by Keri Hudson
And for all her amazing history, Lisa seemed genuinely charmed by her surroundings and intrigued by the natural beauty and bounty of the island. For her, it was a new world, and she seemed open to it in a way that Paul admired and respected. Everything about Lisa van Kamp seemed perfect to him, Paul’s mind still struggling to comprehend the miracle of her presence next to him.
Lisa reached in and picked up a clam, pulling it from its footing in the crags. They shared a smile as she placed the clam into her leaf, and the simple satisfaction of the act was clear on her pretty face, in her sumptuous smile. Paul was locked in the grip of her beauty, her miraculous presence, her astounding attraction to him. She was a dream, she was a cure, she was a gift from the thing his father had mentioned in passing which the normalos called God.
They crouched on the rocks, picking out the fruits of the sea, the dull chore never more enjoyable. But then Lisa was suddenly jerked down as an unseen force pulled her quickly down to the jagged rocks.
She screamed and turned, and that was when Paul saw the tentacle reaching up out of the waves, wrapped around Lisa’s lovely calf. She screamed and reached out even as the creature pulled her into the waves and to her death.
Paul grabbed Lisa’s arms and shoulders, pulling her back. But the strength of the sea creature was incredible, and it held fast to Lisa’s leg. She kicked at it, but another tentacle reached out from the foam to capture her other leg, the slick and boneless tentacle wrapping around her and pinning her legs together. Paul knew that he was her only chance for survival, which was paramount in Paul’s heart, mind, and soul.
He could feel her terror and the octopus’ strength, but Paul was not about the let his prize go to that slimy beast from the bottom. Paul pulled Lisa further from the rocks, using all his human strength. She writhed and struggled, but the creature was too strong. As Paul pulled Lisa back, the animal held on, even creeping out of the shallows to finalize its assault.
The octopus was tremendous, slipping out of the water to claim its prey. Its great head was soft and baggy, huge eyes wide and horrifying, tentacles reaching out to grab Lisa’s arms, wrapping around her nearly naked torso to pull her down and devour her.
Paul pulled her back as far as he could, but he knew the beast was driven and he could not conquer it in his human form. The creature came out further, emboldened and ravenous and fixed on murder. Paul had been shocked, but he could hardly be surprised. He knew from his father how intelligent and intrepid octopi could be, though he’d never seen one of such size and strength and boldness. By its size, Paul took it for an alpha male, and he could only assume that his own presence had attracted the beast, naturally drawn to combat his superior nature. All alpha creatures were protective against and aggressive toward shifters, and this animal seemed no different. But it had eight long and strong legs and the advantage of the water, and it seemed to know it.
Still, Paul resisted shifting, not wanting to traumatize poor Lisa and send her running frightened from him, never to return. The octopus’ tentacles found him, as he knew they were bound to. One wrapped around his left arm, another around his right leg. Paul knew the beast would soon have the better of him, that he was the creature’s likely target all along. Surely it was his natural state of being which had attracted such a terrible predator, and he would not let that cause Lisa’s loss, or his own. He was a creature of tremendous power, as both Lisa and the octopus menacing her were about to find out.
He tore off his leather and shifted quickly, his lupine self overtaking his human body in an instant. Massive snout and jaws replaced his human face, long paws and claws forming from his human hands, thick fur sprouting.
Lisa looked at him with the expression of impossible disbelief, panic, and fear. She screamed and seemed to faint, but Paul knew she could no longer be the center of his focus. He had to kill that octopus and he could hardly wait to do it.
The animal conflict rose from the bottom of Paul’s being, all his strength and natural instincts coming into play. All his power poured into the fight, a chance to harvest the amazing strength nature had bestowed upon a lupine shifter in the prime of his life.
The octopus seemed to know what it was up against, more power thrown into those rubbery tentacles, slapping him in frantic attempts to wrap around his legs, his neck. But in his lupine form, Paul was more than even that supremely intelligent animal could have anticipated. Paul’s first task was to free Lisa, and his clapping jaws and sharp, white fangs bit down onto the tentacles securing Lisa to rip them apart. Hard shakes of Paul’s head tore the octopus’ flesh with relative ease. Its detached arms still lived, wrapping around Lisa’s curvaceous body to act on natural instinct to squeeze, to smother, to kill. But they could no longer drag her down into the deep; they had no mouths to devour her, no sharp beak to break into her flesh and bone.
The living octopus, however, was not nearly so helpless. It seemed to know its true enemy, turning all of its combative attention to Paul in a life-or-death struggle. And Paul was ready, drawing on his primitive strengths and instincts. His blood pulsed with purpose, the strength of his primal power rising to the fore. He even relished the conflict in a certain way that he could not quite understand.
But the creature had similar instincts and comparable desires, willing for combat and ready for death. The thing came at him, lurching further out of the water. Long, wriggling legs lashed at him, rows of strong suction cups trying to latch onto Paul’s lupine fur. But the hair was hard to hold, and though those long tentacles wrapped around his torso, Paul was stronger than the sea creature seemed to expect.
