Chapter 26

chapter 26

ELLE

I decided to go to dinner with the others, rather than sit in my room alone wondering why a kraken had a crush on me. My presence thrilled Donna, but Marcus much less so.

She and I chatted about pets we'd had growing up, times we'd been to the same cities: New York, LA, and Chicago, how weird it was to miss weather, because everything was permanently temperature controlled down here, and at the end of it, when I was helping her clean up, she stopped me.

"Thanks."

I looked around ALRI's small galley, as though there were someone else nearby she might be talking to. "For what?"

"For hanging out," she said, giving me a tight smile. "Things always get weird with you all here. Marcus likes to pretend it doesn't happen, whereas I just dive into the awkward." She grabbed the nearest plate and began scrubbing it. "You're gonna get all busy soon and forget we exist, and while I don't want you to feel bad that you do—I just want you to know how nice it's been to have another woman to talk with. It's been a dick festival down here for months. "

I almost choked on my own tongue and then laughed out loud, not just in my mind. It felt good—like I was talking to Lena.

"It just gets so boring, you have no idea," she went on. "I've read all the books I brought twelve times already. I've watched all of Friends , Homeland , you name it. I think I can recite the whole first season of Grey's from memory. But it's not the same as talking to someone new, you know?"

"Yeah," I said, and then thought around. I couldn't feel Ceph nearby, and Donna was as close as I was going to get to a confidant down here. Plus he wasn't technically mission related—hell, they'd both seen him. "Donna?" I asked, and she looked over. "Would you date a kraken?"

She stared at me as her eyes went wide, and then she got a serious look. "Girl, I have been down here so long I would date a fried fish sandwich."

I giggled at the preposterousness of her statement. "How would that even work?"

"You tell me!" she said, laughing back. "Love is love, baby! But—a kraken? Really?"

Saying it like that made it sound like there might be room for more than one in my heart.

I didn't think there would be.

"Yeah," I breathed—and only barely remembered not to tell her his name.

She reached back and flipped open her pantry cabinet door, so I could see her poster, before holding her hand out beneath it like she was a game show presenter. "You know what this says?"

I couldn't see any words on it, so I shook my head.

"It says live the life of your McDreams."

I pretended to be serious for a minute. "Is that like a new thing on the McDonald's dessert menu?"

"Oh, fuck you," she said with a laugh, and I dodged her throwing a towel at me, before heading back down the hall. "I recommend nozzle setting number four!" she called after me, and I turned bright red, hoping like hell that Marcus hadn't heard her.

I could tell Cepharius was waiting for me by the time I got into my room.

I could feel the sensation of his presence in my mind slowly growing as I neared, like I was easing into the world's most perfect bath.

"Hi," I told him, waving at him from the door as I came in. I moved to stand in front of the window, and wondered if I could ask Marcus about getting his help setting up a curtain situation if this conversation went badly.

"Are you full?" he asked solicitously.

"Yeah," I said, and then we were both there, waiting for the other to take the lead.

What was it Donna had said, about diving into the awkward?

"I know I'm a human—and you're a kraken," I started off, at the same time he did.

"How did you get your scars?"

Him asking that totally derailed me. It meant that he'd seen me the prior night—or he'd seen me looking at them in a mirror in my mind, which was the same kind of peeping-Tom thing.

"You saw me! You lied!"

Ceph was undeterred. "There was no point in telling you the truth then, but now there is. Are you of your species' breeding age?"

I took a step back as though he'd stabbed me, and my hands flew across my chest to rest on their opposite shoulders, trying to protect me, too little too late.

"Are you asking me because I don't have breasts?" I managed to keep the quaver out of my thoughts, but my eyes were filling up with tears.

I wasn't prepared to have this conversation—I'd assumed I'd be with Grant up until about seventy-two hours ago. I didn't know how to talk about my surgery with strangers.

"No," he answered. "I'm asking you because my knowledge of human breeding cycles is limited, and I would like to court you—but only if it is appropriate."

I thought I felt my heart stop.

"Are you all right, Elle?" he asked, and I nodded, so he continued. "You have hurt, and I have hurt. Let us not hurt, anymore, together."

I put a hand to my mouth, half a second away from sobbing. The thought of having a relationship with a kraken was insane—but then so were all of the events that'd led me here, and I was 99.99 percent sure there was a spaceship at the bottom of the ocean less than a mile away.

So why the hell not?

Especially when it felt so right?

"Okay," I whispered, both out loud and with my mind.

"Yes?" he repeated, as though he hadn't heard me, though I could feel his elation building. "I can court you?"

"Yes," I said, with a stronger nod and a silly smile. "But only if you explain to me what that means." I wiped the tears away from my cheeks. "The human in me is a little nervous, but the xenoscientist in me is pretty thrilled."

I felt a wave of the most pure, most perfect joy from him. It was just as strong as the sorrow he'd given me earlier over the loss of his wife, and it also took my breath away.

"Then I will endeavor to make both halves of you happy—and I will do better than explain things. I will show you, beginning tomorrow morning."

I walked up to the window and touched it with my hand—and another hand came out of the depths to meet it, matching mine, half again as big in any direction, in the same blue I'd told him was my favorite, on the opposite side of the glass.

"But for now, open your tablet back up," he said in my mind. "Were you able to flip the feed? "

I blinked myself back to reality. "Yes." I'd set up a basic algorithm to do it and extract the symbols in order before I'd gone to dinner.

"Good. Then let us consider how we might solve this puzzle together."

I curled back up against the window, knowing that he was behind me, and we were working together.

It was the perfect first date.