25. Moss

25

Moss

"Who is the Soul-Eater?"

Lance stood at the head of the table, arms folded. He'd called a meeting the moment the bird-woman was secure—or as secure as they could make her, given that as soon as she woke up, nothing could stop her escaping.

Except the kraken.

Sourness roiled in his gut. He'd seen the bird-woman coming towards Carol and acted on instinct.

And Carol had begged him not to hurt her.

No matter what she thought she knew about the kraken, this was the truth of it. It was violence, and death, and she had to plead with it not to straight-up fucking kill people at a moment's notice.

It was all over. She knew who he was. What he was. And what he was capable of.

And now she was looking at him from across the table with a question in her eyes, tired but trusting.

He felt sick.

Ataahua and Pania were sitting either side of him. He'd never expected to see either of them again. They'd never expected to see him, either. They'd hugged, kissed, and then remembered who he was. What he was.

It was really bloody awkward. They were glad he was back, amazed he was still himself—but he was the kraken, too. All the familial love in the world couldn't make that not weird.

But they were his cousins. They were here, and they were on his side. And when Moss didn't speak, his tongue twisted up by the reality of what he was and what the future held for them all, Pania filled in for him.

"The Soul-Eater is an enemy to all shifters. A being with the ability to take a shifter's animal away from them and add it to his own power."

Lance's gaze was sharp. Around the table, the rest of his team watched Moss and his cousins with similar expressions of wary curiosity.

Not as wary as they should have been, though.

"Why would the woman downstairs mistake you for this being?" Lance asked.

Pania began to answer, but Moss nodded to her. He would take this. "Because the Soul-Eater's a monster. All the animals he takes from his victims become a part of him. It makes sense that she saw me and thought she'd found him." His voice was gravelly.

Across the table, Carol looked thoughtful. "We thought they attacked us because they were after Maggie. If they were trying to find the Soul-Eater all along, why target the plane?"

"The dragons guard the prison that holds the Soul-Eater. Their magic controls it. If these bird shifters want the Soul-Eater, they need to take out the shadow dragons first."

She blanched. "Kill them?"

"How would they have known we had Maggie with us?" Keeley asked.

Lance growled. "If this means there's another goddamned mole in the company—"

"We were a private flight heading to Antarctica. You don't need to be a genius to track flight plans. They might not have even known for sure that we had a dragon on board, if they're targeting anyone heading that far south." The woman who'd spoken was a cheerful brunette seated next to the scarred lion shifter, Mathis Delacourt. Moss recognized her distantly: Chloe Kent. Mathis's mate. She hadn't been on the plane with Carol and the others, but she'd flown in as soon as she heard her mate had been in danger.

Right now, she was scowling. "Are we the only people who were targeted? I haven't heard any news of other attacks, but maybe I need to look deeper…"

The others carried on with the questions. No answers. Only speculation, and worry.

"Francine and Julian will be in danger."

"Have there been any reports of other lost aircraft?"

"We've already delayed too long. We need to—"

Someone swore. Moss drifted further from the conversation, deeper into the churning waters of his own mind.

A mind from which the kraken was markedly absent.

It had leapt to defend them against the bird-woman quickly enough. Then as soon as it was no longer needed, it had retreated further than ever before. It felt exhausted. As though every time it emerged tired it more, drawing from energy reserves it no longer had. But…

That was a trap, right? A lure to put him off his guard before it struck.

Again.

It kept using the same tricks. And if he didn't do something about it, he was going to fall for it. Again.

"—how it all fits together. Dragons. These Stymphalian bird-people. And now a kraken." Lance took off his glasses and rubbed the permanent line between his eyebrows.

" The kraken," Ataahua corrected him primly. "Seriously. Be glad there's only one." She nudged Moss, a wordless gesture of support. "And be glad it chose my cuz here, and he didn't make it to the deep before you ran across the knifey birds."

Across the table, Carol frowned.

He took a deep breath. "I don't know how it fits together any better than you do."

"But you're more familiar with the pieces," Carol said quietly.

And he'd hidden them from her, while they were alone on the island. Guilt constricted his throat. He coughed, leaning forward in his seat to address the whole room.

"The Soul-Eater was imprisoned thousands of years ago. The shadow dragons—Maggie's people—their magic keeps it trapped. And the kraken is the world's last defense if the shadow dragons' fortress falls and the Soul-Eater escapes."

Carol frowned. "Why?"

"Why… defend the world?" Her steady gaze unnerved him.

"Why put the kraken within reach?" Keeley interjected. "If the Soul-Eater can steal other people's inner animals, the last thing you'd want is for it to control something as powerful as the kraken."

He felt as though he were stripping himself bare in front of them. Telling Carol—that was one thing. But the others?

This is their future, he reminded himself. Their lives at stake. Their families. Their world.

We've kept the truth a secret for too long.

