10. Carol

10

Carol

This couldn't be happening.

She'd slept in his arms. Touched his mind with hers and felt the touch of his mind in return. She knew what his telepathic voice felt like, the warmth of its upper currents and the strength and softness weaving beneath. She knew the shape of him outlined in rain and lightning, half-lit by the struggling beam of a flashlight. She knew the way his chest moved when he breathed. The firmness of the muscles underneath his ripped shirt. The scent of his skin.

She knew that he was her mate.

All those tiny intimacies, and she'd never seen him clearly until now.

He was like a god. Like he was made for this wild place, the crag of broken rock behind him, the whisper of the sea at their feet, the sky stretching huge and distant overhead. His brown skin glowed in the sunlight. Damp hair hung in black tendrils over his broad shoulders. For a moment, something with a sheen like abalone glimmered across his eyes—then they were human again, perfectly normal brown eyes except for the intensity with which he was focusing on her.

She shivered, and her eyes dropped. His shirt was still damp, clinging to a chest that… had she seriously spent the whole night cuddled up to that chest?

She felt lightheaded.

Her lips were dry. Salt-cracked and parched, and holy crap, she'd never realized that thirsty wasn't just a euphemism before. She wanted to quench herself on him. She licked her lips, careful not to cut her tongue on her teeth.

Her teeth.

Shit.

She'd been standing here smiling like an idiot, and he'd seen—

He stepped closer. His warm, brown, human eyes searched hers.

"Are you all right?"

She looked away, tongue stumbling over words she didn't know how to say. "I'm sorry—I didn't—"

"Dumb question." Gravel crunched underfoot, and then he was beside her, raising one hand to gently touch her shoulder. "We almost died. Part of me still can't believe we survived last night, and now…"

His gaze went to the calm ocean.

"It's like it never happened," Carol finished for him, feeling faint. He was touching her. He'd seen her eyes, and her teeth, and he'd come up and touched her like they didn't mean anything.

"Pree- ee, " Maggie insisted, and Moss snorted.

"Don't worry. We all know it did happen. Not likely to forget it, either." He frowned as he looked Carol up and down, and as though awakened by his concern, dozens of tiny scrapes and cuts all over her body suddenly made themselves known. "The question is, where the hell are we, and how do we get off this rock?"

And where are my teammates? And what were those strange metal bird shifters? And—

"I know." Moss's voice was quiet, and his hand slipped from her shoulder—a loss that made her skin chill, until he closed the space between them and put his arm, so tenderly it was like he expected her to explode, around her waist. "Those aren't the only questions we need to answer. But we almost died. Let's cut ourselves a break. One thing at a time, right?"

"One thing at a time," she agreed. Water swirled around her ankles. The wind was a constant tug on her skin.

They were in the middle of nowhere, with no food, no decent shelter—

Those were only three things, and they already felt like too much.

Around her neck, Maggie gave a tiny croak of complaint. "That's right, Maggie. Starting with not standing around with our feet wet."

"Pree!"

Maggie tugged on her collar, batting her wings to "help" Carol get further up the beach faster. But Carol already felt like she was walking on air. Moss still had his hand on her lower back. Just for this moment, she could convince herself that he truly wanted her as his soulmate. Everything was going to work out.

Instead of the more likely scenario, which was that everything was going to continue to go to shit.

Well. Maybe she couldn't convince herself, even for a moment. But she could still enjoy it. Right?

"Gotta admit, I was hoping for a different answer to that first question," Moss muttered.

They were standing on the craggy peak above the cave. The highest spot on the island. There was no doubt now that it was an island. A small one.

In the middle of the empty ocean.

"Would have been nice to get up here and turn around and bam, turns out we spent the night with a beach resort right behind us." Moss sighed.

"We already knew there was no one else around," Carol reminded him.

"Still. Could have done without the painfully clear evidence. Not even a cloud on the horizon to aim at." He hesitated, and an uneasy expression crossed his face. "You know, maybe swimming in a random direction isn't the best idea…"

"Your octopus isn't comfortable in the open water?"

"My—yeah. That's it."

Carol frowned. That isn't the reason, is it? You're hiding something from me. Something about his inner animal. She'd suspected it the night before, and this was—well, not evidence, but a little warning bell.

"You won't need to swim. Out of the two of us, your octopus has more arms than my shark. You could—I don't know—h-hold on to Maggie and the eggs, and hold on to me, and…"

"And we could be the world's strangest life raft?" He grinned at her. "Let's do it. An octopus catching a ride on a shark, carrying its luggage with it? I can't think of any better way to guarantee the immediate appearance of a shipload of tourists armed with high-powered zoom lenses. We'd be rescued in no time."

