Page 113 of Heart of the Deep

“You know that’s not what this is,” Randall said.

“Just stop this, Dad,” Larkin said, tone softening. “You did all of this to protect us, but you went too far. We’re safe now. It can be over. Let it beover.”

“I’ve seen what those things can do.” Nicholas thrust his arm toward the sea vaguely. “I know what will happen if we…if we just…if we let them go.”

“They have never once revealed themselves in all the years I’ve lived here,” Breckett said. “I’ve worked on these seas nearly every day of my life, and I’ve never seen them, not until one of them brought my daughter back. We thought her lost at sea during a storm.”

“Jax saved me,” Macy said. “I would’ve drowned otherwise.”

“This is not the same as what happened to me and Mom,” Larkin said gently. “The kraken are not a danger to any of us, so long as we stop hunting them.”

Her father’s face paled further, save for a wild blotch of red on each cheek. His eyes gleamed. “This isn’t about your mother. It’s about…”

“Everything has been about her since she was taken from us,” Larkin said. “You didn’t want to lose the family you had left. I understand, Dad, but it needs to stop. It’s changing you into someone we don’t know anymore. Just…Please, before you lose us both.”

He clenched his jaw and averted his gaze, his stance unsteady, uneasy. He offered no response.

“I’m going to show you.We’regoing to show you. Please, just trust me, Dad. Trust me in this.” Larkin looked at Randall. “Signal them.”

Randall nodded and stepped to the end of the dock. He moved his arms in exaggerated signs, making sure the kraken lookout would be able to see them.

“No weapons,” Larkin said, running her gaze over the people gathered. More had come while they’d been speaking to Nicholas, some of them piled in the boats to see around the cluster of townsfolk. “No matter how strange this is going to feel for most of you,please. No weapons, no hostility.”

The crowd’s uncertainty was apparent in their whispered conversations. As far as Larkin could tell, only the rangers were armed; several of them kept shifting their eyes toward her father, who remained unmoving.

Larkin heard a tiny change in the sound of the bay’s gently lapping water. The crowd gasped as she turned, keeping herself perpendicular to the humans and the kraken now climbing onto the end of the dock.

Dracchus, unsurprisingly, was first. If Larkin’s father noticed, he made no outward sign. The big kraken approached slowly, amber eyes sweeping over the crowd of humans. The rangers raised their rifles as more kraken followed.

Macy and Aymee pulled away from their parents, turning toward the crowd. As one, Larkin and Randall pulled their pistols from their holsters, aiming at the rangers. Aymee and Macy followed suit.

“Isaid, no weapons,” Larkin said, stepping in front of Dracchus. From her peripheral vision, she saw her companions do the same, creating a human barrier in front of the kraken. “We will lower ours if you lower yours.”

“We have come without weapons,” Dracchus said from behind her.

Nicholas finally came out of his trance-like state at the sound of Dracchus’s voice. He turned toward Dracchus with wide, angry eyes. “You’re the one that took my daughter,” he growled, stepping forward.

“Stop where you are, Dad,” Larkin commanded.

Nicholas hesitated, gaze dipping to the gun in her hand. “What are you doing, Elle? What are you doing?”

“Protecting them.Thiskraken saved me that night. He might have taken me, but hesavedme, too.”

“Stand aside, Elle. This has gone far enough.”

“It has,” Randall said. “Order your men to stand down, Dad. Weapons down. We’re not here forthis.”

“Are you seriously going to stand for this, commander?” one of the rangers said, stepping forward without lowering his rifle. Christopher Brock, the one who’d beaten Dracchus on the boat. “We need to shoot these fucking things.”

Larkin turned her pistol on him. “Your finger so much as twitches in the general direction of that trigger, and I will put a bullet between your eyes.”

Brock scowled, glaring at her, but he removed his finger from behind the trigger guard, straightening it along the side of the rifle.

Nicholas turned his head toward his men. “Stand down, rangers.”

“This is krull—”

“Stand down!” Nicholas shouted. “Rifles on the dock and back away.”

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