Chapter 21
T he current hit like a living wall.
One moment Klari had Greta’s hand locked tight in his, the next the sea itself turned against him. An invisible force slammed into his side, crushing his ribs and spinning him violently end over end.
The pressure was everywhere — heavy, merciless, directionless. It tore at his tail, tried to rip his arms from their sockets, and squeezed the water from his gills until his vision sparked with black stars.
“Greta!”
His roar vanished instantly, swallowed by the roaring dark. He thrashed wildly, tail lashing, claws slashing uselessly through water that felt like solid stone. Every muscle in his body screamed as he fought to push forward, to reach the place where she had just been.
But the current only grew stronger.
It yanked him sideways, then downward, then spun him again like a leaf in a storm. His shoulder slammed into something hard — a rock outcrop, maybe — and pain exploded through his already wounded side. He ignored it. He kept fighting. Kept reaching.
His fingers stretched out blindly, clawing for any trace of her, but there was nothing. Only cold, rushing water and the brutal, relentless pressure crushing him from every direction.
Not her. Not now. Not like this.
He twisted, tail whipping with every ounce of power he had left, trying to angle himself against the flow instead of with it. His lungs — his gills — burned. His heart hammered so hard he could feel it in his throat.
The current fought him harder, as if it resented his defiance, squeezing tighter, dragging him deeper into the black.
For what felt like an eternity he battled it. Every stroke was agony. Every twist sent fresh pain through his torn muscles. Blood from his earlier wounds clouded the water around him in dark ribbons.
Still he refused to stop. Still he roared her name inside his mind, over and over, a silent war cry.
Then — finally — something shifted.
The pressure cracked.
Not all at once, but in a sudden, violent release. The invisible wall that had been crushing him weakened just enough for him to drive forward with one last, desperate surge of his tail.
Klari exploded free.
He burst out of the maelstrom with a savage twist of his powerful body, chest heaving, gills flaring wide as he gulped in water. His golden eyes were wide and frantic as he spun in the empty dark, searching desperately for any trace of her.
“GRETA!”
His voice disappeared into the vastness. Only the faint, dying swirl of phosphorescence marked where the current had dragged her away.
Fear slammed into him harder than any rival’s claws ever had.
This wasn’t the cold calculation of the games. This was raw, choking terror with her name branded across every thought. Greta.
The female whose soft laugh had cracked something open inside him on that first alien island. The one whose pink scales had glowed rose and coral beneath his hands while she came apart around him, whispering that she chose him.
The only one who had ever made the endless cycle of claiming feel like something more than survival.
He could not lose her.
Klari forced his body to go still, gills flaring as he read the water with desperate precision. Pressure gradients. Temperature shifts. The subtle drift of silt and debris.
There — a thin, fragile trail of disturbed molecules carrying the faintest trace of her scent. It was faint, but it was there. A ghost of her presence lingering in the water like the last breath of a fading star.
Klari followed it with single-minded focus, every powerful stroke of his tail sending fresh pain through his wounds, but he didn’t slow. Greta was somewhere ahead in that direction. He could feel it.
He followed it.