10. Chapter Ten #3
Calder slowed sooner than Adam expected, but he’d been peering around himself at the fish and other sea life, losing all sense of how fast they were moving.
Holding up a couple arms, Calder made a gesture that Adam chose to interpret as “one minute.” He then let Adam go, and he wondered if the sign had actually been “stay here” or “don’t move.” (Yeah, Adam totally got the value of that telepathy now. Even emotional state might have helped.)
Adam watched the sinuous movements as Calder swam away from him, and then, between one blink and the next, he changed.
He grew. A kraken was really, really big.
Adam had known that intellectually. He’d even known it visually seeing Calder at a distance from the harbor boat.
But as one little human swimming in the sea and then—poof! —a kraken? He was gigantic.
He was also, beyond a shadow of a doubt, utterly majestic.
“Wow,” he mouthed.
Calder seemed to relax, moving his arms and tentacles more naturally now.
When he reached out tentatively, Adam nodded and allowed one of the massive arms to coil around him.
He stroked the soft skin, cool to the touch here in the ocean.
Calder pulled him closer, so that Adam was almost touching one of his huge eyeballs.
Yes, each one was definitely bigger than Adam was. Holy crap. He was less than eyeball sized! This made him laugh, which thankfully worked with the breathing spell.
He used his fingers to show a little space between them and then thrust his arms out to show a big space and pointed at Calder’s eyeballs.
“Wow.”
It turned out a kraken could roll his eyes. Who knew?
Carefully, Calder towed him around again, and Adam watched as all the sea life around them wisely got out of the way.
They were moving much more quickly now, the huge siphon propelling them through large amounts of water, but Adam was carefully wrapped up in a tentacle and held close to Calder’s body—which put him actually kind of near the giant beak—but kept him protected from the movement.
Adam had wondered if he might be instinctively scared of Calder in this form. But he’d already seen him rescue a bunch of children, and he knew with absolute certainty that his mate would never harm him, no matter how he looked.
No, despite their comical size difference, Adam felt safe and protected like this, staring out between all those arms and just imagining how much more swimming together they could do once they were bonded.
If the bonding didn’t help with seeing in the dark water, Adam was going to need to ask Evie’s brother Max for help again.
He didn’t notice when they headed back the way they’d come, but they must have done so, because then Calder was carefully releasing him, leaving Adam feeling weirdly bereft.
He drew back further than Adam liked until he’d suddenly shrunk to little squid size.
(Well, not like little little, because squid could be tiny. But small compared to kraken-sized.)
Calder swam back over, still seeming weirdly small even though he was still longer in this form than Adam was, and gently tugged him into motion once more.
Oh, yes, now Adam could feel how much more slowly they were moving compared to when Calder had been a kraken.
He couldn’t protect Adam quite as well with this relative size.
There was a sudden sharp pinching sensation where Adam’s shoulder and neck met, and he clapped his hand there, expecting to find that Calder had accidentally got him with some of that chitin in his suckers.
There was nothing there, though, and after a moment, Adam remembered about the breathing spell.
Right. Ten-minute warning. Thankfully, Calder seemed to have things well in hand, because Adam had forgotten to even look at the time when they left.
His awesome mate soon slowed, and Adam could see how much lighter it had grown around them.
Calder pulled back a little again, and then sort of…
furled into his human form. (Was that the opposite of unfurled?) Adam had heard that it could look painful when shifters shifted, but with Calder, it looked perfectly natural.
Calder swam closer again, a question in his eyes, and Adam closed the distance between them, wrapping his arms around his fabulous mate and kissing him. If he’d thought about it, he wouldn’t have been sure if the breathing spell would work with kissing, but fortunately, it did.
When he winced a little at the next pinch, however, Calder’s eyes narrowed, and then he was kicking them upwards with more grace and strength than Adam possessed.
They broke the surface, and Adam found himself drawing in deep lungfuls of air—more out of habit than anything, apparently, because he’d been breathing fine the whole time. He could see the shore not too far distant, though he definitely couldn’t touch the ground here.
He flung himself at Calder again, managing to misjudge the distance and splashing them both, but Calder just laughed and gathered him into his arms, kissing him soundly.
“That was so amazing. You’re so cool,” Adam told him, like a total dork.
This just made Calder smile. “Thank you, sweetheart. I’m so glad I could share it with you. It will be even better when we bond.”
“I can’t wait!”
Adam was so excited for everything they could do together. He knew it was going to be magnificent.