Paul rolled on the rocks, jagged crags doing little to hurt him. But those tentacles were vicious and strong and numerous. Paul’s jaws were his only weapon, but he used them with instinct and cunning and swiftness. He bit through one tentacle and tore it away from its base, the long and writhing thing flying off to the side to land with a splash in the water. He tore of another arm, though it remained curling around his legs and gut, desperate for a last-minute kill.
Paul knew he had to make a more direct assault, and as soon as he freed himself of those writhing tentacles, he jumped at the creature’s big, baggy head. Paul jumped and landed directly on the creature, its mammoth head almost the size of his own body, ten feet across. But it had no armor, and even as its remaining tentacles reached up to grab Paul and pull him to a watery death, his own resolve to destroy it prevailed. He tore into the giant octopus’ head, biting down hard and pulling away layer after layer of flesh and blood. The tentacles wrapped around him, his teeth digging into the creature’s head, and the entirety of the sea beast recoiled into the shallows, no doubt to die and to take Paul to that same watery grave.
Paul tried to resist the creature’s strength, but even his tremendous power could not withstand the pull of the animal’s tangling legs and its massive weight as it recoiled into the shallows.
No, Paul thought as he struggled with the beast, pulled from the rocks and into the water. No!
But the animal retreated, holding Paul in its slick tentacles as it pulled back, the cold water rising around him. Paul glanced back at Lisa, safe on the rocks, and he was glad for that outcome. But if Paul were to die, he knew she would be subject to the whims of his family, and he could not trust them.
The dark brine surrounded him as Paul sank into the shallows. But Paul knew there was one way back to life, to love, to Lisa. He bit down hard and shook, feeling the flesh of his enemy deteriorating under the power of his assault. Paul tore and bit, deeper and deeper, until he found the creature’s brain. Paul bored in, the tentacles of the mighty creature twitching as Paul commanded the center of their instruction. The octopus was already dead, Paul knew that. It would never recover from the injuries Paul had inflicted upon it. But whether Paul would survive the struggle was yet to be known.
His instincts told him what to do as water poured into his nostrils, his throat. But his killing power prevailed, and the octopus’ tentacles were acting
of their own accord, as they had on Lisa after Paul had bit them free of their master. Paul was battling nervous reaction, natural instinct, and he realized that. His enemy was fighting long after death, a creature capable of acting without will or consciousness.
But Paul was stronger, inspired by the new life that awaited him, the love that would be there for him were he to make his way back up to that beach. Dedication and hope were what propelled him, inspiring his fervor and giving even more power to his bite, his thrash, his pull, the octopus falling apart, tentacles releasing their grip just enough to let him pull away and escape to the surface.
Paul walked out of the water in his lupine form, two detached tentacles clinging to him, still writhing and wiggling as he approached Lisa. She was still unconscious, the detached tentacles slowly ceasing their wriggling mania. Her perfect skin was blemished by bruises from the suction cups, but they would heal. She was safe and he was alive and the giant octopus was neither.
Paul shifted back into his human form and put on his leather. He picked Lisa up once again, as he had when he found her on that very same stretch of beach. He carried her back to their secluded hideaway, but Paul knew she would wake. And when she did, nothing would be the same.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Paul watched Lisa sleep. He’d brought her back from the beach, and he knew the exhaustion she must have been feeling. Surviving the shipwreck had to be draining, and her first day or so on the island had been traumatic at best. Paul didn’t wonder that her conscious mind wanted to retreat from it all. His own often wanted the same, but he knew that as close as they had already gotten, they were of different minds because they had different pasts and they were essentially different. That was what troubled Paul more than anything else.
It was well known among shifters that they only mated with normalos. To do otherwise was akin to a kind of bigamy. The human aspect of any young shifter had to be contributed by a fully normalo human, which kept the species strong. And it was hard to fathom, but Paul’s own mother had been a normalo, and the inherent weakness of that creature had caused her death from disease shortly after his birth. It was the way of their kind, though normalo women were rarely quick to accept it. Paul knew that many human women were taken by bodily force for the purposes of breeding, just as his own family members had shown a propensity to do. He wasn’t going to do that, and he didn’t have to with Lisa. That lovely, loving young woman had given herself to him willingly, and he’d taken her. He would do it again, and he knew she relished the anticipation. He did too.
But that had all been before, when she took him for just another regular human, a normalo like her. She could perhaps get used to life on the island as he and his family had, and they might even come to grips with the fact that their love could well be stronger than even the familial ties that bound them or the carnal desires which threatened to separate them. But Paul knew she was too intelligent to believe that what she’d seen was a hallucination; he wouldn’t even insult her by trying to lie to her that way. He’d have to be honest, frank, but he knew she would be repulsed by the idea of being so close, so intimate, with something so unnatural from her perspective.
Paul already knew that she would wake with fear and questions, and he wasn’t sure precisely how he would deal with them. But he knew he could only be honest, be comforting, be hopeful.
