Page 15 of Hunter of the Tide

And I have tried to stifle that joy.

Rhea’s own prejudice against the humans had driven her to threaten Macy the first time they met, hoping it would keep her daughter away from the woman. But in the time since, she’d developed a deep friendship with Macy, and Melaina loved spending time with the humans. Rather than being adversely affected by contact with Macy, Aymee, and Randall, Melaina had been enriched.

“What are you thinking?” Randall asked, his breath a warm caress on the back of her neck.

“My daughter is happy.”

“Wasn’t she before?”

“Not before you and Macy.” Rhea frowned. “Kraken live alone. We keep to ourselves, to our own dens, and rarely seek one another’s company. Melaina was all I had. I was all she had.”

“What about her father?”

“Vasil. A good hunter, an attractive male, and my second choice when Jax refused me.”

His hold around her stiffened. “He’s…still around?”

Rhea leaned forward and twisted her torso to look at him over her shoulder. His brow was creased, his jaw clenched. “Yes. Why?”

“Doesn’t he see her?”

“He sees her.”

One of his eyebrows rose. “You said that strangely. I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing. You said you and Melaina were all either of you had. Does he not spend time with her often, or what?”

Before Macy, Rhea likely wouldn’t have been able to decipher his meaning on her own. But after seeing Jax and Macy as a family, caring for their younglingtogether, she understood.

“He has never spoken to her. My mating with Vasil was fleeting. He does not know that he sired Melaina,” Rhea said. She placed a hand over one of his and continued before he could speak again. “The kraken are not like the humans, Randall. Female kraken take mates at our whims, and when we have not conceived or grow bored, we choose new males. We raise female younglings throughout their lives, but we keep males only until they are old enough to join the hunters. It is rare for a youngling to know who their sire is.

“It was not until Macy brought her human ways that we knew things could be different. Jax found a mate he did not wish to leave, a mate who did not want to leave him. And it has made Melaina happy to be around people who care for her, who enjoy spending time with her. People who love her.”

“And what about you, Rhea?” The tips of his fingers trailed lightly over her abdomen, and his eyes seemed a darker blue than usual.

“What about me?”

“Are you happy?”

Rhea turned toward the bed, tracing her daughter’s delicate features with her gaze. She smiled. “I am.”

Before the humans had come, Rhea’s existence had been defined by her daughter — keeping Melaina fed, protecting her from danger, showing her what it meant to be a kraken female, and doing whatever she could think of to discourage the youngling’s wanderlust and overwhelming curiosity. But the humans’ new perspectives had shown Rhea there could be more. There was room for herself and her daughter to find happiness, even if it meant relinquishing a little control. Melaina would find her way better with gentle guidance than with overbearing protectiveness.

The humans had broughtloveto the kraken.

Rhea knew now that she’d always loved Melaina, since the moment she’d first felt the flutter of life inside herself, but the humans had taught her new ways to express that feeling. New ways to experience it.

Could she and Randall come to share it, one day?

“Good,” Randall said. He leaned forward and rested his chin on her shoulder, pressing his cheek against hers. The small hairs on his face scratched her skin, but the sensation wasn’t unpleasant. Rather, it sent a tingling thrill through her, and she found herself wanting to feel it on other parts of her body.

She dropped her gaze to his hands, which were settled at her middle. There was a sprinkling of dark hair across their backs, which thickened as it went up his arm. The female humans had hair on their arms, too, though it was shorter, lighter, and harder to notice. Rhea looked at her own hairless arm.

All her life, she’d been trained to be confident, to understand that her place amongst the kraken was one of privilege. She was female. She was rare. She wasimportant. Males fought for her attention, for the honor of mating with her. Now, for the first time, Rhea felt unappealing.

It was not a good feeling.

“Do you find me attractive?” she asked.

“Of course I do.” Randall’s hands slid to her hips, and he guided her to turn around and face him. “I didn’t know what to think, at first. You’re so different from everything I’ve known. But every piece of you,” he trailed his fingertips along one of her tentacles, over her hand and up her arm, across the sensitive skin of her siphon, “is beautiful.”

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