Chapter 30 Rada #3
“He abducted you from your mate. He stole from you. But he has also entered you, beloved,” Lusca insisted, his voice soft now.
“Do you protect him? I can sense a part of him inside you.” He reached for my abdomen, but I twisted away before he could touch.
His voice thrummed with command. “Beloved. Tell me the truth. Did you lie with him?”
I sighed. This was awkward to explain. How could I phrase it? I choked him, and he liked it? There was no sex, but I wanted to try riding his double-knotted icicle cock? I settled for, “More under and over him.”
His voice dropped to a sibilant hiss that would have been scary as hells if I didn’t know this kraken was fully devoted to me. “Did he… enter you? I can sense a part of him inside you still.”
I made a face. “That sounds far more fun than it was in the moment. It wasn’t fun, Lusca. It fucking hurt.”
“He hurt you?” His irises had begun whirling slowly, like a whirlpool had formed inside them. I should have kept the ice tentacle thing to myself. It sounded a lot worse than it was.
Well, a little worse, anyway.
“Yes,” I blurted out, but then realized what was happening.
Lusca was the father of sirens. His voice was too irresistible to ignore, and lying to him was as hard as not breathing.
“Ah, shit. So, yes, there was a bit of a misunderstanding yesterday about consent, and what needs to happen before a male sticks his… ice tentacle, or whatever, inside a woman.”
“He entered you with a tentacle?” Lusca’s human form shimmered, and the waves almost knocked me to my knees. Alexios and Kellin were suddenly there, one on each side, holding me up. “A tentacle?” My kraken said the word like it was more intimate than a tongue, or a cock.
Maybe it was.
“Without your consent, my mate?” Kellin demanded, his normally placid demeanor replaced with a quieter rage that was just as alarming. He and Lachlan had moved closer, but when Lachlan tried to speak, Kellin cut him off. “He dared?”
“Ah, yes, strictly speaking. But let me explain—” Panic shot through me as he bared his teeth. I’d never seen Kellin enraged, but the fury in his dark eyes was unmistakable. “He didn’t know what consent even was. He was trying to help me…” I looked around for help.
There was none to be found. Matching expressions of disbelief flickered over their faces, all transforming into rage. Even Alexios was snarling, his hands curled into fists.
“Damnit, calm down. I don’t want you guys to try and fight him. He’s a god.”
Well, that was a mistake. It was like I’d waved a red cloth in front of a pasture full of bulls.
Lusca lost it entirely, swamping all the others in a giant wave, though he was careful to keep me dry.
His body kept transforming from human-shaped to kraken, though not nearly as big as he actually was, or we’d all have been crushed.
But the churning a few hundred steps out in the ocean made it clear that he’d let his tentacles stretch there and was whipping the surface of the water in his anger.
Kellin was chanting some selkie rhyme that sounded like it was half magic spell and half Starlakian second verse, listing all the ways he would kill Skadi and precisely where he would hide his bones.
Goran had stopped puking, tumbled off the side of the boat into the water, and was wading toward me, his sword in one hand as if Skadi were behind me, ready to be attacked.
I peeked over my shoulder, glad when I didn’t see anything.
I’d have to wait for the guys to stop posturing to explain what Skadi had done.
“I know a way to kill a god,” Alexios whispered in my ear. When I turned to ask what he meant, he reached into a bag I didn’t recognize.
“My dagger!” I gasped, grabbing it.
“EXCELLENT IDEA,” Lusca proclaimed, and we all covered our ears. I dropped the dagger in the water and scrambled to retrieve it, but Lusca had already plucked it up with a tentacle. He brandished it, moving up the beach. “I will find him and punish him for his crime against you, my Empress.”
“Everybody calm the fuck down!” I screamed, but they were all past listening to reason, or even to me. Only Lachlan and Alexios stayed by my side as the other three stormed the beach.
I could hear when they reached the ice house, because Kellin shouted something that sounded like, “Desecration!” and shards of the house and the stacks of firewood outside it started flying into the air.
“Come and face your death, worm!” Lusca shouted to the sky.
I stomped toward them, knowing if Skadi came back, this was all going to go tits up faster than I could make them understand. I yelled, “Give me back my dagger, or you’ll be the one facing death!”
“Mistress.” Alexios was at my side, pulling something else out of his dry bag. “I regret this is all the clothing I have for you—”
“Fuck, thanks.” I stopped long enough to pull on the long shirt he handed me. I could tell by the scent it was Goran’s, and I let myself sniff it as I slid it over my head. His pine and musk had always felt like home. “Our boat?”
“In too many pieces for even your secret kraken mate to repair.” He lifted an eyebrow. “You had no memory of him?”
“Not until just now.” Gripping my nautilus shell, I headed for Lusca. My foot caught on a sharp rock, though, and the scent of my blood swirled in the sea breeze. “Ouch.”
Alexios had me bundled in his arms before I could take another step, and Kellin was there as well, taking Alexios’s boots off for him while he held me. “Good idea, Kellin,” Alexios said. “Her feet are about the same size as mine.”
“Kellin, no. He’ll need those himself,” I protested, but I might as well have been one of the squawking seabirds on the cliffs, for all the good it did. When he slid the first one on me, I sighed. “I can put them on myself, you know.”
“I know.” Kellin pulled off his fur and wrapped it around the wound, the warmth of it sinking into my skin. I could feel the small cut healing beneath it. “I know you prefer not to have me help you. You may have rejected me as a suitor, but please let me help.”
I cringed. I’d really, really fucked up. He ducked his head, removed the pelt, and slid the other boot on. “Kellin, I didn’t mean to reject you.”
He stepped back, his head still lowered. In the background, Lusca kept on shouting at the sky. The wind was colder now, but it wasn’t coming from the direction of the land. The sea air was dropping in temperature, fast.
But I needed to explain. “Kellin, I’m sorry I poisoned you. I… I need to explain what happened. I had no choice.”
He lifted his head then, a hurt expression I could have lived my whole life without seeing on his handsome face. “You had a choice. You made it, and I understand. I’d hoped…” He sucked in a breath, whirling around. “To the south!” he shouted.
Alexios set me down and handed me a knife.
“Mistress? Is he an enemy?” The words were snatched away, and then I was, too, as the wind picked me up and tried to throw me into the sky.
He leaped for me at the last second and managed to grab my leg, pulling me back down.
Only my cloak kept me from being cut to ribbons on the sharp rocks when we landed.
“You dare to touch my captive,” the wind itself seemed to shout, a blink before Skadi materialized in front of us in his ice dragon form over the water.
He froze the sea where he landed and roared as his snout and scales and wings appeared.
Those cold eyes fell on me, a spark of what might be fear or concern shimmering for an instant.
Then he raked his gaze over the men around me, landing finally on Lusca, who stood in the wreckage of the ice house.
“Who broke the cage I built for my enemy?”
I sighed. Cage? He really could have put that better.