Page 18 of Hunter of the Tide

“If he wants to go, he’ll go,” Randall replied. “I’m not going to keep him on a leash. I trust him enough to let him choose.”

Mild confusion touched Dracchus’s features. “You are comparing the situation between you and your beast to the situation between you and I?”

Randall shrugged. “Yeah.”

“These situations are different. If the beast leaves, it will not call its kind to attack this place.”

“Neither will I.”

“How can I trust that?”

“Because there are people in here I care about too much to put them in that kind of danger.”

“You want to prove yourself to Rhea.”

It stung a bit, hearing his primary motive spoken out loud, but that made it no less true.

No matter how much skill and dedication Randall had displayed, there’d always been rangers who thought he’d been given command of his own team only because his father was the man in charge. Cyrus had been among the most vocal, especially while they were in the field. Randall had never revealed how much it had bothered him because some part of him had suspected they were right.

He wouldn’t allow it to be the same with the kraken. This was a fresh start, a chance to earn his place, to succeed or fail based solely on his own capabilities. And he was competing against beings who were physically superior to him in almost every way.

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you know what this would mean for you? Kraken females are few. Claiming one for yourself will mean constant competition.” Dracchus looked Randall up and down and shook his head. “Even the weakest of our males is more than a match for you.”

“Isn’t that why you agreed to let me carry this?” Randall patted the holstered pistol on his hip. There’d been a few demands to have it taken away from him after the incident with Kronus, but Dracchus, Jax, and Arkon had overridden them.

“You cannot shoot your way through every confrontation.”

“That’s almost funny coming from you; Macy told me how you wanted to fight your way into The Watch to rescue Jax.”

Dracchus furrowed his brow. “You are comparing two different situations again.”

“Yeah. That’s totally valid when it comes to comparison.”

“Perhaps I should have left Arkon to deal with you. He is better able to understand the way you humans speak.”

Randall smirked. “But he doesn’t like me as much as you do.”

“I have not decided whether I like you or not.”

Perhaps it was his imagination, but Randall thought there was a hint of humor in Dracchus’s eyes.

“That puts you ahead of Arkon, I’d say.”

Dracchus fell silent and lowered his gaze to Ikaros.

Randall concentrated on keeping his expression neutral to hide his anxiety. Dracchus could be reasoned with, but he was what the rangers would’ve called, with the utmost respect, a hard ass.

“Come with me, human,” Dracchus finally said.

Releasing a long, quiet breath, Randall followed Dracchus through corridors that had become maddeningly familiar over the last several weeks. Ikaros’s claws clicked on the floor as the prixxir trailed close behind.

The Facility had no shortage of dark, abandoned rooms that no longer served a purpose; they entered one of them, and Randall stopped in front of a desk.

Dracchus rounded the desk and bent down, feeling for something on its underside.

Before Randall could ask what the kraken was doing, a panel on the wall behind the desk slid upward, revealing an alcove a meter wide and two meters tall with three shelves built into it. Diving suits — made of sleek black material that stretched to fit the wearer — were folded neatly along the top, each with an accompanying mask. The lower shelves held piles of weaponry. Harpoon guns, rifles, pistols, heat guns, all stacked haphazardly into a space never intended to house them.

---