"You've seen the kraken's nightmare tentacles. How they're real and unreal at the same time, made of magic. The Soul-Eater needs physical touch to take a shifter's animal soul. The kraken is the only shifter with the power to hold him off without risking itself."

Carol looked worried, as though hearing the explanation again only raised more questions.

"Why keep it trapped? Can't it be killed?" Chloe demanded. Everyone stared at her. She raised her hands, eyes flickering, and Moss felt a sudden urge to look elsewhere.

"I'm just saying! No need to look at me like I suggested we fly over there and gut him personally. And, uh, not to volunteer anyone, but if Moss here is the only one who can actually do any damage to the guy…"

Moss cut in. "The Soul-Eater is eternal. If he dies, he'll reincarnate in another body. A thousand years ago that meant he could wipe out shifters over half a continent before he was stopped. But once you found him, you found him. Now? When anyone can fly around the world in a matter of hours? Losing track of him could be the end of us."

"Or you find the reincarnated child again before his power emerges and imprison a kid."

A chill went down Moss's spine at Carol's words. "Or that."

Except he'd never thought of it that way before.

Lance sighed. "Anyone else feel like we've stumbled into an old fairy tale?"

"I've felt like that since the moment Maggie hatched." Keeley gave him a gentle smile. "Remember, even you ‘normal' shifters are not exactly business as usual to those of us who grew up human."

"Wherever these bird shifters popped up from, it sounds like they're the key to everything happening here," Mathis mused. "This keeps happening, doesn't it? You came looking for me and the others that Gerald Harper locked up—and you found a dragon. We all go on a trip to take the dragon home—and come across metal bird shifters and a kraken. Who knows what's waiting for us if we go looking for the birds now?"

"At least we know about them," Chloe chirped. "Silver lining to them attacking the plane. Sure, Carol and Maggie and the eggs went flying, and I thought I'd finally let my mate out of my sight only for him to almost explode in a crashing plane—but we know what we're up against."

"We have one of them locked up in the basement," Carol said quietly. Moss shot her a sharp look, his instincts wary.

"And you're all alive," Chloe went on. "Nobody died. It could have been worse. We all could have done with a bit less trauma, but… it could have been worse."

Mathis put his arm around her. She sank into him as though it had been taking all her strength to hold herself upright away from him, and being in his arms was as natural as letting gravity hold her to the earth.

The way true mates should be.

The way he and Carol would be, if he wasn't bound by fate to abandon her.

Or worse. To keep her.

"That assumes they only attacked us." Lance's voice was grim, and it dragged Moss from his own dark thoughts. "We know they exist now. We don't know how many of them there are or where their base is. Maggie might not have been the only target that night."

The meeting went on for hours. Lance and his crew were professionals, but the panic sizzling under the surface made it clear they knew they might be out of their depths.

They all were.

At last they came to a decision. They would continue to Antarctica, taking precautions against the Stymphalian threat.

Him. He was the precaution.

Everyone was going to get what they wanted. Maggie would be back with her uncle. Moss would take the kraken and all the danger it posed to Antarctica. They would deal with the Stymphalian birds and the Soul-Eater. The kraken's great duty would finally be fulfilled. And Carol…

The one thing he wanted after all of that was to talk to Carol alone, so of course as soon as he was showered and dressed in clean clothes, he was corralled by his cousins.

Ataahua wasted no time grabbing him by his upper arms and shaking him. Pania whacked her on the shoulder until she let him go, but that just gave her the freedom to storm around the room, waving her arms.

"You disappear! You don't contact us for days! And when you do , suddenly the secret that our family has spent literal generations keeping safe is—poof! Tell everyone! Why not? And you're—you're here. "

The mingled relief and dread in her voice told him what she'd expected. What he'd failed to do.

"I thought we'd seen the end of you, back in New York." Ataahua's voice cracked. "I thought that was it."

"I did, too."

"What happens now?" Pania was standing with her back against the door, arms folded. "When you sent your message, we thought you'd go to the deep before rescue arrived for Carol and the dragonlings."

The deep. The end of the line, in all his nightmares.

"Did you hear the call? Is that why you're still here?" Ataahua's lips were pale.

"No."

"Then…?" They both stared at him, matching expressions on their faces.

They couldn't have heard. Carol had told her team, but the gossip hadn't reached his cousins yet. That was a first.

"Carol is my fated mate."

Pania's gaze turned utterly blank. Ataahua whirled around, saw he wasn't joking, and threw herself face-first onto the bed, where she screamed into the pillow.

"That's impossible," Pania said.

Ataahua screamed more.

"The kraken doesn't have a fated mate."

"So we've always been told." Moss's own voice was as carefully blank as Pania's face.

Why? The question sounded like one of Carol's, sharp and inquisitive and sliding in edgeways at the corner of his vision. She was beginning to rub off on him. Why not until now? Why not until he was around the only other people who'd grown up with the specter of this fate hanging over them? Did he want their support?

