23. Moss

23

Moss

He's my mate.

The claim burned through him, moonlight-bright and dark as sin. Something forbidden. The kraken belonging to anything but the duty it was brought into the world for.

Deep inside him, something shivered with a feeling it didn't understand.

The shadows that clustered around him faded. More of the kraken's magic; power that could blot out the sun. To make whatever cursed place it existed feel like the depths where it belonged.

He hadn't even told it to leave, but the kraken withdrew, pulling all of itself so far into his soul, he took his first free breath in what felt like years.

Maggie leapt onto his shoulder. She barely weighed more than a kitten, but her agitation struck him like a slap across the face. She grabbed his ear in her claws and berated him like she'd just caught him stealing fresh cookies from the pan.

"And here I thought you didn't like me," he joked weakly.

"Pree ee !" Maggie was adamant. About what, he wasn't sure. Foggy images buffeted his mind, but he was too scoured out to translate them.

Wind scuffed through his hair. The hum in his ears turned out to be the roar of the helicopter's motors overhead as it wheeled in to land on a patch of flat ground further along the island.

The noise made conversation impossible. And if he touched Carol's mind now, he didn't know what she would see.

Not that anything she'd seen so far had put a dent in her determination to stop him. To… keep him.

He let out a breath that felt like it took the last of his reserves with it. Carol slipped in beneath his shoulder.

"You're sure about this?" he muttered into her hair.

She shouldn't have been able to hear him. But she turned her face up to his, her eyes solemn. "More sure than I've been of anything in my life. You can't save the world alone."

"That wasn't what I meant."

She reached up to touch his cheek. Light flared in his heart; one end of a delicate ribbon stretched between his soul and hers.

How could he ever have thought he could let her go?

"How do you think they're going to react to meeting the kraken?"

"But Lance and Keeley already know you, don't they?"

"Sure. Through work. But they know Moss Taylor, good at cooking, does tricks with knives. Not Moss Taylor, kraken and guardian of the deep." His voice dropped. "Even I don't know him. Not really."

"It's going to be fine."

"You'll cover for me if I do something embarrassing like pass out?" His voice was only shaking a bit. "All that time I spent unconscious and I'm still exhausted. Doesn't make sense."

She didn't laugh. She squeezed his hand, and the corner of her mouth quirked sideways in perfect understanding, which was better and worse at the same time.

A figure dismounted from the helicopter: a black man with striking green eyes. Moss spoke without thinking.

"Lance?"

Lance MacInnis met his eyes and hesitated, shock flashing across his face for a microsecond before he resumed striding towards them.

"B-boss, this is—"

Carol's stutter was back. Moss pulled her closer instinctively, and Lance's eyebrows came together as he noted the protective movement.

"Moss Taylor. We already know each other. Friends of friends," Lance said flatly. "Isn't that right?"

How much had he seen? The power writhing around him as the helicopter approached? The darkness dancing beneath the waves, waiting for the chopper to come close enough to strike?

From the sharpness in Lance's eyes, he'd seen enough.

Moss felt as though a door was clanging shut behind him.

The two halves of his life were coming together. And the people who'd met the version of himself he'd fabricated were about to discover how little they truly knew about him.