16. Carol

16

Carol

One previously unknown limitation of being stuck on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean?

There was nowhere to hide when you'd just embarrassed yourself more than you thought humanly possible.

It wasn't enough that she'd literally thrown herself at Moss and munched on his face instead of kissing him normally. Oh no. Then she had to go and throw a pity party so that Moss—the guy she'd bitten on the mouth— went and felt sorry for her.

Worst of all, she'd gotten perilously close to revealing the truth about herself.

Revealing one terrible betrayal would have been enough, surely. She didn't need to go on and almost tell him about Eloise.

Cold gripped her. For one brief moment, she thought her shark was rising to the surface inside her—but one mental glance behind her put paid to that idea. It was nowhere in sight.

As usual.

But it gave her an idea. There was one way she could get some time to let all her embarrassment boil off. Somewhere she would have privacy even inside her own head.

She found Moss down by the spring, refilling one of the more waterproof kelp bags. Her stomach lurched slightly at the sight. How long did he expect them to be stuck here?

Better to be a prepared pessimist than an optimist proved wrong, she thought. Maggie jumped down off her shoulder and scampered over to the spring, eyeing the kelp bag with the calculating expression of a tiny dragon who wanted to test how good her claws were at puncturing things.

"Ready for breakfast?" Moss asked. "Hope you're not sick of mussels. If you are, though, I was thinking of trying something with the seaweed. I've got a reputation to uphold, you know. Wouldn't look good if we got rescued and it got out I hadn't invented some cutting-edge new survivalist dish."

"Sounds good," she said, and he laughed.

"I wouldn't go that far. But we'll see." He watched her with careful eyes. "How are you this morning?"

It took all her effort to smile. This was exactly what she didn't want. The wariness. The softly-softly, don't-talk-too-loud-around-her-or-she'll break approach.

Okay, so she might break, but that didn't make it any better.

"Fine," she said breezily. "No sign of anyone this morning?"

"Blue skies and empty horizons," Moss confirmed solemnly. His thoughts nudged hers. * I'm starting to get worried. I know, I know, best to wait for rescue, but… No ships at all? No planes overhead? It's…*

*Worrying?* She bent and tickled Maggie. * I was thinking. I want to try swimming in my shark form again. If I can figure out where we are, or if we're close enough to Lance and the others to reach them—I know it's a long shot, but…*

*But it's better than doing nothing? I think that's a great idea. One problem.*

They both looked down at Maggie.

* While she's napping,* Carol suggested.

* She naps? Where was that yesterday?*

"Yesterday was too exciting. She got attacked by the ocean, had to save me from the ocean, and breathed fire for the first time," Carol said out loud. Maggie looked up at her inquisitively, stretching out a casual claw to prod at her mouth. "Today is going to be very boring."

Only a few hours later, Moss stared down at a sleeping dragon.

"I can't believe that worked."

"She's only a baby. It's easy to forget that. Her dragon side can do so much. But somewhere in there is a little human infant who just wants to eat and sleep and burp, and not worry about any of that other stuff."

Moss's eyebrows shot up. "Maggie's human side? I can't imagine any side to her that isn't constantly energetic and full of… her-ness. So. Huh. What do I do if she does shift?"

"She won't," she reassured him. "She doesn't like being in human form. We don't know how dragon ages work, because they're in the egg for so long, but Keeley says she looks three or four months old in human form. So given a choice between being a human who can maybe roll over and a dragon who can leap and fly and bite things…"

"She'll choose the one that can shoot flame?"

"Exactly."

He shook his head slowly. "No need to worry about her shifting into a tiny human baby. She'll stay safe in her flying, biting, fire-breathing, teleporting form. Consider me reassured."

"And she can turn invisible."

"And she can turn invisible," Moss echoed faintly. "Maybe you should go before I change my mind."

The wind picked up as she made her way down the beach. She shivered as clouds scudded overhead. What would they do if the weather turned? They'd been lucky so far. The wind was constant, but the sunlight had enough heat in it to keep them warm during the day, and they'd been able to keep dry. If another storm like the one that had brought them here hit—how much protection would their little cave be?

She began to undress. She thought back to the first night they'd huddled together, sodden and shaking, the cold so deep it had dragged at her bones. And last night, lying with the fire on her face and Moss's huge, warm body at her back, wrapped around her like she was the most important thing in the world. Like she hadn't just dissolved into a blubbering mess.

There was no way she was the sort of mate he must have expected. He was so capable and warm and outgoing, and she was…

She sighed. You didn't get to choose your mate. That wasn't how it worked.

She would just have to try harder to be the sort of mate Moss might have chosen.

The sort of woman who went to parties like the Diazes' wedding had been. Who went on mountaintop dates and out for dinner. In public.

Her shiver this time had nothing to do with the sea wind, or the water lapping around her ankles.

Lying about her face wasn't the get-out-of-anxiety-free card she'd hoped. Moss didn't look at her like she was permanently broken. It was worse.

He thought she could be fixed.

She made sure her clothes were above the high tide line and glanced back one last time at the shallow cave where she'd left Moss and Maggie. If only everyone was like Maggie. The little dragon treated her teeth like the best thing ever. Like they made her special and exciting.

