prixxir and lifted him off the floor. The kraken and the prixxir stared into one another’s eyes for several seconds. “Your beast is a clumsy hunter.”

  “He’s just playing,” Randall replied, just before Dracchus’s words sparked a new thought. “You’re a hunter.”

  Dracchus grunted affirmatively.

  “I’ve hunted my entire life, but never underwater, and Ikaros was too young to hunt when he was brought here. Take us out there. Teach us. You accepted me as one of your people, so let me contribute.”

  The large kraken’s gaze shifted from Randall to Ikaros and back again, skepticism and scrutiny written in the set of his mouth and the crease between his brows. “You are unable to hunt in the manner of my people,” Dracchus said after a long silence, “and your beast is a youngling still.”

  Small as Ikaros was, the prixxir had gained at least twenty-five centimeters in three weeks, and his once scrawny frame had filled out. A few more weeks and Ikaros would likely top a meter from his snout to the tip of his tail.

  “He should be catching his own small prey by now, and there are plenty of tools in this place that would allow me to get in that water and hunt.”

  Dracchus set Ikaros down and rose. “So now you wish for me to arm you and let you out into the water?”

  Randall threw his arms to the sides. “What do you want me to do, Dracchus? Either I have a place here, or I don’t. If you don’t give me a chance to earn trust, to prove that I have value, why keep me alive? Give me a chance.”

  “At what risk to my people?”

  “My people, my hunting party, betrayed me. But I was conscious when you first brought me here. I heard what you said to Kronus. You said that we — me, Aymee, and Macy — are your people now, too. If I’m one of you, how is there a risk? Let me earn my place. Take me out there. Watch me like you’re guarding a prisoner if you must, as long as I can get out of these walls for a while.”

  The kraken’s siphons flared open and closed as he stared down at Ikaros. The prixxir sat on the floor with surprising patience, tail swishing slowly over the floor, and stared up at Dracchus.

  “What if your beast swims away, Randall?”

  The thought produced an unexpected pang of sadness in Randall’s chest. A few weeks wasn’t much time, in the grand scheme, but Ikaros had become such a large part of his life that he couldn’t imagine things without the prixxir around.

  “If he wants to go, he’ll go,” Randall replied. “I’m not going to keep him on a leash. I trust him enough to let him choose.”

  Mild confusion touched Dracchus’s features. “You are comparing the situation between you and your beast to the situation between you and I?”

  Randall shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “These situations are different. If the beast leaves, it will not call its kind to attack this place.”

  “Neither will I.”

  “How can I trust that?”

  “Because there are people in here I care about too much to put them in that kind of danger.”

  “You want to prove yourself to Rhea.”

  It stung a bit, hearing his primary motive spoken out loud, but that made it no less true.

  No matter how much skill and dedication Randall had displayed, there’d always been rangers who thought he’d been given command of his own team only because his father was the man in charge. Cyrus had been among the most vocal, especially while they were in the field. Randall had never revealed how much it had bothered him because some part of him had suspected they were right.

  He wouldn’t allow it to be the same with the kraken. This was a fresh start, a chance to earn his place, to succeed or fail based solely on his own capabilities. And he was competing against beings who were physically superior to him in almost every way.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Do you know what this would mean for you? Kraken females are few. Claiming one for yourself will mean constant competition.” Dracchus looked Randall up and down and shook his head. “Even the weakest of our males is more than a match for you.”

  “Isn’t that why you agreed to let me carry this?” Randall patted the holstered pistol on his hip. There’d been a few demands to have it taken away from him after the incident with Kronus, but Dracchus, Jax, and Arkon had overridden them.

  “You cannot shoot your way through every confrontation.”

  “That’s almost funny coming from you; Macy told me how you wanted to fight your way into The Watch to rescue Jax.”

  Dracchus furrowed his brow. “You are comparing two different situations again.”

  “Yeah. That’s totally valid when it comes to comparison.”

  “Perhaps I should have left Arkon to deal with you. He is better able to understand the way you humans speak.”

  Randall smirked. “But he doesn’t like me as much as you do.”

  “I have not decided whether I like you or not.”

  Perhaps it was his imagination, but Randall thought there was a hint of humor in Dracchus’s eyes.

  “That puts you ahead of Arkon, I’d say.”

  Dracchus fell silent and lowered his gaze to Ikaros.

  Randall concentrated on keeping his expression neutral to hide his anxiety. Dracchus could be reasoned with, but he was what the rangers would’ve called, with the utmost respect, a hard ass.

  “Come with me, human,” Dracchus finally said.

  Releasing a long, quiet breath, Randall followed Dracchus through corridors that had become maddeningly familiar over the last several weeks. Ikaros’s claws clicked on the floor as the prixxir trailed close behind.

  The Facility had no shortage of dark, abandoned rooms that no longer served a purpose; they entered one of them, and Randall stopped in front of a desk.

  Dracchus rounded the desk and bent down, feeling for something on its underside.

  Before Randall could ask what the kraken was doing, a panel on the wall behind the desk slid upward, revealing an alcove a meter wide and two meters tall with three shelves built into it. Diving suits — made of sleek black material that stretched to fit the wearer — were folded neatly along the top, each with an accompanying mask. The lower shelves held piles of weaponry. Harpoon guns, rifles, pistols, heat guns, all stacked haphazardly into a space never intended to house them.

  Randall cringed at the sight. Firearms were an integral part of life in Fort Culver, always treated with care and respect. It hurt a little to see this mess, especially when the weapons down here were in near perfect condition; as far as he knew, the only use they m
ight’ve seen was when the kraken overthrew the humans in the Facility hundreds of years before.

  “You are not meant to know of this,” Dracchus said, straightening. “I am extending you my trust, Randall. Break it, and I will break you.”

  Coming from a creature that had to be well over three meters long if he lay down and weighed more than four hundred kilograms, it was no idle threat.

  “You’ll have to get in line for that, Dracchus.” Randall stepped toward the alcove and looked over the weaponry with wonder. There were several models of firearms that he’d only heard about through historical holos, and he’d never held anything that was in such good condition. Everything the rangers possessed had been passed down from generation to generation, repaired and rebuilt with whatever parts and methods were available as years passed and the colonization became history.

  A chirrup from behind caught Randall’s attention. He turned to the desk to see Ikaros atop it. The prixxir walked to the edge nearest Dracchus and lifted a paw, brushing it lightly over the kraken’s tentacle. Dracchus ran his palm over the prixxir’s head and back, folding down the little top fin along its spine.

  “Suit in and select a harpoon gun. I will meet you at the main entrance,” Dracchus said.

  “Suit up.”

  Dracchus grunted questioningly.

  “It’s suit up, not suit in.”

  “If you understand what I mean either way, human, what is the issue?”

  Randall shrugged as he unzipped his jumpsuit. “Can’t really argue your point.”

  “Hurry, human.” With that, Dracchus exited the room. The sound of the kraken’s tentacles moving along the corridor floor gradually faded.

  After stripping out of his clothes, Randall donned a PDS — personal diving suit — and lifted the mask, which appeared to be little more than a clear piece of glass, into place. The suit automatically sealed the mask to the hood. A faint tingle spread over Randall’s skin as the suit’s systems came online.

  “Hello, Sam,” he said.

  “Hello, diver seven-seven-four,” replied Sam, the suit’s internal computer.

  Randall selected a harpoon gun and slung it over his shoulder before making his way toward the building’s main entrance.