20. Carol

20

Carol

She waited for Moss as the night wore on. She waited while the stars wheeled slowly overhead. She waited until it was stupid to keep waiting, and then she cried and waited some more.

And then, as dawn slunk beneath the horizon, as unwilling to appear as she was to see it, she slept.

Stones grated together. She heard it half-dreaming, except she wasn't dreaming. She was drifting. Water surrounded her, a deep current nudging her gently along. Where was she? She'd never seen rocks like this before, huge flat rectangles tumbled over one another.

Or had she seen them? The water tasted strange, but somehow familiar. Had she been here before?

But she would remember rocks like that. Would remember finding the gaps between them, the shadows that hid tunnels and passageways, the soft tickle of seaweed on her skin. The strange, glinting light ahead. Grasping the edge of one rock with her hands and—

Her hands?

She was in human form.

I can't breathe underwater . But she was underwater, so deep the pressure held her like a blanket. Too far to surface to take a breath. Her lungs burned. Why wasn't she in shark form?

This was a dream, it had to be a dream, but she never tasted anything in dreams, and the water here tasted like finding your way home again, and it was all the way down her throat, choking gasps that made her breathe more water in, not home anymore, flailing helpless cold alone—

Something huge and fast surged out of the darkness and tackled her awake.

She gasped, her eyes shooting open, sprawled on the sand. The sand? The beach. Waiting for Moss. Waiting with Maggie. Shit. The whole reason she'd stayed here was to look after Maggie, and she hadn't even gone back to the cave to watch over her. Anything could have happened. If the metal bird shifters came back—

"Chr-eeek! Chr-eek!"

She was so relieved to see the little dragon that it took her a moment to register the strange tone of her chirrups. Alarm? Interest? Both? Maggie's spines were sticking straight up, her tail flicking like a whip. Her golden eyes were fixed on something out at sea.

Carol followed her gaze.

It was mid-morning. The sun was low enough to make her squint, transforming the sea into a glittering silver mass. But there was something dark beneath the eye-watering brightness. Something that was getting closer.

She got to her feet, slowly, mouth open as though she could taste the air in human form the way she tasted blood on the water in shark form. As though she were still in her dream.

Her dream…

"Pree-ee!" Maggie stood up on her hind legs, delight exploding from her mind like a sunray crown. "Eee!"

"Eee?" Carol echoed faintly, and then—

Familiarity washed over her. She didn't know if it was a scent, a sound, the brush of his mind, but she knew at once.

It was Moss.

And not only him.

She didn't hesitate. Didn't even think. Just ran down into the water, sprinting until the water dragged at her thighs, pushing through the waves until the shadow beneath the water resolved into something solid.

She almost saw it. An impression of unbelievable size, of tentacles that stretched far beyond the shallows of their little beach.

But as she approached it, water slapping her face, feet leaving the sand with each wave, it collapsed in on itself. Shadows unraveled. The darkness fell away.

Leaving Moss.

He fell into her arms. Heavy. Too heavy. She shouted his name, but his eyes were closed. His face slack.

The next wave almost pushed them both under.

She should have been terrified. Instead, she was furious.

"Don't just leave him like this!" she yelled at the creature that had abandoned its human host. Water filled her mouth, and she spat. * I need you here still! Help us!*

And all at once, she was surrounded by the same black tentacles that had plucked her from the storm. They bent around her like a cage, holding her and Moss close, while others clawed for the beach and pulled them to dry land.

Again.

Her heart was thudding in her ears, thu-thud, thu-thud , and that was what it was saying. Again. Again. This creature was saving her, was saving both of them, again.

She staggered to her knees on the dry sand, Moss in her arms. He was too heavy, the sort of weight she had to stop herself from calling dead weight. He couldn't be dead. He wasn't. His inner animal was alive, and that meant he was, too.

Because there was no doubting it now. Moss had been lying about being an octopus shifter. This was what he'd been hiding: the tentacles that sprang from his back like coils of pure night, translucent in the blinding morning light and yet somehow solid.

What would his shifted form look like, if this was it still hiding behind his human form?

The moment she thought that, the tentacles began to retreat. "Stop," she burst out.

They hesitated.

"Thank you," she said. "For bringing him back to me."

She didn't know where he'd gone. Or why. She wasn't sure she wanted to know—there were too many possibilities that hurt too much.

But he'd gone, and his inner creature—whatever it was—had brought him back. Alive.

One tentacle, smaller than the rest, reached out to her. It curled at the end like a fern frond and brushed her cheek.

It felt like nothing. The numbness of death, of cold, of the void of space.

And something like Maggie's shared imaginations washed over her mind. An image picked out in over-bright colors, quivering with care.

Below, the deep and endless black. Above—an island more emerald-green than the faded grassy rock they were perched on, set in turquoise waters beneath a butter-yellow sun.

Happiness, the image suggested, with a wariness that made her think the word was somehow forbidden.

And then it was gone. Image, tentacles, everything.

Moss stirred, murmuring.

"Moss?" She reached for his mind, and there it was—an echo of the creature reaching back, before she found Moss. He felt far away. * Moss?*

*Carol…* His lips moved, trying to form the word. * I'm sorry.*

Sorry for what? * It's okay.*

*Tired… can't even think… Meant to go…*

She waited, but that was it. Exhaustion had him.

And she had him.

Her mate, with all his mysteries and secrets, was back. Even if his inner creature had to throw him back on shore to make that happen.

He was alive.

Whatever else he was hiding could wait.

Waiting fucking sucked.

That was Maggie's opinion, anyway. As the day crept by, Carol was inclined to agree.

Moss stayed asleep. He only seemed exhausted, not injured. No injuries she could see, anyway. His breathing was slow and steady, his heartbeat a regular thud that made her want to curl up on his chest and do nothing except listen to it.

Instead, she brought water down from the spring and washed his face so he wouldn't wake up crusted over with salt. She kept some aside for drinking. Collected shellfish and cooked them over an ember fire the way he'd done for her.

When they were done, he was still asleep. She forced herself to eat them without any appetite.

And Moss still didn't wake up.

She couldn't move him. She was stronger than a human her size, but not that strong. Moss was big. All she could do was rig up shelter over him as the sun rose higher and hotter. Sit with him.

And watch the skies.

If Moss's inner animal was the same creature that had saved her during the storm—was it connected to the metal shifters? Was he? He'd talked about shifter myths—was that a slip? A crack in the fa?ade he'd kept up the whole time they'd known each other?

She would have laughed, except she felt too sick. She worked for an investigative agency. As a desk jockey. How many cases had she worked on where shifters used their abilities to con people?

She'd guessed Moss was lying. She'd known he was. So why did it hurt so much to have the evidence in front of her?

How much of the Moss she knew was real?

She had too many questions and too much time to think.

And one thing that wasn't a question at all, that she'd not had time to start thinking until now.

He was her mate. And she was falling in love with him.

And she didn't even know who he was. Not really.

She'd been worried about telling him the truth about herself. But what did her truth matter, compared to him? He was a part of the new world that scared her so much: the world of dragons, and metal bird shifters, and shifter myths. That must be why he'd hidden it. He was something from a world no one else knew existed.

But her? She wasn't special.

Only broken.