Chapter 27 Goran
GORAN
“Maybe I never deserved her,” I whispered, the cold sea wind whipping the words from my lips as the memory faded. “But I sacrificed for her. And I loved her, even if we didn’t talk about everything we should have.”
“Or talk much at all,” Alexios agreed.
Dustin whispered just loud enough for me to hear, “Yeah, sounds like all they did was f—”
I bared my teeth. “Don’t finish that sentence, boy, if you want to live.”
He stared at me in horror and said it anyway. “Fuck!”
I wasn’t really going to kill him. Maybe hurt him a little. I took a breath to shout, but Alexios was also staring at me with fear in his expression. No. Staring behind me.
Without another thought, I threw myself down, my hand closing over the hilt of my sword that I’d placed alongside the inner hull. The scabbard was tied down to a metal bolt with the belt, but the sword swung free, and I turned, ready to face whatever had my companions going pale.
Fuck indeed, I thought as I turned, and my blade caught in the largest tentacle I’d ever seen.
A tentacle attached to a monster the size of the largest castle built.
It wore a carapace on its back encrusted with shells, barnacles, and stones that gleamed in the sunlight like a hundred dragons’ hoards, fixed to the curved surface.
Before I could say a word, the tentacle closed around my sword and yanked it from my grasp, and another dozen smaller tentacles wrapped themselves around my sailboat, the wood creaking and popping as the thing turned its head so it could stare down at me with one gigantic, swirling eye.
I’d seen an enormous whirlpool once, and this did the same thing, drawing my attention into its deep center inexorably, mesmerizing me.
Trapping me, then abruptly letting me go.
The tentacle loosened, and I fell gasping where I’d stood.
The appendage picked up Alexios next, who stayed motionless while he was inspected.
He still had the obsidian blade in his hand, but didn’t use it, not even when the monster shouted, “Where is my Empress?” A trickle of warmth began in one ear, as the sound burst my eardrum.
“Softer, Emperor,” Alexios said quietly. “We are only human. Please be merciful. We will tell you everything we know. We welcome your assistance in finding her and keeping her safe.”
Alexios was put down far more gently than I had been, and he gave a deep bow once he’d regained his balance. Dustin was still crouched in the bottom of the boat, looking sick for the first time all day as he stared at the kraken that had ambushed us.
I’d seen a kraken before, though only seven existed in the world, as far as I knew. Wren’s mate, Leviathan, was large, but this one was terrifyingly massive. It could only be his eldest brother, the one they called the Emperor of Emperors, Lusca.
“I apologize,” the monster said, his beaklike mouth somehow forming human speech. His Starlakian was perfect, his accent unremarkable. “May I come aboard?”
He spoke to Alexios, but I answered. “If you shift into your human form, Emperor Lusca.”
That baleful eye moved to me again. He didn’t answer me, but one of his tentacles shifted into a human leg.
In one step, as if the edge of the hull was a magical portal that changed him as he moved over it, his massive form transformed into a body.
No one seeing him up close would make the mistake of believing he was human, though.
He was ten feet tall at least, and his presence was almost overwhelming, the sheer force of his personality making me blink and move back.
My mind insisted that he was still every bit as large as he had been before, though my eyes could take him in, more or less.
I’d heard about Lusca from the selkies, but nothing they’d said could’ve prepared me for the reality of him.
He was majestic, like a mountain or the night sky, and as hard to describe.
His hair was the same color as the deep ocean, blacks and blues with hints of luminescence among the strands.
His eyes were a mix of every blue and green of the seas.
He also felt like a storm about to erupt, and standing next to him I could almost hear thunder as he replied to Alexios with a few words in what I assumed was the priest’s language.
Almost hear, because he’d burst my damn eardrum.
Dustin was there with a square of cloth. “Warlord, for the blood.”
The Emperor turned to me and reached out a hand. “May I?”
I did not want him touching me, but Alexios was smirking and Dustin watching. “Of course.” His fingers brushed my ear, there was a painful pop, and then I could hear again. It wasn’t perfect, but it felt like the rupture had happened a week ago, rather than moments.
“How?”
The kraken’s smile may have been intended to seem friendly, but his tone was patronizing. “Human bodies are made of mostly salt and water. I am the Emperor of Emperors. I’ve had a long time to learn how to rule what is mine.”
“I am not yours,” I said, wondering if I was imagining the rancor rolling off him in invisible waves.
“No? And yet I know everything about you that I would want to.” He brushed past me and leaned down to Alexios’s discarded wet robe. With one touch, he pulled the seawater out of it and out of the Beta’s hair as well. “May I borrow your cloth?”
Alexios handed it over, pulling his pale robes on as the kraken took the sheet.
With a few quick movements, the Emperor fashioned it into a toga, wrapping the cloth around his waist and over one shoulder.
The difference in size when he stood next to Alexios was jarring to witness, and made it even more obvious that this creature was only playing at being human.
But the disdain in his expression when he finally turned toward me was even more discomfiting.
“Have we met, Emperor?” I asked when he only stared, like he was looking for something and not finding it. “I’ve heard stories about you from my friends. Stellina, Kellin, and Lachlan. They’re—”
“Selkies, yes,” the kraken finished. “Worrying that one of them is an Omega. I hope you’ve protected him from harm.” What was he hinting at? That I might have hurt Lachlan?
“I protect all Omegas; I’ve taught my men to do the same, or face dishonor or death. And yes, Lachlan is a good friend. He’s my best friend.”
