Five

Nala splashed into the water, then disappeared for a moment. Just when I started getting worried, he leaped—there really was no other word for it—out of the sea, his lower half no longer the skin and bones of two separate legs, but instead a tail. A tail that gleamed with gold, brown, and almost black scales, the fin at the end a glorious gradient of brown and gold.

"Close your mouth, sweetie," Tarika said at my side, and I snapped my mouth shut.

"He"s...he"s..."

"A siren. We both are." My eyes snapped to her. What did she look like in her siren form, I wondered?

Eben made a sound low in his throat, and my eyes turned to him. He was watching Nala with narrowed eyes, eyes that slowly slid to me before snapping away when he realized I was watching him, his tentacles flaring outward. What...?

Then, without a word, Eben stalked toward the water, transforming the moment he reached it.

My eyes widened as he changed forms fluidly between one instant and the next, and whatever I"d remembered about his kraken form, I"d forgotten the sheer size of him. He was...he was huge. Definitely bigger than one of those cruise ships they showed in the movies. I"d known he was big, but I hadn"t expected him to be that big.

"Do humans just have really bad control of their jaws?" Tarika asked, her voice completely dry, and I snapped my mouth shut with a clack.

I wished I could get up and go to him, but if walking on a sturdy floor had been torture, trying to do so on sand would probably kill me.

"Sorry. He"s just so... magnificent," I murmured a touch breathlessly as Eben swam, only the top of his head and the tips of two tentacles peeking out of the water.

"And a jealous idiot."

"What do you mean?"

She raised a brow at me. "You didn"t notice? He saw the way you reacted to Nala, and he did not like it. So he had to one-up him and get your attention back."

I blinked as I turned my eyes back to Eben. Was she right? He"d gotten jealous? Over that? Why did I think that was cute?

As I watched, Eben grabbed Nala around the waist and threw him into the air while Nala let out a loud "Whoop!"

Nala flipped twice in the air, the scales on his tail glittering as they reflected the sunlight. He was laughing loudly, which told me this was something they did often and Eben wasn"t actually torturing the poor guy.

"They can act like such kids sometimes," Tarika murmured with a wry smile on her face, and I glanced at her. Her blue eyes were full of fondness, and suddenly, I was glad Eben had these two. When he"d told me his age, I"d been worried he"d been all alone for that long, and I was glad he hadn"t.

I"d never ever thought soulmates—or fated mates, as Eben called it—could be real, but now that I knew, I felt like I"d won some kind of lottery by getting Eben as my mate. He was just so good. Sure, I"d only known him for a day, but he"d done so much for me already.

The thing that truly convinced me, though? It was the fact that I knew without a doubt that even if I hadn"t been his mate, he"d have helped me just as much. Sure, he might not have brought me home with him, since it was his private place, but he would"ve made sure I got the care I needed in the human world. He might not have held me in his tentacles, but he would"ve made sure no one hurt or even triggered me.

"Hobie!" Eben called from the water, and I blinked when I realized Eben had called from the water. He could speak in his kraken form too!

I waved at him, and he stuck one long tentacle out to wave back at me.

"Are you going to hunt?" I asked, and the tentacle shook side to side.

"No, not right now. I usually hunt at night," he said, making me smirk.

"Like an octopus, you mean?" I teased, and then shrieked as water splashed on me, somehow perfectly avoiding my injured leg and the hand with the IV in it, but still getting me right in the face.

"Eben!" I shrieked, as Tarika reached over to the basket and then handed me a towel.

"Don"t worry. The sunscreen was waterproof," Eben said, as if I"d be concerned about that. "And stop calling me an octopus, or I"ll start calling you an ape."

I chuckled at the grumpy tone, then broke into soft laughter because he was just so cute when he was annoyed, and suddenly, I was face-to-face with a giant kraken.

Somehow, he looked even bigger out of the water, his body large enough to be the same size as his house, and I wondered just how far his tentacles would reach if he stretched them out fully.

"You have a beautiful laugh," he said, his gold eyes burning and swirling as if someone had stirred that pot of melted gold, and I sucked in a soft breath as the last of my laughter drifted away.

Reaching out with my free hand, I placed it on his body. He was so warm considering he spent so much time in the water. For some reason, I"d expected his skin to be cool, but it was blazing hot under my touch.

"Once you"re better," Eben said, and I craned my neck up to meet his eyes. Well, eye. They were too far apart for me to properly look at them at the same time. "I"ll take you to see the ocean."

"Uh, I can"t swim," I blurted out like the dumbass I was, and Eben made a huffing sound I took to mean "kraken laugh."

"You won"t have to. Don"t worry," he said, and I jumped before sinking into the touch when he caressed my cheek with one of his tentacles. "Do you want to head inside?"

I shook my head, taking a deep breath of the salty air and that thick, oceany scent that was all Eben. "I want to stay for a bit. You can hang out in the water some more. I like watching you," I added when he looked like he was going to say no. I wondered how I could even tell that. He didn"t exactly have human facial features after all.

