Page 5 of Hunter of the Tide

“Melaina has to help take care of it.”

“Yes!” Melaina exclaimed, her tentacles writhing on the floor. “I will!”

Randall lifted his eyes to Rhea in question.

Rhea nodded once.

“Good. Now, my father told me when I was little that you shouldn’t name animals, because they were bound to…well,move on. But my sister named them anyway. I think you should give him a name. Having something that belongs to him will help him be strong.”

Melaina stared down at the prixxir. The creature stared back up, shifting its attention between Randall and the youngling. Opening its mouth, it released a high-pitched call and attempted to leap out of the container; it fell back into the water with a splash.

“Ikaros,” Melaina said.

“Come.” Rhea placed a hand on Melaina’s shoulder. “Randall will tend to it, and we will visit soon.”

“Ikaros, Mother, notit.”

Rhea raised a brow.

Melaina offered Randall a smile. “Thank you.”

Despite thanking Dracchus earlier, Rhea’s instinct was to tell her daughter never to thank a male; it was a male’s duty to provide. But she held it in. Things were changing. The kraken were changing. And Randall wasn’t a kraken, anyway. Rhea had been learning from her human friends, Macy and Aymee, and they frequently expressed appreciation to their males. Perhaps it was a good thing to do, from time to time.

“Hopefully I’ll earn that thanks.” Randall’s smile, despite his strange human teeth, was the most charming that Rhea had ever seen. She stared at his lips and wondered what it would feel like to have them pressed against hers.

Chapter 2

All was quiet as Randall walked through the empty corridors save for his own footsteps, the gentle sloshing of water in the container, and the occasional whine from the prixxir within. The creature’s calls were high-pitched, chirruping, and heart-wrenching. Though some part of Randall thought it was ridiculous to empathize with an animal — his father would’ve called him a damned fool — he couldn’t help but think he knew how Ikaros felt.

As though things aren’t grim enough, now I’m comparing myself to a baby sea-lizard.

He grinned. Fortunately, no one was around to see it; he worried it was the expression of a desperate man losing touch with reality. The thought shouldn’t have amused him that much.

He took a meandering route through the Facility; his mind wandered often lately, and he lost himself in thought as he went to check the spots Aymee frequented when she wasn’t in her room — the mess hall, the infirmary, the chamber she and Arkon had cleared to use for painting.

The thought of Aymee and Arkon gave him pause. Randall had wanted Aymee from the first moment he’d seen her — she was beautiful, yes, but she was also passionate, bold, and intelligent. If circumstances had been different for them both, he liked to think he would’ve had a chance. They’d enjoyed one another’s company on the few occasions during which they’d been able to relax. But she’d fallen for Arkon.

That had hurt a lot more than Randall had expected it would.

He searched for that bitterness, for the ache of rejection, for the constriction in his chest, but he could not find them anymore. He’d seen Aymee and Arkon together often in the weeks he’d spent here in the Facility, and it had stung every time. That sting had lessened a little with each passing day.

Somehow, Rhea had chased the last of that feeling away. She’d been kind — if sometimes overbearing — during Randall’s time here, and she made little effort to hide her interest in him. While he’d recovered in the infirmary, it’d been Rhea who was there each time he woke, Rhea who’d often tended to him. Now, she’d stood up for him to other kraken without hesitation.

And saidI’munderherprotection…

The first time he’d seen her — while he was in extreme pain and on the verge of exhaustion — he hadn’t known what to think. The kraken had been so new to him, then, so alien, and the females were hairless and bare, their breasts on full display. But he’d grown more accustomed to their appearances since, and he couldn’t deny Rhea’s exotic beauty and effortless grace. Her features were deceptively delicate, belying her impressive physical strength, and her gray skin was so soft to the touch.

His curiosity felt dangerous; was it right for him to be attracted to her? Was it natural?

Randall had spent his life hunting dangerous creatures, and that’s what the kraken were supposed to have been — prey. More threatening than anything else he’d hunted, perhaps, but wild beasts all the same. Something that needed to be killed to protect human life. Shaking that manner of thinking had proven difficult; it had been ingrained in him since childhood.

Pushing away those thoughts, he shifted his attention to his surroundings, stopping to lean into Aymee’s painting room. She wasn’t there, so he continued walking.

In some ways, the Facility reminded Randall of home. Like Fort Culver, this place had been constructed with clean, impersonal aesthetics favoring practicality and functionality. Despite centuries of inhabitation by the kraken, it was clear that everything in the Facility had had its place, and that everything had been arranged in a fashion that favored organization. It’d come as little surprise when he was told this place — like Fort Culver — had been utilized by military personnel.

But Fort Culver wasn’t sixty-five meters below the surface of the ocean, nor was it inhabited by human-animal hybrids.

Pausing in the doorway of the mess hall — called simply the Mess by the kraken — he glanced inside. The large room, which had undoubtedly been utilized as a dining area long ago, was empty, and the kitchen beyond was dark.

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