52. Epilogue

Moss and his mate floated on the surface, the swell of waves all around them and the sky a blue-white shell far above. The kraken's power kept the swell from overwhelming them.

Somewhere behind them, Lance and the others were aboard a ship. The last few days had been a flurry of activity, and this was the result: a small force, with a baby dragon for a navigator and heralded by birds whose wings rang like clashing shields.

And with the kraken in front, in case they were all wrong and the Soul-Eater was already free.

Who knew what lay ahead. But here, as the water changed from cool to icy, he and Carol were stealing a moment to themselves.

* What does your kraken think of all this?* Carol asked, underlining the question with a reminder that he'd asked the same about her shark, not too long ago. A lifetime ago.

The answer came to him like the scent of smoke on the night breeze. There was so much the kraken hadn't done, for so long. To exist like this at all, to watch the sky change color and know that its vessel was holding his mate in his arms, was more than it had dared to dream.

Carol sighed, satisfied. Then she rolled over, facing him in the water. "We don't know what the future's going to bring crashing down on us. Before that happens…" She smiled, but there was a question in her eyes. "I've met your family now. You've experienced what it's like to have a video call with more great white shifters than anyone would ever want to encounter. And if we get through this— when we get through this—we're going to keep showing each other where we came from. Where we grew up. And… I want that to include the kraken."

"It's not like we can leave it behind," he joked.

"I mean—"

Her meaning washed through him. He shivered. "You want to visit where it's meant to be imprisoned?"

"Not if there's some—some magic that will trap it there? Or something? But—" She bit her lip, the same careful pressure of sharp teeth against soft skin that had enthralled him the first time he saw it. "I've been… I've had these dreams."

She hesitated, then slipped her hand into his and closed her eyes. A vision flowed to him through the mate bond.

The crushing pressure of water far below where any light could reach. A world so distant from the surface, it might as well have been on an alien planet; cold, remote. Some things lived there, but it wasn't a place for humans. For people.

Then even deeper, pulling hand over hand into a chasm, through narrow gaps in the wall, past light, past warmth, past the staring eyes of the creatures that lived here in the deep…

He gasped and jerked away. She didn't let go.

"Why would you want to go there?" His voice shook. * Why?*

*I've been dreaming about it,* she replied. * I only put it together after you told me about the kraken needing to be exiled while it waited to be called. I think—I think we need to go and see it. So we can put it behind ourselves. All of us.*

The kraken stilled. And then, to Moss's surprise, it agreed.

The Soul-Eater's prison was still distant, but they weren't that far away from the chasm where the kraken dwelled. Not when it could pull the ocean around it like a shroud, almost teleporting from place to place.

They traveled deeper than before. His octopus watched, fascinated, as gills reappeared on Carol's neck as they swam, then seemed astonished to find the same on Moss's own neck.

* How will you manage with the pressure?* he asked Carol, not sure how far her new control over her partial shifting went.

* I'm not sure,* she replied. * In my dreams, I was in human form. But that was dreams, right?* She gently touched her gills. * My shark can cope with deeper water. But I don't know how finely I can tune my human body to keep up. I'd better…*

She shifted, a single smooth movement that would have seemed easy if not for the fact they were still in each other's heads. He felt how much determination it took her to shift so quickly. The love and compassion she had for her shark, the new understanding between them so bright and happy. But also the memory of the first time she'd shifted. The fear and confusion as her friends turned on her and her own body transformed into something new.

* I'm here,* he reassured her.

* I know.* There was a brief pause, and he sensed, but did not overhear, her talking with her shark. When she focused on him again, her mind was brighter. Happier. * Do you want to lead on?*

He took her down into the dark, where he'd once been afraid the kraken wanted to steal her away. As the pressure grew, he shifted into kraken form, and they swam deeper, the kraken's tentacles a guard of honor for the great white.

There were the huge rock faces from Carol's dream, tumbled like broken buildings. The darkness so deep, even the kraken couldn't see through it. But it knew its way by touch. Remembered every crag of rock, every narrow crevice.

And it hated it. Hated it, and was afraid of it, but it kept going, because his mate had asked it to.

How many years did it spend down here? Moss thought, overwhelmed by the despair roiling through the kraken's mighty soul. It volunteered to save the world, and it ended up… here.

Had the shadow dragons known it would be here so long?

Memories surfaced. The kraken showed them to him reluctantly. It had been the monster everyone feared; a great weapon in the fight against the Soul-Eater. A killer.

The years down here had changed that.

Too many years, he thought to it.

Enough years to find you and your mate, it replied. To become something I never could have been, before.

At last they were there. He knew the taste of the water and the chill in his blood the moment they arrived. A narrow crack in the world, and beyond it, a dark, empty cavern.

Carol's shark nosed it. * I'm almost blind down here. Can't map the shape of things from living creatures, because there's… nothing… living down here.* She paused. * How could you even fit in there? The kraken's too big.*

Human form, the kraken told him, and he repeated its explanation to Carol as he listened. * A human can swim through. And—the kraken can keep them alive. For a few minutes. Protecting them from the cold, and the pressure.*

But not completely. That experience would leave the human and the kraken both exhausted. And once inside the prison, it would shift back, lurking in the darkness until it was needed again. Locked away not by prison walls or chains, but by the kraken's human host being sworn to their duty, and knowing the danger that faced their world if they tried to escape.