Jokes apart, he did look like a humongous octopus, except his golden eyes looked a touch too small for his giant form, and his tentacles only seemed to have those sucker-thingies at the very tips—and were more varied in size and thickness—while I remembered reading that octopuses have them all over and that"s why their tentacles are called arms. I remembered way too many now-not-so-useless octopus facts from my trips to the aquarium, but then again, that place had been my safe space when I lived in the city, and cheaper than most places that sold annual passes. It"d been my sole indulgence, one thing that could make me feel human on the days I felt like nothing more than trash.

I wondered if I"d been attracted to that place because it made me feel closer to Eben in some way, even when I hadn"t known he was waiting for me.

After spending a couple more hours in the sun, I carried Hobie back to his room, where he insisted on taking a shower. On his own.

While his doctor had said it"d be okay as long as he covered up the wound on his thigh properly, there was no way I was letting him do it alone. Humans were fragile creatures, and Hobie had already been hurt.

"How about this?" I suggested, knowing we"d need to compromise somehow if we were going to get anywhere. "I"ll keep my back to you, but you let me support you and cover your thigh with my tentacle so water doesn"t get into the wound."

Hobie stared at me for a long moment, and I begged him with my eyes to please let me help him. I was not dying from a stupid heart attack, damn it, and I wasn"t letting him die from slipping in the bathroom either.

He gave a loud sigh before his shoulders slumped. "Fine. But no peeking."

"No peeking," I promised, and his lips twitched up on one side before he shook his head.

I removed the IV from his hand, making sure the little cap on the needle was screwed in properly before grabbing a fresh towel and a change of clothes for him. Putting them all in the bathroom, I returned to the bedroom and helped Hobie to his feet.

"Huh. My right leg doesn"t feel like it"ll buckle under my weight anymore," he said, then winced. "Okay, the left one is still fucked up. Shit!"

"Do you need some pain medicine?" I asked as he gritted his teeth and shook his head. Humans might have been fragile, but they were also pretty damned resilient. At least my human was.

"Nah, I"ll be fine." He insisted on walking—or more like hopping—to the bathroom, and I didn"t know whether to love or be annoyed by his pigheadedness. I had a feeling it was that very stubbornness that had allowed him to survive the monster who"d hurt him.

Once he was in the bathroom, I dutifully turned my back to him as he undressed and removed his bandages—he"d agreed to let me wrap new ones later, which made me wonder why he was making such a big deal about me seeing him naked—keeping one tentacle wrapped firmly around his waist. I wasn"t sure if he could feel it, but I was practically holding him up, just allowing his feet to touch the floor so he wouldn"t freak out.

"Okay, you can wrap up my leg now." His voice was hesitant, and since I couldn"t see him, I had to trail my tentacle down his leg until I found the right spot, which made him jerk in my hold. If I hadn"t been holding him, he would"ve taken a tumble right then.

"Shit! That tickled." He sounded supremely flustered, and I wondered if his cheeks were red.

"Sorry."

He gave a huff before heading to the shower, my tentacles stretching to accommodate him.

While Hobie showered, I fiddled with the phone Tarika had handed me on my way back from fetching some towels. She"d bought it for Hobie on her supply run, insisting that these days every human had one of them. It was a sleek device with a large screen and a logo of a half-eaten apple on the back, its color matching the silver of Tarika"s hair. Hobie would like it.

Now that I had Hobie in my life, I wanted to pamper the heck out of him. He"d led a tough life, even before the hell he"d been in the past few months. He"d said he"d been homeless, which made me wonder just when was the last time someone had taken care of him and loved him the way he was supposed to be loved.

Over the years, I"d realized that while humans were the least powerful in terms of magical strength, they were also capable of the worst of atrocities. Most supes, when they targeted humans or other supes, usually did it to gain something. Power, strength, land, food. Humans were one of the few species that killed simply for the sake of killing, that enjoyed hurting people and took pleasure in it. Monsters, I"d learned a long time ago, were rarely people like me, even if we were the ones always labeled as such in the stories humans told each other.

The water shut off in the bathroom, and I made sure Hobie didn"t trip as he walked out into the dry area of the bathroom. I kept my ear on him as he dried off, and then took my tentacle off his thigh when he asked me to, leaving only the one around his waist.

"You can turn around now."

I found him standing there with his arms at his sides, dressed only in simple white boxers, every cut and bruise somehow appearing even starker on his pale skin.

"Do you feel better now?"

I walked over to the cabinet under the sink and fished out the large medical kit Tarika had brought when they went to fetch the doctor.

"I feel fresher," he said, and I didn"t push as I picked him up and placed him on the counter, making him chuckle softly. "You really enjoy carrying me around, don"t you?"

I shrugged, not wanting to implicate myself, and placed the kit beside him on the counter. I applied the antiseptic cream over the stitches on his thigh before carefully wrapping the wound, then turned my attention to the scrapes and cuts on his chest. The doctor had bandaged him last time while I"d watched to make sure he didn"t hurt Hobie, but seeing the wounds up close filled me with anger. How could anyone hurt him like that?

Once Hobie was better, I was going to hunt that bastard down and eat him. I usually avoided consuming humans—I couldn"t remember the last time—but I"d make an exception for the man who thought he could hurt my mate and get away with it.