If only…

She shook the thought away, and before she could change her mind, she plunged into the water.

Cold water closed around her. She hung in it, held by that strange mixture of buoyancy and pressure. There was no need to fight it this time. The ocean was as calm as it ever could be, a world of constant movement. She kicked, and the water parted around her. Welcoming her in.

Would it let her go, that was the question.

She squeezed her eyes shut, grimacing at herself. She knew the ocean. It didn't want . It didn't welcome you, or keep you, or throw you out. It just was , and if you lived or died in it, it didn't care.

She cared.

Her lungs began to burn. A flinch of panic jerked through her limbs. It was gone less than a heartbeat later, but a heartbeat was long enough.

She surfaced, half expecting the thud of wood between her shoulders pushing her down again. But nothing touched her. She sucked in a breath of sweet, fresh air.

See? she told herself. That wasn't so hard.

And if that bit wasn't hard, then this shouldn't be, either.

Pulse hammering in her throat, she closed her eyes and searched inside herself for her shark.

It wasn't there. Her jaw tightened, teeth gritting together. Of course it wasn't there. That wasn't how this worked, for her. Shifting into her animal form wasn't a joyous connection to her soul's true nature; it was a struggle. Every time. Like getting dressed in the dark, in clothes that didn't fit. As though this form was something she had stolen, not something that was really hers.

She swallowed. Somewhere in the dark of her mind, or soul, or whatever it was— there .

A long, thick body, brutally hydrodynamic. A shape that evolution had abandoned millions of years ago because it already had everything it needed. Fins and tail. Strength and speed. Black eyes staring out either side of jaws built for grabbing and tearing. Death in the water.

Her body slid into its other shape slowly, reluctantly, and then all at once, as though some part of her or her shark or both of them had accepted even she couldn't cringe so far she escaped her own self.

She cut through the water, swimming deeper. No need to worry about breathing underwater now. Water flowed over her gills, and oxygen flowed into her body. So long as she kept moving, she could breathe.

Safe.

She ventured deeper, letting her senses expand until the ocean around her transformed into a constellation of electrical impulses. The glitter of distant fish, the slow pulse of crustaceans and sea bugs on the rocky floor… Like this, the ocean showed so much more than could be seen from the surface.

Even if it did swim or scuttle out of sight the moment it noticed her looming up.

The aftermath of the storm was everywhere. Dead things didn't glow like living ones did, so it took more effort to see them. Kelp forests torn from their moorings, the corpses of fish tangled in its ropes. And—

Something strange. Not a change in the water temperature or pressure, not the sudden appearance of another living creature worth paying attention to down here in the deep, but… something. Carol swam on, a human's mind in a shark's body but without its instincts, knowing that whatever she saw would only be a fraction of what there was to see.

Depth loomed at her. The ocean floor fell away sharply, the softness of muck-covered rock disappearing into gloomy black. There was more life down there—distant—but strangely, none here, at the edge of the chasm.

This wasn't the direction she was meant to go, anyway. She swam to the surface, rolling to one side to gauge the direction of the sun and compare it to where Maggie had been insistent that Lance and Keeley were waiting.

The ocean went on forever. Distant whalesong echoed in the depths, and the prickling heartbeats of countless marine creatures. Carol called out at intervals, broadcasting her thoughts to anyone who could hear them.

But no one did.

At least, nobody responded.

Where were they? How far did Maggie's tracking magic go? She couldn't sense any land masses ahead—nowhere for Lance and Keeley to have landed after the plane went down.

But if Maggie could track her uncle across a whole continent…

She couldn't swim that far in one day. And—panic beat through the human part of her as her shark loomed emotionless in the water. What if she went too far? What if she couldn't find Moss and Maggie again?

What if—

A strange warmth suffused her. Like a door opening and letting in the full heat of the afternoon sun.

* Carol?*

Oh god, it was Moss. That was what his mind felt like to her, even before she knew it was him.

Like someone coming home to her.

* Hey,* she replied, as though the world wasn't crumbling all around her.

* Maggie's waking up.*

Oh, shit. * I'll come back now. Though—I'm far away, it'll take me a while—*

*I'll keep her entertained.*

She turned back, disappointment clinging to her conscience. It had been a slim hope, but not reaching Lance and Keeley, not finding any trace of land or coast that she recognized—something in her had really been holding on to that hope, no matter how slim it was.

Which was ridiculous. Had she really expected that there would be an underwater road sign saying Civilization, Just A Few Miles Over There, Friends and Family Included ? Or—no.

No. That wasn't why the little candleflame of hope had flickered out. Despite everything, part of her had hoped her shark might rise to the occasion.

Instead, there was only her, and the stumbling sensation of steering her shark's body all by herself.

And Moss, who felt like sunlight reaching her soul.

It must have been hours later that she reached the shallows and staggered back into her human body. Her clothes were still dry, above the high-tide line, and she pulled them on haphazardly, reaching towards the cave with her mind.

