Page 55 of Rising from the Depths

“I will not let anyone stop us this time,” he promised.

Chapter 16

Eva’s limp was more pronounced as they entered their home. The long trek to and from the clinic had left her legs sore, and the tremors coursing through her after the confrontation with Blake refused to subside. She’d known she would run into him eventually; they lived in the same town, and there were only so many places to go. But she hadn’t expected…that. The last time she’d seen Blake, he’d looked happy, carefree, had already been moving on with his life.

She’d seen a different Blake today; he looked like he’d gone to hell and back.

Aymee had told her everyone experienced and expressed grief in their own way. Had Eva given up on him too soon?

No.

Eva shoved aside that twinge of guilt as quickly as it had come. Whether or not she had Kronus, it didn’t change the fact that Blake had left her, spurned her, had chosen himself and his own desires over her without a backward glance. He’d placed the blame at her feet —foot— looking at her injury with open disgust. That wasn’t how a person was supposed to treat their loved ones. Regardless of what he’d said in the town center today, his actions immediately after the attack spoke loudly about how he really felt about her.

She’d been right to say they hadn’t loved each other.

Eva made her way across the room and sat in the chair near the window, coming down more heavily than normal. Her hair, left loose, fell around her face as she massaged her thigh.

Kronus sank down in front of her and placed his hand on her leg to mimic her massaging, his fingers strong and confident.

“What may I do to aid your comfort, Eva?” He kept his voice low; there was still a slight red tinge to his skin, and he’d been stiff and brooding throughout their return trip.

“Could you take it off?” she asked. Though she’d accepted the loss of her leg, she preferred having the prosthesis on, if only to maintain the illusion of normalcy. No matter how many times she and Kronus made love, no matter how many times he’d seen the rounded end of her stump, she was still self-conscious of it.

Nodding, he drew back slightly. He raised her skirt over her knees and cupped the back of her prosthesis with one hand, straightening her leg as he lifted it. With his other hand, he pressed the release; the pin disconnected with a soft click.

Eva watched him silently for a time, her eyes moving over his bent head, along his muscled arms, and down to his webbed and clawed hands — hands capable of such violence and destruction, hands that could maim or kill with ease, hands capable of such gentleness and care, hands that could soothe and caress.

“What did Ector mean?” she asked as Kronus removed her prosthesis. “When he said you’ve learned more than most? That I helped you find balance?”

His hands stilled, and his shoulders rose with a deep inhalation. After a few moments, he carefully slipped off her sock and liner, keeping his eyes on his task. “When Jax first brought Macy to the Facility, Dracchus made him present her to our people. Dracchus and many others were swayed by her, especially when Jax declared she was his mate…but I could not forget the history that had been taught to me since I was a youngling.”

Eva frowned. “What history?”

“We were kept as slaves by the humans who once dwelled in the Facility,” he said, folding the sock and liner. “We were not people to them, but tools, ideal for the harvest of halorium, some sort of crystal that made their machines erratic or inoperable. Halorium holds great power, and they were eager to have it. But they were cruel to our ancestors. They…they hadcreatedus, had given us life and purpose, but they did not acknowledge the intelligence they had designed within us.

“My ancestors rose against those humans, generations ago. And they killed every last one of them to claim the Facility as our home, our sanctuary. The lesson we held to afterward was simple — humans could not be trusted. They were our enemy, and they would seek either to control us or destroy us. But, for whatever reason, they never came. So we kept to ourselves, and saw to our own people, all the while struggling to overcome the things they did to keep us under control. They built us to…to die out, without their intervention.”

“What do you mean?” Eva asked, eyes wide.Die out? Was…was something going to happen to Kronus? To the others?

“Macy and Arkon have accessed many files in the Computer. There are records detailing the way we were designed by the humans who made us. Our females have great difficulty conceiving young, and when they do, they rarely birth more females. It was a simple means to control our population. They wanted us to reproduce, to maintain their workforce, but they did not want more of us than they could control. It mattered little for them, in the end.”

After setting her prosthesis and its accessories aside, he finally lifted his gaze to meet hers. “When Macy came, that is what I saw. Our ancestors fought to take our home from her kind, and she had no place there. Even if she was not a physical threat, there was always a chance of her contacting other humans, of her revealing the location of the Facility. Of revealingus. And for all our strength, we knew we could not match human numbers and human cleverness. We had grown up around the things humans had built. We knew their weapons. If enough humans came, our kind would have been doomed.

“So I raised my voice against her. I denounced her presence and demanded she be cast out into the sea to fend for herself. When more humans were brought to the Facility, I could scarce contain my anger — especially when two of those humans were hunters who had come for the sole purpose of finding our kind and killing us.” He clenched his teeth, causing the muscles of his jaw to bulge. More color rippled through his skin, red and brief, pulsing flares of purple. “There were other kraken who felt the same as I. That humans had no place amongst our kind. That those who had embraced the humans were traitors both to our people and to the legacy of our ancestors.

“I fought. I challenged Jax and Dracchus on several occasions, and every time, I was forced to submit. No matter my fury, I could never best them. But I took the pain and pushed on. I wanted themgone. Away from our home, from our people, so that we could be safe. Because I believed that we would never be safe so long as there were humans amongst us.”

He dropped his gaze to his hands, which lay palm up atop his tentacles, and curled his fingers. “Even after Macy gave birth to Sarina and Aymee to Jace, two younglings who were, by most measures, kraken, I fought. Despite those younglings being a glimmer of hope for our kind. Because what did that mean forourfemales? If humans could bear kraken young, would our females be abandoned? Would they be unimportant? Everything we had held to be true, everything we had been taught, was being threatened, and I could not allow our ways to be destroyed because they wereall that I had.

“One night, one of my supporters crept into a den shared by a kraken female and her human mate and attempted to kill the human. Rhea was wounded defending her mate, and her youngling, Melaina, was present during the attack. I knew then that things were spiraling out of my control. I was furious over Rhea choosing a human male when there were so many kraken males she might have selected, and I did not want humans in our home…but I could not support harm coming to females and younglings. I said nothing when judgment was passed on Volk, who had carried out the attack. He was banished.

“More hunters came, and they captured three of our kind. One of those three was a kraken who supported my stance. He was called Neo. Though all three escaped, Neo clung to his experiences aboard the human ship, clung to the pain and suffering they had inflicted upon him, and returned to us filled with hatred for humans.” Kronus raised a hand to his forehead, slowly trailing his palm back over his scalp. “I thought it should have been obvious to all our people after that. Humans were the enemy. They were cruel. We could not accept them.

“But some of my followers had grown dissatisfied with my leadership even before Neo’s return. They felt I should have done something to protect Volk, that I should have spoken in his defense. They thought my lack of action against the humans was cowardice. But the humans had Dracchus on their side, and Dracchus… He is the largest, the strongest, the most respected of us all. Even the elders looked to him as a leader.”

Kronus lifted his gaze to meet Eva’s again. His features were strained, and his coloring had taken on an oddly muted tone. “I wondered more and more what I had begun. Was it worth the turmoil amidst our people?”

Eva reached out and brushed her fingers along his jaw. “What happened?”

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