"And we explain away the dragon again, somehow," Carol said absently. Moss shot her a narrow look but didn't say anything.

And another little warning bell rang in the back corner of her mind. How did he have no questions about Maggie?

The night before, she'd been overwhelmed, focusing on staying alive and keeping Maggie and the eggs safe. And on the fact that her sexy-as-hell mate had appeared in the middle of the storm like some sort of freaking god of the ocean.

But today, with the skies clear and nobody trying to slice her up with their razor wings…

Yesterday's events were coming together in her mind, like putting together a jigsaw puzzle that had been shaken apart.

And so many of the pieces didn't fit.

She clenched her jaw. Trust issues, much?

Moss had done nothing but help her. And she was hiding things from him, too.

But…

She closed her eyes briefly, diving into the depths of her mind as though she could find peace there. The sort of peace she used to find in the ocean. Before her shark appeared.

Every part of her connection to her shifter magic came with a price. Why would she expect finding her mate to be any different?

"Fresh water," Moss announced. She jumped, opening her eyes. He'd clambered back down the other side of the hill and was crouched near a crack in the rock. "Fresh-ish, anyway. All that rain was good for something."

Carol followed him down. Whether the water was a spring from some sort of miracle aquifer or just the rainwater seeping through the rock, she didn't know and didn't care.

Maggie didn't wait for an invitation. She slithered down off Carol's shoulders and flattened herself beside the trickle of water, slurping greedily.

Carol cupped her hand and scooped up some water. It was cold and tasted like dirt—but it was fresh.

She rinsed the taste of dried salt out of her mouth and scrubbed her face, suddenly realizing how thirsty she was. The normal sort of thirst, not the kind that sent her head spinning whenever she looked at Moss.

"Better than seawater," she said.

"You sound as though you're speaking from experience."

"With seven shark shifter brothers? When we drank gross stuff, it was out of stupidity, not desperation."

"Sounds horrifyingly familiar." Moss drank and wiped his face, then stood. "When I was, what, twelve? Some idiot passed around a rumor that drinking seawater could make you hallucinate cool crazy things. And some other idiot believed them."

"That first idiot must really get around. We heard that one, too."

"Any luck?"

She snorted. "I'm sure my brothers wished that all the vomiting was a hallucination, but no. I think you need to be properly lost at sea for more than a few hours if you want to see mermaids pop up by the side of the boat."

His eyes softened, their warm brown deepening. "We've got the first bit sorted."

"And now we wait for a mermaid to turn up?" She grimaced. "The way my luck is going, she'd probably have a tail made of chainsaws."

"Aw, hey." Moss leaned against a rocky outcrop. "No need to ruin my line like that."

She blinked, confused. "Your line?"

"I was setting up to say that I think the mermaid's already here." He smiled, slow and beguiling and with a hint of embarrassment.

It was that hint that undid her.

"Oh," she said, her tongue and her brain both fumbling for how to respond while her body made a strong argument for saying nothing and just plain jumping him. "I. Um—"

"Pree ee? Ee!"

Maggie was finished drinking. She sprawled on the ground, belly-up, and a hazy vision of steaming baked salmon wafted into Carol's head.

Moss laughed. "I'm getting the feeling it might be time for breakfast, eh?"

"Ee ee !"

"That's us told." Moss straightened and brushed himself off. Carol stood, feeling slightly wobbly, and he held out a hand to steady her.

Maggie scampered ahead, searching for salmon steaks under every loose stone. Moss didn't let go of her hand, and… well, she didn't let go of his. That was normal, right? There were a lot of loose stones.

Then he leaned in close, and the touch of his mind was like dipping into a layer of cooler water beneath the sun-warmed surface. * I meant it,* he said.

* Meant what?*

* That the mermaid is already here.* His thumb traced a circle on her palm. * I just have to hope she isn't a hallucination.*

* Are you sure you aren't the merman in this hallucination?*

Something shivered in the undercurrents of his mind. * An octopus merman? That's a bit too Ursula for me. Wasn't she all about bad deals and cursing people?*

*And a shark is any better?*

Could he feel the same uneasy undercurrents in her psychic voice as she felt in his? She stilled, wary.

He sensed her stillness. At least, she hoped that was all he sensed. He looked back at her, his dark eyes strangely luminous. * I happen to like sharks.*

Then I must be a real treat. She managed to keep the thought, and the bitterness that wreathed around it, inside her own head.

He liked sharks? How long would that last, when he realized she looked like this all the time?