* Moss? Maggie?*

"Pree-ee!" Maggie trilled back. Happily. A tightness in her chest eased. She might not have found out where they were, or solved her personal problems with her shark, but no crying baby dragons still counted as a win.

She rounded the boulders that hid their little cave, and her heart leapt into her throat.

Moss was sitting alongside the fire, with Maggie beside him. His head was bent towards hers, listening intently to whatever she was crooning. By the occasional wince, he was listening to her psychic monologue as well.

But that wasn't what made Carol feel as though she'd walked into a dream.

They were looking at the dragon eggs. Maggie was chittering instructions, which Moss was doing his best to follow. He shaped sand into soft beds next to the fire and tucked each egg into place, stopping after each movement to check with Maggie whether he was doing the right thing. She peeped and whistled, content that her every whim was being followed, and for a moment, Carol couldn't breathe.

Moss was a gentle giant. She already knew that about him. He knew how big he was and took care to move gently through the world. He noticed the details; she knew that as well. He had made sure she and Maggie were warm and fed, even if he couldn't promise they were safe. He even put up with Maggie's bad attitude. She'd known guys who weren't that understanding with human-shaped kids. But not him.

Her stomach twisted. He'd appeared out of nowhere, sure. He was hiding something from her, and she was starting to suspect what it was.

But look at him. Playing babysitter to an opinionated baby dragon. Listening to her whistle lullabies to her unhatched siblings.

How could she do anything but love him?

But there were limits to how good anyone could be. And the longer she put it off, the worse it got.

She had to tell him the truth.

"Hey, you two," she said, her voice as awkward as her footing as she crouched beside them. Her human body felt as unwieldy as her shark form, lurching through air too thin to hold it up. The glow at the edges of her vision—was that a migraine? Was she going to faint?

Was her heart beating so loudly her shark senses were going into overload, perceiving her own body as a nuclear glow?

"We're all good here. Sorry for rushing you back. Maggie seems happy enough bossing me—" Moss looked up, and his eyes narrowed. "What's wrong?"

I decided to tell you the truth about myself, and my body decided to blow itself up rather than go through with it. "Hngh?" she managed to gulp out, and then he was at her side, one arm around her shoulders, the other tipping her head back to study her face.

Concern creased the skin at the corners of his eyes, dug lines around his mouth. The pad of his thumb brushed her cheek—soft, careful. "Are you all right?"

She was rallying herself to answer—this was her body , she could make it talk, she could —and then his eyes flickered. Down to her mouth. Back up to her eyes.

His expression tightened. Not disappointment, but something close. Sympathy.

He'd been hoping that shifting into shark form would reset her face.

Her chest hurt. If that was true, I would have been fixed years ago.

"I'm—not feeling so good," she managed to force out. "Bit woozy."

Maggie pulled Moss's hand out of the way and pushed her snout into its place, worry jabbing from her mind.

"I'm fine," Carol reassured her quickly. "Just a bit light-headed from shifting and running up here."

"I should have told you there was no hurry," Moss said ruefully. Damn it, she hadn't meant to make it sound like she was blaming him. Then his mind brushed against hers. * Did you find anything out there?*

* A lot of water.* She grimaced and looked away. * Nothing useful.*

*Was the swim nice, at least? I'm saying this silently so that Maggie doesn't hear the ‘s' word.*

Carol smiled. * It… was. Actually. Yeah.*

And it was the truth. Moving in her shark form had been as awkward as ever, and she should have been as terrified by the ocean as Maggie was. She'd had enough bad experiences with it. But maybe her brain had filled up on freakouts. The water had been cool and soothing.

Maybe next time she could try swimming in human form.

"Pree-oo? Oo? Oo?" Maggie looked between them both, an accusing wrinkle on her snout.

"And now I think it's time for lunch," Moss announced.

Maggie straightened. "Ee!"

"How come she hatched, but the others haven't? Are they from different, uh, nests? Clutches?" Moss paused, an oyster dangling precariously from one hand. "I… their mom must have been in dragon form, right? And this is the point where I backpedal and say, let's let dragon business stay dragon business; I don't need to know how the birds and the bees work for them."

"They're from the same clutch. Um. For the birds and the bees, your guess is as good as mine—"

"And I'm not guessing. This is where the speculation ends." Moss waved his hand. Maggie's nose followed the oyster shell, her nostrils quivering.

"Maggie didn't hatch until she was separated from the others. But—" Carol held up her hands as Maggie's head whipped around. "We're not going to try that! They'll hatch when they're ready. They're alive in there. Just… waiting."

She placed a hand over one of the eggs. It was warm beneath her touch, whether from the sun or the fire or its own heat, she didn't know. She concentrated, and the little electric hum of life within the jewel-like egg glowed. "What are they waiting on, I wonder."

Though really, maybe it was a good thing the other two eggs hadn't hatched yet. She couldn't imagine three Maggies running around.

She shared this thought with Moss—silently, so Maggie wouldn't overhear and get any ideas. Not that she needed their help having ideas. Moss laughed, and Maggie struck, snatching the oyster from his hand and scampering behind a rock to devour it.

It was the perfect moment.

She put off telling the truth. There would be time later. Right?