His heart broke for it.

I was too dangerous to be let out, the kraken argued—but its voice was exhausted. It remembered too well the other humans it had held in its soul, tethering them to this place and tethered by them in turn.

Moss's great uncle. And his great uncle's ancestors before him, a line stretching back to a world he couldn't imagine. A world split by war against an enemy who had torn shifters' souls apart with a touch.

They would have given anything to keep those they loved safe.

*But it didn't work, did it?*

Moss didn't realize until she spoke that Carol could hear the kraken, too. * The Soul-Eater never escaped,* he said.

* No. I'm not talking about that. I mean—the kraken was so weakened after it—you—rescued me. And that was one storm . Not a—a battle. And everything else it's done since then has left it exhausted. Staying down here, alone, so far from the world… it wasn't in any condition to wage war on anyone, even if the Soul-Eater did escape. The only reason you had the energy to come after me on the ship was because the mate bond gave you that energy.*

Silence filled Moss's soul as the kraken absorbed her words, shocked.

* I'm going in,* she said.

*Wait!* Moss said, and WAIT, the kraken howled, but she was gone, her shark form slipping—

Into human form.

She disappeared into the cavern, beyond the kraken's reach. Beyond him.

No. No!

He rushed after her without thinking. Rock grated and crumbled beneath the kraken's tentacles, and then he wrenched himself into human form, dragging himself forward hand over hand, the ocean's might pushing down on him but the kraken's power holding him safe. Holding her. Magic spilled out before him, seeking his mate's slim, pale form, finding—

An empty cavern, the black night sky wrapped in stone, and his mate floating in the center.

He could see her. He could see. The magic he'd sent out ahead filled the air with shimmering light, like the bioluminescence some sea creatures created. Green and blue and purple light washed through the yawning emptiness of the kraken's tomb, as though his mate had plucked a thousand stars from the heavens to fill this lonely place.

Her eyes were full of love and sadness. * This is where you thought you needed to be?*

The kraken tasted her words, rolling them around as Moss swam forward and took Carol's outstretched hands. * It was where I was meant to go,* he said.

* Meant to?* Her thoughts were wry and bitter. Echoes of images flashed through his mind, whisked from the edges of her mind. Fairchild, talking about what shifters were meant to be. The Stymphalian birds, taking on their vicious forms like they were meant to during whatever long-ago war they'd fought, and being trapped like that for untold years.

Carol herself, now that she could strip all traces of her shark from her face. Choosing not to, even though she was meant to be either all human or all shark.

* The only thing you're MEANT to be is mine,* she told him, and the shiver of anxiety beneath those brave words made them all the more delicious. She'd spent so long making herself less than. Less frightening. Less unusual. Less of anything that would make ripples in the world.

And now she was claiming him, the kraken, as her own.

She kissed him with wild defiance, stamping her mark on him. Her fingers burned trails of fire down his jaw and chest. In this place of darkness and isolation, she was life. Heat and passion and everything he was not meant to have.

They came together like lightning striking the sea. Two bodies that fit together, in this hellhole that neither of them should have been able to survive in. His magic kept them safe. Lit up every stone that had never seen the light before.

And the mate bond was even brighter than his magic. A woven thread of pure light, holding them together with all the love in both their hearts.

* You're never coming back here,* Carol told him afterwards, fierce and compassionate. * Not while you're my mate. And not whoever comes after you. We'll find a different way to protect the world. A better way.*

*No more secrets?*

*No more secrets.* She smiled, crooked-edged and sharp. * I thought I was broken. But my shark wanted to save me, to look after me, it just didn't know how. We were never broken. Just all twisted up the wrong way, not knowing what each part of us needed. And now—now that I can look however I like, I want to look like this. " No hesitation now. Only certainty, warm as a campfire. *This is the real me. All of me.*

He pulled her close, pressing his nose and forehead against hers. *I thought I'd lost everything, and here I am, with more than I ever imagined waiting for me. My soul in three parts instead of two. A monster in my heart who stole me away to keep me safe from the vow it took centuries ago. My octopus, hiding from us both and finally realizing it'd been gone too long and things had got weird.*

He chuckled, and her thoughts reflected the same heart-wringing fondness she felt for her inner shark. The acknowledgement that their animals, these strange, inhuman parts of their souls, could be as lost and confused as the human parts.

* And here I am .* His voice softened, his hands coming up to cup her face. * With my heart and soul cracked open and stitched back together again. My fate broken and reforged. Because of you. For you. And now I get to keep you.*

The possessive curl in his voice thrilled through her. The ocean sang to him, melodies of the joy rippling across her skin.

*Forever?* she asked, light in her eyes.

*Forever,* he agreed, and kissed her.

Hundreds of miles away, where ice clawed its shape from the ocean, something that had not moved for centuries opened its eyes.

Thank you for reading my book!