Page 57 of Kiss for My Kraken
The realization sent his protective instincts into overdrive. His markings flared blue with rage, briefly illuminating the water around him before he tamped down the glow, forcing himself to wait. Not yet. Let them fully commit to their trespass. Let them reveal their true intentions.
The lock clicked. Jed pushed the door open, and the other two followed him. She turned on the lamp as Jed spoke, his voice cold and self-righteous.
“Nina. It’s time to come home.”
That voice—so certain, so dismissive of her autonomy—infuriated him, but he remained in place.
Wait for her signal. That was the plan.
Then she cried out his name and his restraint shattered.
His body responded immediately as his instincts took over—primal, powerful, protective. The water around him began to churn as his form expanded, stretching to its full magnificent size. Plates of armored skin slid into place along his back and shoulders. Dormant muscles activated, rippling beneath his silvery-grey hide. His gills flared wide, drawing in massive gulps of water, supercharging his system.
Her second cry slammed into him like a sledgehammer.
“SAM, HELP!”
The desperation in her voice ignited something primeval inside him. Not the calculated anger he’d felt while hunting prey, not the defensive rage when threatened by humans in his past, but something altogether different—white-hot and all-consuming. This was the fury of a mate protecting his loved one, an emotion so powerful it seemed to boil the river around him.
As he surged forward, no longer concerned with stealth or caution, he sensed the vibrations of struggle—Nina’s frantic movements, the heavier footfalls of the men restraining her. He heard the sharp crack of something breaking, followed by a male voice spitting hateful words.
Mine. She is MINE.
The carefully constructed walls of civilization he’d built over the years crumbled away. He was no longer the reclusive male who watched humanity from a distance. He was Kraken. Protector. Predator.
With one powerful thrust of his primary tentacles, he propelled himself upwards. The surface of the river bulged and then exploded outward as he breached, water cascading around his massive form like a liquid cloak. His secondary and tertiary tentacles unfurled behind him, twenty feet of coiled muscle spreading like a deadly fan.
The dock splintered beneath his weight as he hauled himself upwards, using four of his thickest tentacles to support his torso. Water streamed from his body, his bioluminescent markings pulsing with brilliant blue light, triggered by the flood of adrenaline coursing through his system. Each pulse illuminated the night around him in strobing flashes.
He advanced towards the shack, each movement a display of overwhelming power as his tentacles gripped the earth, propelling him inexorably forward. The ground shook beneath his weight, leaves trembling on their branches overhead.
He could see them inside the shack—Jed, with his hand on Nina, his face twisted with hatred. Another man struggling to restrainOzzie. A third standing between her and the door. All three now frozen in shock at the sight of him.
He roared, the sound erupting from deep within his chest—a primal, guttural bellow that reverberated through the night. Inside the cabin, windows shattered, showering the floor with broken glass. Nina, still struggling against Jed’s grip, cried out again, but not in fear. In triumph.
“LET HER GO.”
The words tore from his throat, amplified by the resonant chamber of his body. His voice was not human, but a deep, echoing rumble filled with power and anger. He had never spoken in his warrior form before, and the sound startled even him.
The men inside the shack stared at him in frozen terror, their faces pale and slack. Ozzie immediately ceased his struggles, his tail wagging frantically.
Sam’s eyes fixed on Jed, his vision shifting to a deeper spectrum where he could see the heat of the man’s blood pulsing just beneath his skin, a beacon in the darkness. The man was marked, identified. Predatory instinct demanded his death, and it took every ounce of his remaining self-control not to rip the man apart right then.
“Release her,” he repeated, his voice a thunderclap that shook the walls. “Now.”
Jed’s mouth opened and closed, his expression shifting from terror to disbelief to desperate defiance. He pulled Nina in front of him as a shield, his arm a steel band around her waist.
“Demon,” he finally whispered, the word barely audible even to Sam’s sensitive hearing.
He let the accusation hang in the air, neither confirming nor denying. Let this man believe what he needed to. Let him face the physical manifestation of his own fears.
“Leave,” he commanded, his voice a rumbling bass that seemed to vibrate the very air. “Now.”
Jed’s shock gave way to a twisted kind of ecstasy, the fervor of a zealot whose darkest beliefs had just been confirmed. “I knew it,” he hissed, turning back to Nina. “I knew this place was infested with evil. With Satan’s spawn.”
He grabbed her arm, attempting to pull her towards the door. “Come, Nina. You see now what I’ve been trying to protect you from.”
She yanked her arm free, her face flushed with anger. “Don’t touch me, Jed. Ever again.”
