Chapter 27
Kael
Fighting the Black Tide
The water is black fire around me.
Shadow coils bite into my tentacles, searing like acid, pulling, trying to drag me down into some pit beyond the abyss.
Idris’s magic clings like tar, every strike with my trident cutting nothing but smoke.
This SoulTaker is a beast. And he is massive.
A form shifting creature—sometimes claws, sometimes tendrils, sometimes the face of every nightmare I have ever had.
It hisses through the dark.
She will drown. She is mine.
Rage surges hotter than the storm.
“She is not yours. She is mine.”
My roar shakes the sea, but still the thing laughs, still it tightens.
My limbs thrash, each movement powerful but clumsy, the new Titan strength too raw to control.
For the first time, doubt slithers close.
Then—something cuts through the black.
A voice. Not mine. Not the Lords.
Phoebe.
My Telya.
The bond between us flares bright as a star. She calls—not to me, but through me. Outward. To the sea.
Help him. Protect him. Go to him.
The plea is clumsy, human, but the sea listens.
The sea obeys.
Shapes surge out of the deep.
My sharks tear into shadow tendrils, ripping chunks free.
A pod of whales rams the SoulTaker’s flanks, driving it back.
Otters swarm its limbs, gnawing through darkness with impossible courage.
Even the sea tigers roar, clawing and snapping until the creature reels.
For a heartbeat, I freeze.
Not from fear—but from awe.
My mate.
My Telya.
She has no training, no bloodline of command—and yet the creatures rally to her call as if she were born of the tide itself.
Phoebe.
I think of her, gratitude flooding me as strength surges back into my limbs.
My magical, wonderful, brave mate.
The SoulTaker thrashes, suddenly pinned by fins and claws and teeth, held in place by the will of the very sea it thought to corrupt.
I grip my trident with both hands.
Lightning crawls down its prongs, storm light searing through the water.
“Back to the hell you crawled from,” I snarl beneath the water, and drive the weapon straight into its core.
The shadow shrieks, a sound so sharp the sea trembles.
Then the creature implodes, collapsing into itself until only a smear of black foam remains, sucked downward into the rift Idris clawed open.
The tear seals with a final hiss.
Silence follows.
The creatures wheel around me, their calls echoing, not just mine anymore.
Ours.
And through the bond, I feel her—Phoebe, alive, fierce, blazing with the magic she doesn’t even realize she carries.
She saved me. Saved us.
And as I turn upward, pushing through the water toward her, one truth drowns out all else.
I will never let her doubt her place at my side again.