Page 82 of The Kraken Games

“Yep. He’s the best. So even though my grandfather forbade her to take me there, Mom overruled him. She learned to concoct the healing potions from the recipes Waldo gave her, and she made me do the exercises. Every single day she had me doing those damn stretches.” He laughed. “She was a complete tyrant. She got my dad on side, so much so that he stood up to the elders, which for my dad, is really saying something.”

“Couldn’t your own doctors heal you?”

“No, they’ve lost much of their healing magic through the centuries.”

“But kraken can still shift. That’s a kind of magic, isn’t it?”

“Shifting is buried deep in our gene pool. We are lucky that it hasn’t weakened in us.”

“Hana said humans have not set foot in Thedaka for hundreds of years.”

“That’s true. But we know there was some alchemy with humans a long time ago, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to take on human form.” His gaze held hers. “Maybe it could happen again.”

“How? Your people hate humans.”

“They didn’t hate you Luna, they’re just cautious.”

Luna rolled her eyes. “Next you’ll be telling me the elders have a soft spot for me. No, they just knew they did wrong by sinking my family’s boat. They’re making amends. And then they’ll make sure never to set eyes on me again.”

He didn’t answer.

Somehow, she swallowed past the giant lump in her throat. “You’ll go back to Thedaka, find a nice kraken girl, I’ll go back to my job on the wharf, maybe I’ll see you at the games, but no, they probably won’t let you compete again, even though I’ve publicly said I cheated. And humans will hate me too because they realize I’m worth nothing to them. Basically, same old, same old.”

“Idon’t hate you. So far from it.” He reached over and smoothed the line between her brows with his fingertips. Instinctively, she pulled back. The sweetness of his words, the magic of his touch nearly broke her. And she couldn’t break, because soon he’d be gone from her life. “Please… don’t touch me.”

He retracted. Muttered, “Ah yeah, must only touch when it’s sex, right.”

“Glad you remembered,” she retorted. He couldn’t know how much she wanted him to keep touching her, holding her,lovingher… to tell him that somehow, they’d work it out. But she didn’t know how to ask. All she knew was how to hurt with her words. “Last night… you know it was just a finale fuck, right?” she said gruffly.

For a second his beautiful face contorted, then he barked a laugh. “First the hate fuck, then the bribe fuck, and now the finale fuck. Should have guessed.”

“Pretty much sums it up,” she lied, biting the inside of her lip until it bled, hating herself for her cruel jibe. “See—what you said last night, it’s not true. I’m not good, or kind, am I?” she finished bitterly.

In the silence she heard him say softly, “I refuse to believe that.”

He stood, threw the shells into the fire and stomped the embers out with his foot. When he looked at her his face was a blank slate. “It’s time we got going. It’s a long day’s hike to reach our destination.”

CHAPTER 27

Kai didn’t touch Luna again for the rest of the day. Not even when she stumbled on some slippery rocks as she made her way into the water for their third swim. She held her small pack above her head as she swam, and he didn’t offer to take it from her.

His thoughts were glum.

Like she said, he would return to Thedaka, and she would return to her job on the wharf.

How could it be any other way?

There had not been a kraken human mating in several hundred years, well before the Great War. Before evil diluted the magic, polluted the waters. Besides, he reminded himself, it had been humans that maimed him and killed his friends. Even if Luna was from a different clan, how could the Thedakians ever accept a human in their midst?

How would she even breathe down there, you dumb fuck?

The only other way would be for him to live on land. In Motham. His tentacles would shrivel and die, he would become a sad, mutated kraken, losing his ability to swim deep. It was rumored to have happened once or twice over the years, and had ended badly by all accounts.

But would he? If she intimated, that she… loved him back.

Loved—him—back.

Was he admitting he loved her then? Fuck. How could he deny it? He cursed the hopelessness of their situation as they climbed out of the water yet again, and he watched her push back her short hair and wring the water off it. It hurt to look at her, like staring too long at the sun.

---