He carried her into his secluded hideaway, careful to sniff out any predator or even a member of his own family. But in his human form, his senses weren’t any keener than any other human. The hogs had a certain pungent smell, but his own family did not. They could always be prowling, Paul certain that Lisa remained a priority. But the hideaway was clear and quiet and Paul laid Lisa down on the grass next to the pond, under the breadfruit tree. A macaw called out from a nearby tree, seemingly disinterested in what was happening below.
She slept like an angel, eyes closed and lips perfect and pouty. Lisa whined just a bit in her troubled sleep, and each little squeak inspired more passion, more strength in his body, mind, and soul.
In the quiet moments, Paul allowed himself to fantasize about what their lives might actually be like in the event of her rescue. She would bring Paul with her, he felt certain of that. He’d insist on his family’s rescue, and he knew she would agree. Facing the prospect of delivery to normal human society would appease them. The anticipation of being let loose to enjoy all the amazing things James Landry had told them about society, to mate freely with the many women who were going about in the cities and towns all across the world, was too much to ignore. His brother, cousin, and father would all be both pleased and appeased. There would be no reason to fight over Lisa, though Paul knew he would never let her go to anyone ever, unless that was her wish. Whatever she wanted, he wanted it for her. Paul was so enamored, so fulfilled and in love that he was ready to kill himself if that was what she wanted.
But it was just a fantasy. If his family would relax their own demands, and Paul was willing to hope that they would, they could all live as a happy family even if her father’s rescue forces never did arrive.
And they weren’t going to, Paul felt certain.
Lisa woke, eyes fluttering before she lurched up with a start. She looked around, looked at Paul, and he knew Lisa was reviewing the events before she passed out. He could see her thought process, he felt he could almost hear her inner voice. But he didn’t need to; he knew what she was thinking and he was about to hear it.
She screamed, breath spilling out of her until she clearly had to breathe again. Her pretty eyes bulged, and she crawled backward and away from Paul even as he held out his flattened palms to calm her.
“Take it easy,” he said in a voice deliberately calm and soft, “you don’t have anything to fear from me.”
Lisa was clearly thinking things through, reviewing their good times, their lovemaking, but even that seemed to fill her with new worry, new fear, as if he’d violated her in a way he’d never wanted to do.
“I… I don’t understand.”
“I know,” Paul offered, “it’s… it’s not what you’re used to, none of this is.”
Lisa looked around, confusion possessing her gorgeous expression. “But… that thing in the water, and then you… you changed, you changed!”
“I know, it’s hard to understand. But you’re okay now, that’s what matters.”
Lisa was clearly still stunned, as any normalo would be. She was clearly wrestling with truths that most normalos never had to consider even for a moment.
“I… you… I don’t understand!”
“The octopus attacked you, I had to protect you.”
After another confused pause, Lisa said, “Right, I… thank you, but…?”
Paul knew the source of her confusion. There was no need to go on asking. So he added, “I… we, my family, we’re not like most people.”
“You… your whole family?”
Paul nodded. “It’s the way we are, nothing we can do about it.”
Lisa seemed to accept that, but wrestling with the terrible truth was obviously difficult for her. And Paul understood that; he didn’t want to push her beyond her comfort level, which she’d clearly already breached.
“You’re… you’re werewolves?”
“Shifters,” Paul said. “What’s a werewolf?”
Lisa seemed to wrestle with the question before shaking her head and waving the notion away. “So you… you change… into a wolf, that’s what I’m saying.”
Paul gave it some thought, her perspective not too off the mark. “I suppose that’s about it, right.”
But it was still too much for Lisa to digest, Paul could tell that by her cramped brow, her pretty head shaking. “Are you… human? I don’t understand!”
“Look at me, Lisa, I’m only what you see, I’m only what I am. I’m a person, maybe not like any other, but… basically I’m just… I’m just me. That’s all I can be, all I’ll ever be. I understand if you don’t want anything to do with me, and I… I�
�m sorry if what happened between us last night was… if you think I was… I was lying or tricking you or… or being mean in any way.”
“No, Paul, it’s not that, I… last night was lovely, really, and you… you’re a good person, I know that, I can sense it.” After a worrying silence, she added, “But… your family?”
Paul wasn’t sure how to answer her. “They… we’re all shifters, my mother was the only normalo in the family.”
“You… you interbreed?”
“Always, it’s part of our life cycle. There are times when normalo women actually choose to be with us, like my mother and father. She loved him very much, I’m told, was completely dedicated to him, their family.”
Lisa nodded, but it was clear to Paul that she was still trying to wrap her mind around the truth of his nature.
“It’s like… it’s like being schizophrenic, then?” Paul could only shake his head, no notion of the word entering into his mind. “Split-personality?”
“No, Lisa, no. Even when I’m in my lupine form, I’m still me, though my mind is a bit more… instinctive.”
“Lupine?”
“It’s… it means wolf or wolf-like, my father said. But there are others too, ursines.”