Page 4 of Heart of the Deep

Ikaros, stretched out on the floor beside Melaina, lifted his head and cocked it. He was a prixxir — creatures that walked on four legs while on land, with small, flexible scales, a spikey fin along their spines, and long whiskers on their faces that were constantly in motion. Like the kraken, prixxir were able to breathe both underwater and in the air.

Dracchus coiled a tentacle around Jace’s middle and lifted the youngling off the floor, raising him to eye level. The child swiped at Dracchus with his tiny, clawed fingers and intensified his growling.

“You are not doing it right,” Dracchus said.

Jace stopped, arms dangling, and stared at Dracchus questioningly. It was the same inquisitive look that Arkon so often wore.

“Ikaros does not bite me,” Dracchus explained. “Because I do not taste good, and he likes me.”

Sarina giggled and reached toward Dracchus. He bent, offering her an arm, and lifted her when she latched on. Holding herself in place with her tentacles, she placed her hands on his cheeks and blew through her siphons. Dracchus mimicked her; he’d done so once, when she was very small, and she’d enjoyed it so much that they’d done it over and over again.

“Can we go out soon?” she asked. “I want to swim.”

“That is for your mother and father to decide. I will go out soon, but I must journey far away, and I cannot bring you.”

She frowned. “I want to go with you.”

Jace squirmed. Dracchus ruffled the youngling’s hair and let him back down before returning his attention to Sarina. “You are too small. This is your place for now.”

“Will there be a hunting party?” Melaina asked. Ikaros perked upon hearing the wordhunt, whiskers sweeping forward.

“No, not this time.” A hunt would’ve been a simple thing to explain, but very little had been simple over the last year. “We have heard of a large boat and must see that it is not a danger to us.”

Sarina coiled her tentacles tighter and wrapped her arms around Dracchus’s neck. “I don’t want you to go.”

Dracchus had never understood the bond he and Sarina had formed, had never understood why she showed him so much affection or why he was compelled to show her the same. He was too inexperienced with younglings to know if it was normal behavior. He’d accepted it as a truth and moved on.

That acceptance had led him to unexpected experiences — like the pang in his chest now, an echo of the sorrow in her voice. He didn’t want to leave her, but duty called him away.

“If I do not go, your father will go, and Jace’s. And I do not want them to be away from you if they don’t have to be.”

Sarina’s hold tightened.

“Is Randall going?” Melaina asked.

Dracchus shook his head. Randall, another human like Macy and Aymee, had become one of Dracchus’s most trusted companions alongside Jax and Arkon, but this task required speed and stealth underwater that humans could not match.

“Randall and Ikaros will remain, also,” he said. Staying behind would allow Randall more time with Melaina and her mother, Rhea, who had become Randall’s mate.

“Will you be back?” Sarina asked against his shoulder.

His brow fell, and he frowned. However well as she articulated herself, Sarina was too young to have such concerns. Life had never been easy for the kraken, but their young were usually protected from the harsh realities of survival in the endless, unforgiving ocean for at least a few years after birth.

Perhaps things were worse than he’d led himself to believe.

“I will be back.”

“Promise?”

He slid a finger under her chin and tilted it up. “Yes.”

Her dark hair framed her face, long enough now to brush her shoulders. She met his gaze and smiled. “I will miss you.”

Dracchus smiled in return; many of his people likely believed him incapable of such an expression. “I will miss you, as well. But you are strong.”

The door behind Dracchus slid open. He turned to see Jax the Wanderer enter the room.

“Daddy!” Sarina’s face brightened.

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