43. Moss

43

Moss

"Carol—"

Moss plunged into wakefulness like the ocean had picked him up and thrown him. His mate's name was on his tongue, and his tongue tasted like grit and antiseptic and stale breath. He coughed, rolling over, and found himself staring into Lance MacInnis's watchful eyes.

Strange, how sometimes you couldn't tell if someone was a shifter, and sometimes you couldn't see anything except the predator in their eyes.

Lance stepped back, and his inner snow leopard retreated. "You're back with us?"

"Where'd I go?" Moss said automatically. Tried to say. His throat was raw and dry. He coughed, and someone passed him a cup of water. "Pania?"

* Hey, cuz.* She sounded wary—and weary of being wary. He sensed Ataahua next to her, biting her tongue about something.

"I think it's traditional to say We almost lost you in these situations. But frankly, I'm not sure what just happened." Lance settled against the wall, and the shadow of a toetoe brushed over his face. He knew that shadow. They were still in the lodge on the peninsula?

What had happened? Why did he hurt all over? What had—

"Pree!" Sharp claws pricked Moss's ankles. He looked down the bed—he was in bed?—and met Maggie's golden eyes. She stared pointedly at him, then lowered her head and bit him on the leg. Pointedly.

He stared, and not only at the angry dragonling. His foot was… in a shoebox?

"What's going on?" he asked.

"We almost lost you," a low voice deadpanned.

Moss turned. "Mathis?"

The lion shifter was standing in front of his mate, little Chloe, who was batting his arm away as she scootched around him. "You were melting ," she said as the two men opened their mouths, presumably to stop her telling him he almost melted.

Hell, his head hurt.

"Melting?"

"You went all oozy." Chloe flipped out her tablet. "The video's not great, but—"

" Don't !" Mathis and Lance bellowed in unison.

She let out an unimpressed huff. "Well. He asked what was going on." Her eyes met Moss's, and the hairs on the back of his neck prickled at the concern hiding behind her impudent expression. "We didn't think you'd make it through the attack. By the end, you were the only one the attackers were focusing on, and—they shot you. A lot."

He looked down at himself. Bandages, check. Pain, check. "I guess it didn't take."

"It almost did." Pania wrung her hands. "You've been healing. Slowly. I don't know if the kraken was hurt too, or—if the kraken can be hurt—but you…"

"You've been phasing in and out of your kraken form since you fell unconscious. Part of your kraken, anyway. I get the feeling the whole thing wouldn't have fit in here." Chloe flicked a glance at Lance, as though she was checking something with him.

They were hiding something. All of them. And he was too bound up in pain and nausea to figure it out.

He searched inside himself. The kraken was there. The silver bond that would always lead to his mate, no matter how much he feared it, no matter how far away she—

She wasn't here.

His senses flooded out, telling him what his eyes had already seen but his mind had somehow missed. Everyone else was crowded into the room. But not her.

"Carol—" he began.

"She's gone," Ataahua said, before he could say anything else and before anyone could stop her.

At the bottom of the bed, Maggie hissed angrily.

"But I felt—" What had he felt? Her presence. Her name on his lips as he woke. Why had he thought she was close?

The silver bond wrapped around his heart kept them connected, but it shouldn't trick him into thinking she was close when she was far away.

"Where is she?" he demanded.

"They took her—"

*Moss!*

Carol's voice and heart crashed through the mate bond, a surging tide of hope and fear that froze the blood in his veins.

* Kraken! Come to me! I need you!*