Or did he want them to close their hearts and tell him to close his, too, and that he knew where his duty lay?

"You can't take her with you."

He flinched. "I'd never do that."

"Then—what are you going to do?" Ataahua's face twisted as she looked up from the bed. "She's your soulmate! You can't leave her. But you can't take her to—that place. God! It's bad enough one of us has to go, let alone anyone else!"

"The kraken has never had a mate. But—whoever it chooses has always gone to the deep at once. So there was never a chance for them to find their mate, if they did… if they were meant to have one." Pania's voice was as pale and hollow as her expression. "No mate. No direct line of descent. And everyone else in the family makes sure to have a couple of kids so that when one of us gets tapped on the shoulder, there's always someone left to pad out the next generation."

While the kraken waited, chained in the deep, for the call that would fulfil its duty. The call that never came.

"Moss." Pania's voice cracked. "What if—"

She couldn't make herself say it. Her throat bobbed as the words stuck in her throat.

Ataahua whispered, "What are you going to do?"

He knew what he should do. The rules were clear. The moment he'd become the latest incarnation of the kraken, he should have taken himself off to the deep and ensured he could never harm anyone.

Anyone he wasn't meant to harm, that was.

These last few days could be argued away as necessary delays. The kraken and the shadow dragons' histories were intertwined; looking after little Maggie, ensuring she and the two unhatched eggs made it safely back to their protectors, could be considered part of his duty.

And now…

Moss raised his head. "I know what I have to do."

Two pairs of dark eyes watched him, waiting.

It might have been either of them. If the kraken had chosen Ataahua or Pania, he would have lost one of them forever. And they would have lost one another. He couldn't bear to imagine it. Ataahua's cackling laughter, or Pania's steady warmth, locked away beneath the waves.

And he never would have met Carol.

An uncanny stillness washed through him, cold and bright and sharp. He never would have met Carol, because she would have died out there in the storm.

He steeled his shoulders. Decision made. No turning back. And it was easy to pull on a smile as he said, "Fancy place like this must have a kitchen. Let's start there."

The kitchen was well equipped and stocked to feed guests with expensive tastes. Expensive tastes and good palates—an important distinction. Everything was as fresh and high quality as though he'd plucked it from the markets and the ocean himself.

Next time , he told himself, as though there would be a next time.

He was lucky to get this one chance. If it was a chance, and not a trap.

The deep black of his soul was silent. The kraken was still dormant.

So he still had a few precious hours to do this one thing for her.

Kitchens had always been his sanctuary. Commercial or home, well stocked with all the mod cons or bare cupboards and a blunt knife with the handle broken off. So long as there was something to cook and something to cook it with, he could make himself at home.

Or so he'd always thought. Now, with his future looming cold and empty in front of him, he knew there was one other key ingredient.

Someone to cook for.

The twins usually crowded him in the kitchen, in the lovingly-helpful-but-annoying-as-fuck way that family was so good at, but this time they gave him space. He told them what he was planning. They didn't tell him he was being a complete dumbass. That was a good sign, right?

He cleaned, and prepped, and lost himself in the familiar movements of chopping and stirring and tossing, the symphony of sound and taste and heat that pulled at him like the moon pulled the tides. The hiss of the gas. The burst of flavor on his tongue. The myriad scents billowing in steam or crackling in fat or spiraling upwards, caught in smoke. The moment everything came together.

Plating, the usual mixture of frustration and frivolity. Did he enjoy fussing with food like this, or did he only do it because people wanted to see a fuss being made? Too late to figure it out now.

There was a platform a short distance down from the main lodge, looking out over the water. He laid out place settings on a table there and set the rest of the stage: aromatic logs in the firepit, which would burn without the salt-mineral stench of the driftwood they'd had to use on the island. Fresh water that didn't taste like the dirt it had filtered through on its way to the surface. Chilled wine to match the food he'd prepared.

Everything he wished he could have offered her from the moment they met.

He took the shrubbery-lined path back up towards the main residence. The twins were playing with Maggie in the garden, hiding in the flax bushes and jumping out. Was Carol with them? They'd said they would tell her he wanted to talk, and where to meet her, but there was no sign of her.

The call of the ocean spun a sweet story over his skin. It could tell her where she was, bring him the shape and intoxicating scent of her from where the traces of salt in the coastal air brushed against her own skin.

No. Even with the kraken silent, he couldn't risk that.

He met Pania's eye and made a questioning gesture. She raised both eyebrows at him.

Fine. He walked closer. "Have you seen—"

"She already followed you down, cuz."

He looked back down the path.

Carol was standing on the edge of the deck, staring back up at him.

He swallowed. He'd set all this up for her. But now she was here, and he couldn't decide whether she'd been drawn in by the lure he'd unwittingly set.

Or whether she'd decided to hunt him down herself.