Page 32 of The Kraken Games

They stared—actually more like scowled—at each other across the table. Kai’s breath came fast and shallow, the barely contained rage tightening his throat. His eyes stung. It struck him that maybe she was like a drug, one that he knew would harm him but that he couldn’t seem to keep away from.

He deepened his scowl. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

She stared back, unblinking. “I repeat—why the fuck are you here?”

“I found out you’ve registered for the games. And a few things fell into place.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Like what?”

“Why you were so keen for me to shift… when we—” He swallowed hard. “— that night.”

She dropped the crusts of her sandwich onto the paper bag, licked her fingers. “I just felt like tentacle sex, is all.”

He wanted to grab her by the front of her tee, pull her up to face him, nose to nose, chest to chest. Fucking smack that pouty rude little mouth—or kiss it. Bite it. He didn’t know which, he just knew he wanted to hurt her the way she’d hurt him by leaving. By using him.

She stood up abruptly. “For the record, it was fun, but yeah, you’re just a notch on my bedpost.” She flung her sandwich at the bin. A perfect hit. “Tentacle play,” she made a tick motion in the air with her finger, then turned toward the door, that smirk pulling her small mouth sideways in a way that shouldn’t be the least bit sexy, but somehow fucking was. “See you in the ring.”

He stormed over to her, his sense of being manipulated, being ignored, playing into every other time he’d been belittled, made fun of. She was moving fast, but he was faster, blocking theexit, muscles pumped, his color deepening with anger. She stood barely inches from him now, as prickly as a fucking sea urchin, staring woodenly at the center of his chest.

“Let me pass,” she demanded.

Kai didn’t budge. “I don’t get you. When we… ” he growled in frustration. “It was good, for me… I thought… it was good for you too.”

“Ever heard of a hate fuck?”

Kai blinked, suddenly bewildered.

“How can you hate me? You don’t even know me.”

Finally, she met his gaze and the look in her eyes made him want to recoil.

“Not just you,” she gritted out. “I hate all krakens.”

CHAPTER 10

Luna was still shaken up when she left work three hours later. Kai turning up at the warehouse, demanding to know why she’d entered the games, and worse, calling her out on her run from their date—no, fuck that. Don’t call it a date, it was a hook-up.

Face it, the look of hurt in his eyes had thrown her far more than she wanted to admit.

Luna walked faster, trying to erase all thoughts of Kai.

As she made her way to the mouth of the river to meet Marrick, she kept looking behind her. What if he’d followed her? What if he saw her working on her technique as she floundered in the mud? Then she wouldn’t look so damn cool, would she?

Why shouldn’t he watch you? You took illicit photos of him.

A pang of shame coiled in her gut. Hell. She was entitled to hate kraken kind. They’d murdered her family in cold blood. Left her hanging onto a broken plank. Left her to die. She winced as memories of that day flashed in front of her eyes, clear as a movie clip, imprinted on the very cells of her brain. The aftermath was blurrier, but she did recall an albatross swooping, taking her in its big claws and carrying her to its nest on a cliffface. It had fed her, horrible wet fish from its beak, but it had kept her alive.

And finally, when it had dropped her outside a tumble-down house in the marshes weeks later, she’d been strong enough to knock on the door of Edith Bloomnick. Edith was a miserly, bad-tempered human who lived out here, one of a bare few that had gotten stranded after shipwrecks and the like. Outcasts from the human world, mistrusted by the monsters of Motham. Shadow people.

One thing at least bound them together: Edith hated kraken too. Once, when she’d drunk too much ale, she told Luna she’d lost her fisherman husband to a kraken raid. It had helped Luna to feel they had something in common, even if she received no love from Edith.

If you hated enough, Luna realized, you had a reason to keep on living.

So there it was…

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