Page 85 of The Kraken Games

He smelled just as she remembered her family smelling, like sea foam, and rain, and the westerly wind. His arms around her felt like her mother and father’s embrace. His smile was like her dad and her mom put together… And above all else, he was a strapping lad. He was healthy and he was happy, and he was known here by the same name,almost, in a different world from the one she’d lived in since they parted.

All these years he’d been no more than twenty miles from the marshes. And she hadn’t known. She shook her head at all the sadness, the loneliness, all the wasted time.

But this was not the moment for regrets.

He stepped back now, and she looked him up and down, remembering to keep her lips tilted upward, to wipe the furrow from her brows. She was so used to guarding herself, but how could she with her own family?

She turned and glanced at Kai, standing big and blue and silently watching out of compassionate, loving eyes. Her heart flooded with gratitude, and something else—something so big she couldn’t let herself acknowledge it.

“This is Kai. He is responsible for me finding you.”

“You’re kraken.” Tom stepped forward and they shook hands. “Your folks saved my life. Brought me here.”

She sensed Kai pulling back a little, sensed his shame. Maybe Tomas did not know that kraken had also killed their parents. Then suddenly her brother said, “I do know the whole story; my Mer moms didn’t hide it from me.”

“Everything?” Luna asked.

“I know that the kraken thought we were an enemy boat, that it was a mistake.” He looked from Luna to Kai, his eyes bright. “That Mom and Dad drowned in the raid.”

“You must hate us,” Kai said gruffly.

“No. I don’t hate kraken. That isn’t the Mer way.” He smiled at Luna. “And now we’ve got each other, so Mom and Dad live on in us, right?”

Luna nodded, trying to swallow past the huge lump in her throat.

Kai said, “I’m going to leave you to spend some time together. I’ll be out at the cabana.”

Luna watched him wistfully as he strode away.

It was bittersweet, this reunion.

How ironic; she’d found Tomas but would soon lose Kai. Just as her heart was learning to love, she was going to say farewell to the guy she was falling for.

No. Luna. No.

She focused back on Tomas.

“Tell me all about you,” she said. “I want to know everything I’ve missed for the last fifteen years…”

Brooke swam up to Kai as he made his way along the shoreline toward the cabana. “Here, I’ll show you around the community,” she shouted cheerily from the water.

He waded in and swam leisurely alongside her.

“So you’re the kraken they played in the games this year.” Brooke turned onto her back, swishing her tail and eyeing him with curiosity. “And you lost to her.”

“I did.”

“And then she renounced the title.”

“She did.”

“I watched her interview with the wolf on TV last night. Those games of yours are daft anyway. All you monsters beating each other up every year, for what? Makes no sense to us.”

Kai huffed a laugh. “I’m not sure it makes sense to me anymore, either.” He decided to change the subject, he’d had enough of the games to last him a lifetime. “But tell me about this amazing place. How do you keep humans away?”

Brooke bared her pearly white teeth and made a chomping gesture. “Sharks, luv, sharks.”

“How does that work?”

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