“He’s also mated with Rada, my mistress,” Alexios interrupted.
“Their bond was unintentional, I believe. As was the one she formed with his brother, Kellin.” The kraken’s edges wavered as he moved to face the Beta, like he might forget to hold this smaller form.
The boat creaked; one or two nails pinged as they dropped out of the hull.
We all held our breath until he nodded. “Two unintentional mates? Explain, quickly.”
“Lachlan was taken out to sea by an unknown creature,” I said. “The thing froze the sea itself and nearly killed Lachlan. Rada went out to save him.”
“Thing?”
“Some kind of dragon—”
“A dragon dared to touch her?” The boat creaked again, and a few tentacles emerged from the toga’s edge.
“She said it appeared as one, but we believe it was something else,” Alexios said calmly.
I went on. “The ice dragon caught her, along with Lachlan. Lachlan was dead, or so she thought. She yelled at the dragon, then stabbed it in the eye and escaped with Lachlan, though she inadvertently completed a full mating bond with him in the, ah… heat of the moment.”
“Bites, a blood exchange, and three spoken acceptances of the bond?”
I nodded. A small crack opened in the bottom of the boat, with water starting to pool at my feet. Dustin picked up the water cup Alexios had been using and started bailing.
“And the other bond?” The kraken sounded even angrier now.
Somehow, Dustin found his voice. “Well, that was because of her murderousness, your monstrosity. She can’t be held accountable for it; the Goddess made my lady as lethal as she is lovely.
I’m pretty sure stabbing is one of the ways she lets a fellow know she likes him.
That or poisoning. You can’t blame her for being how she was made to be, can you?
No more than a shark or a stingray or one of them really bad jellyfish that wrap around your legs and make you wish for death.
” The young warrior slapped a hand over his own mouth, like he couldn’t stop babbling any other way, and gave me a helpless look.
Alexios moved slightly, putting himself between the boy and the kraken.
We all jumped when the kraken burst into laughter. “You are absolutely correct, young one. I’m not angry my Empress chose more mates; I just wanted to make certain they were worthy of her this time.”
“Your… Empress?” Dustin, Alexios, and I all repeated at the same time.
“You claimed her?” Alexios’s voice had deepened. “Where is the mark?”
Lusca waited a moment, then murmured, “A very personal question. I will forgive you for asking.” His lips slid into a sensual smile, like he was remembering something intimate.
I reached for my sword… only to remember it was no longer in the scabbard.
“Looking for this?” the kraken asked, holding a hand over the side of the hull. A wave lifted my sword to him, and he gripped it by the blade and handed it to me. I knew the blade was razor sharp, but the kraken’s hand hadn’t even been scratched.
I took it and slid it back into the scabbard, my common sense returning. “Apologies, Emperor,” I managed to say through gritted teeth. “If my wife is your Empress, that means she accepted you.”
“No,” Alexios said softly. “It means the Goddess accepted him.”
We all knew what he meant; if a mate wasn’t worthy, the Goddess made Her judgment clear by closing the Omega’s entrance.
I remembered the first time Ratter and I had tried to make love, and I’d felt that resistance.
It wasn’t until I’d proved myself that we’d been able to claim each other in a temporary nest, though she’d refused my Alpha bite.
Had she really accepted his? I hadn’t seen any marks on her besides Lachlan’s bite and my tattoo, though there were a dozen places she could’ve carried it that I hadn’t seen. Very personal places.
My thoughts grew dark as the kraken replied to Alexios, “She met you after our short time together, I presume, or I would have known your name and face. She shared everything with me, in our nest.”
“Nest?” Dustin’s whisper was ignored by the rest of us.
“Short time?” I asked, bitterness flooding me. Then she had mated him. “Why did she leave you?”
“You assume much, little Alpha.” His lip curled. “Goran, the Warlord of All Starlak, as if that is anything to claim. I dried tears that belong to you, Warlord.” When I choked, he sneered. “She spoke of you. She told me all about the mate who let her go and left her unprotected on her journey.”
“You did the same,” I argued. I’d saved her from being burned at the stake!
“Did I? Or did I save her from death by drowning and make certain nothing could harm her, whether I was with her or not?” He and Alexios exchanged a look that made me want to reach for my sword again. I needed to kill something.
“The pendant?” the Beta murmured. “It was protecting her.”
The kraken nodded. “As long as she wears it. I felt her remove it and came to make certain she hadn’t been harmed while it was off. She is not in the water now, and she has it on, so she cannot be killed.”
Couldn’t be killed? What kind of magic was in that pendant?
“Can she be killed by a god?” Alexios asked while my mind spun. “Because the ‘ice dragon’ may actually be some sort of elemental god.”
“An ice god?” The kraken’s dark skin grew slightly paler at those words, and the wind picked up, lightning flickering on the horizon. “Hold on to the mast. What direction did he take her?”
Alexios pointed north, and the kraken slid over the side, his body changing so fast it blurred.
Suddenly, the boat was shooting up in the air, the three of us humans scrambling to hold onto anything we could reach as the kraken expanded and began to carve a path through the waves to the north, his rage a shimmering veil that covered us all as he swam.
Rage filled me as well, but mixed with something else. Doubt.
How much had I gotten wrong? How many things had I missed about the woman I’d claimed to love above all else? Had I been so caught up in having her to myself that I’d forgotten that Omegas were never meant to be owned, only protected and worshiped?
Please, give me the chance to worship her better, I prayed, and kept praying, while Alexios and Dustin did the same, all of us holding to the mast together.