Page 106 of Heart of the Deep

Arkon leaned his face closer to the screen. “Macy, it is Arkon. You can open the door now.”

Several heartbeats passed. Pain slowly made itself known in new parts of Dracchus’s body, introducing him to wounds he hadn’t yet noticed. He shoved it aside.

The door opened, and Ikaros bound out, leaping at Randall with enough enthusiasm to knock the human down.

“Easy, easy,” Randall said, rubbing the prixxir’s side.

Macy leaned through the doorway, peered up and down the corridor, and looked back into the room. “Stay in here. Donotcome out until one of us comes to get you, okay?”

“Okay,” Melaina and Sarina replied in unison.

Macy stepped into the hallway and closed the door. Tears spilled from her eyes as she ran to Jax and took him in a tight embrace, avoiding his wounds. “I was so scared I’d lose you.”

Jax returned the embrace. “Nothing will keep me from you, Macy.”

“They all came to help us,” Larkin said, looking past Dracchus.

He followed her gaze. Even more kraken were in the hallway now, dozens of them. More, perhaps, than had ever been in the Cabins at once. Their conversations were low, their expressions fraught with confusion, anger, and sadness.

Slowly, their eyes began to turn toward him.

“We need to get all the injured to the infirmary,” Aymee said softly behind him. “That includes you.”

He turned his head to look at her over his shoulder. “I will be—”

“You have a fucking harpoon sticking out of your back!” Larkin snapped, glaring at him. “That isn’tfine.”

The dull pain in his back sharpened, and he was suddenly aware of the weight of the projectile jutting from the wound.

Ector and Vasil approached him.

“This will not be easy for any of us to understand,” Ector said. He looked as though he’d aged several more years since the last time Dracchus had seen him, only two weeks before.

“Keep only who you need to clear the hall,” Dracchus said. He looked past them, at the expectant crowd. The truth of what had happened, the enormity of it, poked at the edges of his mind, but he would not allow it entry. “Gather in the Mess,” he called. “As soon as our wounds are tended, we will address this matter, and we will decide how to move forward as a people.”

Slowly, many moving as though in a daze, the kraken began to disperse.

“What about him?” Vasil asked, gesturing to Kronus, who remained in the place he’d taken against the wall.

“He fought alongside us,” Dracchus said, “and risked much to warn us of what Neo intended. We will discuss his fate, as a people.”

Ector placed a gentle hand on Dracchus’s shoulder. “Our people look to you as a leader, Dracchus. You have proven time and again that you will fight for their survival, that you will put their needs before your own. They will all need to lean on your strength, now more than ever.”

Those words echoed something Jax said to Dracchus after the decision had been made to allow Macy to stay.

Dracchus was no more comfortable with the implication now, even after so much had changed. “I will do all I can for our people, elder, but I should not lead. They would do better to follow Jax or Arkon.”

“You have been leading already, whether you realize it or not,” Ector replied gently. “And for now, at least, we are dependent upon you.”

Dracchus looked over his surroundings again. Blood and gore bathed the hallway, and the bodies of the fallen were scattered about as carelessly as pebbles on the seafloor. He still couldn’t acknowledge this, not yet; he feared the burden might crush him. But he could acknowledge that he’d never wanted it. No matter how tense things had become, no matter how infuriating the behavior of the exiled kraken,he’d never wantedthis.

His gaze shifted back, over the people gathered behind him. Arkon, Jax, and Rhea embracing their human mates with such quiet relief, suchlove. Ikaros sat with surprising patience beside Randall, gently pawing at Rhea’s tentacles with apparent concern. All the kraken bore numerous wounds, taken in the defense of people they cared for.

He looked finally at Larkin, who stood beside him, watching him with apparent concern. She stepped closer to him and settled her hand over his hearts. “I will stand with you. I’ll always stand with you.”

Dracchus did not know the proper words to express his feelings toward her, if those words even existed. Their actions had always spoken louder than anything either of them could say. He dipped his head and kissed her, letting his lips linger against hers; this small taste wasn’t enough.

Had he known the events of this night would occur, he wouldn’t have changed a single thing leading up to it. The price had been steep, butthiswas the future of his people,thiswas their way forward — not the bloodshed and loss of life, but his friends, his family. They were the start.

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